Today  marks the 163^rd anniversary of the discovery that marked the beginning of the California Gold Rush.  Most of you know that the gold was discovered at Sutter’s Mill, but how much do you know about Sutter himself?  Well, depending on which version of history you want to believe, the man was either enterprising, adventurous, supportive of the American settlement of California and a good and generous host to travelers, or the man was a cheat, liar, slaver, alcoholic and smuggler.  A controversial figure to be sure!

John Augustus Sutter was born in Baden, Germany  in 1803 to Swiss parents.  He married at 24, but the time he turned 31 he’d encountered a series of business failures that resulted in a mountain of debt.  Sutter, unable to face his creditors, decided to see if he would fare better in America.  He left his wife and five children in his brother’s care and traveled to New York, just a few steps ahead of the bill collectors.  From there he headed west to Missouri where he set up as a trader and innkeeper on the Santa Fe Trail. 

But Sutter had bigger dreams.  He wanted to establish his own agricultural empire ‘somewhere out west.’  In the spring of 1838, again escaping creditors, he joined a group of trappers headed for the west coast.  The party arrived at Fort Vancouver, near present day Portland, OR, in October of that same year.  Sutter looked for a ship that would take him to the San Francisco Bay area, but when one was not immediately available, he set sail instead on a ship bound for the Sandwich Islands (Hawaii).  From there he sailed to the Russian colony in Sitka, Alaska.  Sutter managed to engage in profitable trade during these detours, and by the time he arrived in California in July of 1838 he could pass for a man of means.

Ingratiating himself with Governor Alvarado, Sutter easily gained permission to establish a new settlement east of Yerba Buena (later to be renamed San Francisco).  The settlement was located near the spot where the American River meets the Sacramento River, an area formerly occupied only by Indians.  He started with tents and brush huts, but soon had set up a more substantial adobe building.

Setting his sights on a land grant, Sutter became a naturalized Mexican citizen in August of 1840.  The following June Governor Alvarado handed him the title to eleven leagues of land – approximately 48,800 acres.  Sutter named the grant New Helvetia, which means New Switzerland  (this would later become Sacramento).  

In 1844, Sutter completed Fort Sutter and established it as a frontier trading post.  This was an impressive structure, constructed of adobe and with walls 18 feet high and 3 feet thick.  Because of its placement along the overland trails, one of the most strategic locations in Northern California, it became a gathering place  and resting spot for settlers, traders and trappers in the region.  With his dreamed-of agricultural empire established, Sutter branched out into many additional enterprises.  He hired trappers to provide skins and furs for trade, built a distillery, established a blacksmith shop, and transported both freight and passengers between Fort Sutter and the San Francisco Bay.

In 1846, during the California revolt against Mexico, Sutter saw the writing on the wall and decided to side with the Americans.  In the years that followed, Sutter continued to prosper.  Though his reputation among the white settlers continued to be favorable, it was not so with the Indian population.  Much of the labor that fed Sutter’s empire was provided by the Indians who, according to some reports, were treated almost as slaves.

As a side note, though Sutter liked to speak of himself as a good family man, alluding to a home in Switzerland where his family was ensconced (untrue – they were charity cases living with his brother), he never did send for them.  In 1848 his oldest son, on his own initiative joined his father in California and in 1850 it was the son, not the father, who sent for the rest of the family.

In 1847, a chain of events began that would eventually bring about the downfall of Sutter’s empire but would ensure his place in history.  It started innocuously enough – Sutter decided he wanted to establish a sawmill.  For this purpose, he entered into an agreement with James W. Marshall.  They decided to build this mill on the American River at a spot called Collumah by the Indians.  On January 24, 1848, while inspecting the builder’s progress, Marshall spotted a bit of glitter in the mill’s tailrace.  Marshall took his discovery to Sutter.  Sutter confirmed the discovery was indeed gold by checking the entries in an encyclopedia.  He tried to swear his workers to secrecy, but it didn’t take long for the word to get out.  The gold rush was on!

To get an idea of how rapidly the fever spread, in the spring of 1849, the non-Indian population of California was in the neighborhood of 14,000.  By the end of 1849 it stood at almost 100,000, and by 1852, to over a quarter million.

But Sutter himself never profited from the discovery.  In fact, just the opposite.  His workers abandoned him, his lands were overrun by fortune hunters, his crops and cattle were stolen.  By 1852 Sutter was bankrupt and  New Helvetia was in ruins.  Sutter spent the rest of his life petitioning the government, both federal and state, for compensation for his losses but it was not to be.     He died, disappointed, during a trip to Washington D.C. in 1880

In the state of Colorado
In the year of seventy-four
They crossed the San Juan Mountains
Growing hungry to the core.
Their guide was Alferd Packer
And they trusted him too long:
For his character was weak
And his appetite was strong.

This is the first stanza to The Ballad Of Alfred Packer, by Phil Ochs.

I include it here because I was checking the This Day In History Calendar and I came across a rather grisly story of the old west.  In the late 1860s and early 70s, Alfred Packer was a Rocky Mountain prospector who supplemented his income by serving as a guide.  In the winter of 1873-74, Packer started out with a party of 21 men from Bingham Canyon, Utah headed for the gold fields in the Breckenridge, Colorado area.  Several months later Packer showed up, alone, at the Los Pinos Indian Agency.

 To read about what happened in the interim, check out this link: Alfred Packer – Maneater

And to see the rest of the lyrics to the ballad, check this link:  The Ballad of Alfred Packer

I absolutely love this picture. This is just the kind of image of that can transport my brain to another era, like falling into the rabbit hole.  Doesn’t it just come alive? Makes me feel like I’m standing right there on the edge of town…a tiny new community popping up in the middle of no where…which is exactly what happened in this historic town of Bodie, California. I came across this picture while looking up info on Montana mining towns, but I marked the site because I was really struck by the contrast in pictures, like I”d been pulled into the bright shiny start of a new gold rush community and then dropped into the aftermath following the boom by the picture below.

Here’s Bodie from another angle, the ghost town I’d expect to see nowadays with a skeletal reminder of its booming heydays. Can you see the church?  Kind of  spooky the difference lighting and angle can make. Bodie was a Quintessential boom town, making a sleepy start in 1859 when prospector W. S. Bodey discovered some gold. He died during a freak blizzard in November of that year, so the town was named in his honor…sort of.  A painter accidentally lettered the stable sign to read “Bodie Stables”, and the new spelling was adopted by the town.

Bodie remained an obscure little mining community with a handful of residents until 1876. A large deposit of gold-bearing ore was discovered and by 1880 the population had exploded to nearly 8,000.  The town grew to more than 2,000 buildings, including two banks, a brass band, railroad, miner’s and mechanic’s unions, several newspapers, and a jail. Over the years Bodie produced nearly $34 million worth of ore and bullion.

At its peak 65 saloons lined Main Street, which was a mile long. Murders, shootouts, barroom brawls, and stagecoach holdups were regular occurrences. “Badman from Bodie” described the town’s rambunctious inhabitants, earning the community a reputation for violence that rivaled Tombstone, Deadwood and Dodge City. Eventually the gold went the way of water in these hills…and the booming town dried up along with it.

Here’s an interesting tidbit I found on Bodie History.com:

The Founder Has His Day

“Bodie’s confirmed status as a gold-producing community inspired its historically-minded citizens to wonder about the unfortunate prospector who had succumbed in a snowstorm some 20 years earlier and become the town’s namesake. They located his shallow grave and dug up his bones. One area pioneer said the remains were those of William S. Bodey from New York, but his presumed widow in Poughkeepsie said his first name was really “Wakeman.” The New York Times printed “Waterman.” Despite uncertainty, which continues to this day, citizens organized a grand funeral procession and formally interred the bones in the town cemetery. But they failed to mark the new grave and quickly forgot its location. “

Still, it’s the spark  of life in the first picture that really takes me back.  Do you feel it?  Or maybe that picture really makes me believe in GHOST towns

]]> http://petticoatsandpistols.com/2010/10/08/before-and-after-a-boom/feed/ 29 http://petticoatsandpistols.com/2010/08/05/caroline-phyffe-eureka/ http://petticoatsandpistols.com/2010/08/05/caroline-phyffe-eureka/#comments Thu, 05 Aug 2010 09:00:50 +0000 Guest Blogger http://petticoatsandpistols.com/?p=18070 There’s gold in them thar hills…somewhere!  Throughout the history of the West, stories are told of lost, forgotten and misplaced mines.  Many have been sitting undisturbed for years, shrouding their boundless wealth, just waiting to be re-discovered.  Gold and silver-bearing regions are awash with stories of miners losing their way; Indians killing off the miners and then hiding the markings; flash floods destroying the lay of the land; earthquakes changing the rock formations that helped a miner find his way.  
Some of these accounts, of course, are surely yarns, just like the “fish-stories” told by sailors.  But many are the true tale of mines “gone missing” to the poor fools that lost them.  In Arizona alone, there are thought to be at least twenty such sites.  Can you imagine how many the vast American West could be hiding?  

The naysayers can scoff, but in 1959 the Burro Mountains gave up their treasure of the long-lost Spanish mines, twenty-five miles northwest of Lordsburg, New Mexico. And in 1965, Arizona’s “Lost Coconimo” mine was found in the state’s Sycamore Canyon.  

If you’re feeling lucky and have been bitten by wanderlust, you might want to check out a few of the accountings I’ve listed of some of the most famous or colorful lost mines:

—Lost Blue Bucket at the Malheur River in eastern Oregon.  The date was 1846 when a wagon train pulled into camp on the middle fork of the Malheur.  Some pioneers, finding some stones in a creek bed, filled a hand-made blue papier-mâché bucket. Later they learned their finding was gold. Status: still lost.

—Lost Rhoades in the Uintah Mountains, northeastern Utah.  This mine was said to be owned and strictly guarded by the Mormons.  Only Brigham Young and a handful of elders and two other members of the Rhoades family knew of its location.  In 1877 the Indians placed a ban on visits to the ledge where the mine was located, because it was on the Uintah Reservation.  In 1905, Caleb Rhoads, the last living person to know its whereabouts, took the secret to his grave and the “bank” of the Mormon Church was lost, so to speak.  He left a crude map with only Rock Creek and Moon Lake as landmarks, but others have been unable to find its location. Status: still lost.

—Lost Padre, somewhere in the 113,809 square miles of Arizona.   This mine, originally owned by Indians, was taken over by Spanish missionaries.  After the California gold strike of 1849, the Southwest had a surge of hopeful miners looking for their Eureka.  To keep their mine secret, the padres sealed it off. It’s been re-discovered several times, but with all the lucky finders ending in a violent death. Status: still lost.

—Lost Gunsight in California’s Death Valley.  No date is given for the first discovery of a reef that was said to be heavily laden with silver.   It was discovered by a single man who was part of a Mormon migrant party.  He fashioned a gun sight for his rifle with the silver from the reef.  Stories of this silver reef in Death Valley have circulated for years, and it’s been found and lost several times.  It’s believed that the cause of its elusiveness is the shifting sands.  Status: still lost.

—Lost Adams, south of the Little Colorado River in northeast-central Arizona.  In 1864, this gold-bearing dry wash was discovered by a man known only as Adams, along with a party of prospectors.  They were led by an Apache half-breed.  Soon after the colorful discovery, a war party descended and killed many of the men and ran the others off.  For ten frustrating years, Adams tried to get back to the findings, but was always held off by the Indians.  Finally, after the Apache Indians had been moved, Adams went back in search but was never able to find the correct spot.            This discovery is also known as the “Lost Adams Diggins” and has been made into a movie called Mackenna’s Gold. Status: still lost.
As you now see, there is still gold in them thar hills! You just have to be lucky enough to find and keep it.  Have you ever been gold panning?

Have you visited a haunted mine or discovered something special?  We’d love to hear about it…
 
Today, in celebration of the release of MONTANA DAWN, I’m offering a signed copy to a commenter.  Also, if you go to my website (www.carolinefyffe.com) and sign up for my News Letter on the contact page, you will be entered in the drawing for a basket filled with candies, chocolates, muffin mix,  a handsome coffee mug (filled with even more chocolate!) and a jar of scrumptious jam, all made from the Big Sky State’s coveted huckleberry.  

Also included is an autographed copy of both MONTANA DAWN and WHERE THE WIND BLOWS.  It’s as easy as pie. The winner will be drawn on December 10th, 2010–just in time for Christmas.
 It’s wonderful to be here again at Petticoats & Pistols.  

Thank you to all the Fillies for having me.  It seems like only yesterday when we were talking about Pioneer Teachers and how they helped shape the West.  Don’t know about the rest of you, but time seems to have jumped its bank…and there’s no holding it back.

<— CLICK HERE TO ORDER FROM AMAZON

There are strange things done in the midnight sun
By the men who moil for gold;
The Arctic trails have their secret tales
That would make your blood run cold;
The Northern Lights have seen queer sights,
But the queerest they ever did see
Was that night on the marge of Lake Lebarge
I cremated Sam McGee.

Few periods in American history have spawned as many legends as the 1896-99 Klondike Gold Rush.  The rush brought out the best and worst in the men and women who swarmed north in search of wealth.  The tales of their adventures, some true and some myths, have filled many books.  But few writers captured the spirit of gold rush life like poet Robert W. Service, sometimes called “The Bard of the Yukon.”  His writing was so expressive, and so evocative of the time that his readers took him for a hard-bitten old Klondike prospector. 

Nothing could be farther from the truth.  Robert William Service never prospected for gold and did not, in fact, arrive in the Klondike until years after the gold rush played out. 

Service was born in 1874 to a Scottish family living in England.  Trained to be a bank clerk like his father, he left Glasgow for Canada at the age of 21, hoping to become a cowboy.  He drifted around western North America for a time and finally took work with the Canadian Bank of Commerce.  After working in a number of branches, he was posted to the branch in Whitehorse in 1904, then later to Dawson City in the Klondike in in 1908.  Inspired by the vast beauty of the wilderness, Service began writing poetry about the things he saw.  Conversations with local characters who’d lived through the gold rush led him to write about things he heard, embellishing them with his own imagination. 

After collecting enough poems for a book, he offered a publisher $100 of his own money to publish the work.  The publisher returned the money and offered Service a contract.  The book, published as The Spell of the Yukon in America and The Songs of a Sourdough in England, made him world famous and also very wealthy.  Within two years he was able to quit his job at the bank and travel to Paris and Hollywood.  Service remained a British citizen for life.  During World War I he served as an ambulance driver.  He wrote many poems about the war and about other places he visited – more than 1,000 poems in all, as well as two autobiographical novels.

He married a Parisian woman and lived most of his life in France, where he died in 1958.  His wife, thirteen years his junior, died in 1989 at the age of 102.

If you’ve never read Service’s Gold Rush poems you’re in for a treat.  I especially love “The Cremation of Sam McGee,” quoted in part at the beginning of this blog, about the prospector who was always cold.  It’s too long to include in its entirety, but here’s a link:

http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/the-cremation-of-sam-mcgee/

Enjoy!