The newspaper that roams
|
A visit to the place where the California gold rush began PLUS: A visit with a tinsmith, to a hunted hotel and Miwok Indian village and to other historic Gold Country communities. From Out West #13 By Chuck Woodbury, editor I’m camped on the shore of the American River about 200 yards from the exact spot where gold was discovered in Coloma, Calif., in 1848. James Marshall found a tiny nugget here, and it wasn’t long before gold-seekers from the East and around the world beganswarming to Coloma and to nearby regions of the Sierra foothills to claim their fortunes. Some did, but most did not. The dream of California as the promised land had begun, and it never died. Those early immigrants sought gold; later, traveling iron rails and paved highways, they merely sought jobs, and perhaps a stucco home where they could raise their families. Yet, if you sit by the river in the quiet morning, or in the evening as the sun sets, it appears much the same here today as it was then. Ignore the intrusive sound of the passing traffic and concentrate on the passing river and the replica of the sawmill alongside the river. A real sawmill was here then, and before the gold strike it was the only reason the settlement of Coloma (spelled Culloma then) existed. Perhaps you can imagine John Marshall picking up that nugget. How could he know what his discovery would mean to California, the West, and indeed the United States itself? Marshall died years later, an alcoholic and broke. Toward his end, he earned a few dollars signing autographed photos, but considering his place in history, it was a terrible way to end a life. Today, of course, he’d do the talk shows, write a book, and sell the movie rights; with a good financial planner, he’d be set until the booze rotted his liver. Marshall is remembered and honored in Coloma, at Mashall Gold Discovery State Historic Park. A replica of the old sawmill is the biggest attraction, but there’s also a visitor center, and even a beautiful monument to Marshall. C
State route 49 is your pathway through the Mother Lode, the name given to this region. The road was named after the 49ers who came here in Marshall’s day. My hometown of Grass Valley, about an hour drive north of here, is in the northern end of the Mother Lode, in a region of the Mother Lode known as the Northern Mines. Nevada City, a few miles away, is the showpiece of the region with its Victorian homes and gas lamp-lit main street. Horse-drawn carriages haul fare-paying passengers around town in a scene reminiscent of a Norman Rockwell painting. But, like most towns along State Route 49 (the highway was numbered in honor of the gold seekers of 1849), Nevada City survives to a large extent from the dollars of tourists, who visit the Mother Lode by the millions each year to see towns built by gold, and to even pan a little themselves along one of the many rivers. As geologists will tell you, eighty percent of all the gold that was here still remains. Mining stopped only when the gold price plummeted back in the mid-twentieth century. Now that prices have risen, so has mining activity, and if you look close you will find active mines and miners. To see what I mean, visit the tiny settlement of Alleghany and have a beer or burger at Casey’s Place. There’s a good chance the guy sitting next to you works over at the Sixteen-To-One Mine — one of the many small mining operations that have come back to life in the past few years. Except for the electric lights and the neon beer signs, the scene inside Casey’s Place could be from 1880. A VISIT WITH A TINSMITH Earlier today, as the sun set, I took a fast walk through Mashall Gold Discovery State Historic Park. But, I didn’t walk much after I entered the L. Hodkin Tinsmith shop, which is right on the main street. It isn’t very big — perhaps twice the size of my motorhome. Jerrie Shannon, dressed in garb from the gold rush days, was busy snipping tin, and fashioning the pieces into candle holders. Curious visitors would ask her what she was doing, and she’d light up with a big smile, and explain in a barrage of non-stop words. She wouldn’t stop talking until someone interrupted her, or they walked away. Then she’d start working again until the next tourist asked a question. I was the next tourist. Jerrie, it turned out, works at the shop on weekends, when owner is off. Her regular full time job is at the University of California at Davis as a sheetmetal worker, which is an unusual occupation for a woman. In the local chapter of her 3,200-member union, there are only four women. She took up the trade at age 34. She was a single mother of two, and she needed a way to earn a living. At the time, she was barely getting by, even relying on food stamps to feed the family. So she stuck her head in a library or two and researched trades. She settled on sheet metal, and then spent the next four years as an apprentice. Her first job paid $7.02 an hour — a fortune to her at the time. Apprenticeship completed, Jerrie started making things from tin and selling them at crafts shows. But it was tough. It was more work than she ever imagined, and she got discouraged. The last straw came when she got second place in a show; first place was a decoupaged electric plug wall plate. She applied for a job at the University of California, Davis, and got it. Now, she’s one of 11 sheetmetal workers on campus. But her love is tinsmithing, and at the park here she can explain her craft to visitors. She especially enjoys talking about how important tinsmiths were in the gold rush days. “They made coffee pots, gold pans, lanterns, tea containers,” she told me, and then rattled off a list of a dozen other important items which I have now forgotten. On busy weekends, she takes her tools out on the front porch and demonstrates tinsmithing to larger crowds than she can accommodate in the small shop. She’ll make cookie cutters or candle holders, or other things, and the people will watch, and they’ll buy up everything she produces. Jerrie’s next project is to become a blacksmith. In case you haven’t figured it out by now, Jerrie Shannon is a woman with a lot of enthusiasm and energy. OTHER GOLD RUSH COMMUNITIES While Coloma is the Mother town of the Mother Lode, it shares the historic spotlight with dozens of other gold rush-era settlements. Today, I have visited several of these picturesque communities as I move south. Placerville — once called Hangtown — was the first stop. This is a busy town nowadays, probably because it is within commuting distance to Sacramento along U.S. 50 — a
Once, though, Placerville was a rough place. By the fall of 1849, crime was rampant, and three men had been flogged and hanged — at one of the hangman’s trees at what’s now 305 Main Street. Folks started calling the settlement Hangtown, and the name stuck for five years until the town was incorporated as Placerville. Today, Placerville looks much like it did back in those days of yesteryear. The main street follows an old miners’ trail, and that explains why it bends in a few places for no apparent reason. A stuffed dummy hangs from a noose high outside the Hangman’s Tree Cafe bar on Main Street, a reminder of days long ago. On the edge of town is Gold Bug Park, a 61-acre preserve studded with hundreds of old gold mines. It’s said $17,000 worth of gold was mined here in one week in about 1849. Nowadays, the Gold Bug Mine is the best preserved of the old tunnels. It’s open free of charge to the public on weekends. You can walk right in. An occasional light bulb illuminates the way, so you don’t even need a flashlight. From the outside, Poor Reds looks like a genuine dive. The building is nearly as old as California. The decor inside isn’t much more impressive, but nobody cares because it’s the food and drink that count. I stopped for lunch, and chose a Pork Dip and small salad for $3. There was so much food, I ende
While, Dot was puffing on a cigarette, folks in Fiddletown were mostly just fiddling around. A couple of guys in flannel shirts were across the street jump-starting a Corvair, and two kids were running up and down the street yelling at each other. And a guy in a Mercedes stopped out front to read a road map. But other than that, nothing much was happening in Fiddletown, which is the home to a popular bumper sticker, “Fiddle Around In Fiddletown.” Fiddletown, by the way, once had the largest population of Chinese outside San Francisco, although it was settled by Missourians in 1849. It got its name because, according to one settler, the citizens were “always fiddling around.” A GOOD PLACE TO LEARN ABOUT MIWOK INDIANS Up the road apiece, I spent the night at Indian Grinding Rock State Park, the only state park in Calfornia devoted to Indian culture. The most interesting part of the park is the 14,000-square-foot grinding rock with its 1,185 chaw-ses, or mortar cups, which Miwok Indians used to ground up acorns from the hundreds of nearby valley oaks. It’s the largest such grinding rock every found. There are also many Miwok homes — bark tee-pees. Park guests can rent one of these for the night, certainly one of the more interesting accommodation
Another interesting part of the park is the athletic field, which is about the size of a football field. The Miwoks played a game similar to soccer. Men were only allowed to kick the ball; women, however, could handle it in any manner. Interestingly, a woman who possessed the ball was fair game for the men, who could pick her up and run with her. I suspect if American football added this rule to the game, attendance would soar. He’s a retired Army sergeant, and she’s a retired insurance office manager, and they have a nine-year-old dauchshand named Marcie who hasn’t retired from anything, but who is very active in the squirrel pursuit business. Aloysius is the president-elect of the 30-member Sierra Nevada chapter of Region 12 of the Wally Byam Caravan Club, International, Inc., which is comprised of 15,000 folks who travel in Airstream Trailers — those long silver jobs that look, as one of my friends says, “like old toasters on wheels.” June is the secretary treasurer of the club, and, said Aloysius, “the club’s first lady.” The Britzes are a couple of folks on the move, and have been for the better part of 20 years. They’ve toured America and Canada from coast to coast and most points between. Most of the time they’re headed to or from an Airstream rally. There are hundreds a year — some big, some just a few rigs. Until mid-January, though, the Britzes will be parked at Indian Grinding Rock State Park, where they donate 20 hours of labor a week in turn for their full-hookup campsite. It’s a terrific deal for this sociable couple, who have worked as campground hosts since 1973. “We do it to see an area,” explained June, who is an award winning chili cook, and maker of Finnish pasties — meat pies. For extra income, June makes various craft items. During my visit, she was working on Thanksgiving centerpieces — turkeys fashioned from large pine cones. Aloysius takes photos, mostly for fun or for an occasional PR assignment for his Airstream club. The Britz’s said they never get bored or lonely on the road. “We have friends and relatives all over the country,” explained June. “And if we don’t like our neighbors, we just unhook and take off.” In January, after leaving Indian Grinding Rocks State Park, they’ll head south to Blythe, California and to Tucson, Arizona. In Blythe, they’ll attend a rally will a hobo theme. “We dress up as hoboes, and have a great hobo stew,” said Aloysius. Mokelumne Hill, population 100, is another old gold rush town, and the site of the “French War” of 1851. The story goes that the French miners were finding a lot of gold, and to celebrate they ran their country’s flag right up a flagpole. Well, the Americans didn’t find this amusing — in fact they were mighty angered, probably more out of jealousy than anything else, so they did what they figured was just — they attacked the Frenchmen. Although the Frenchmen erected a temporary fort, the Americans won the fight and the Frenchmen left town. I’m not sure of the historical lesson here, but the story is worth repeating. Today, Mokelumne Hill (called Moke Hill by locals), is one of the more picturesque of the old mining camps. HAUNTED HOTEL? One of the most interesting buildings is the old Hotel Léger, built in 1854 by George Léger, who migrated to the California gold fields to mine the pockets of miners, rather than the earth itself. Part of his hotel building once served as the
But it may be that George Léger never actually left the place. He was murdered in room seven of the hotel, and some folks believe his ghost remains. Marci Biagi and her husband Joseph Rohde recently bought the hotel, and they’ve been hearing ghost stories ever since. Marci, a self-described skeptic about ghostly things, says she hasn’t actually observed ghost George in action, but there have been some strange occurrences. For example: •A few beds have become mysteriously unmade. Marci has no explanation. George’s ghost, perhaps? •The hotel’s cook, Anthony “Tiger” Rasser, once spotted a man with black shoes behind a stall in the bathroom. After leaving the room, he remembered the hotel was closed. So he immediately returned to the bathroom, but the man had vanished without a trace. George’s ghost? Marci won’t rule it out. Marci says there have also been reports of a woman pacing in room two, a small child playing in another room, and an old woman weeping in the hotel theater (the old courthouse). If you like hotels with ghosts this might be a good place to stay (phone 209-286-1401 for reservations). But if you’re superstitious, you might think twice: the hotel has 13 rooms, and there’s even a resident black cat (well, it has a little white on it, but it’s mostly black). Rooms go for $59 to $79 a night (2000 rates). They’re nothing fancy, but the feel of the old West is there, and you can’t beat the setting in downtown Moke Hill.
Out West, 9792 Edmonds Way, #265-A, Edmonds, WA 98020. |
