Introduction

California Gold Rush Camps

The Book Club of California 1991 Keepsake

"He is near six feet tall, weight 160 pounds, and is as rough as a Grizzly bear," is the way miner J. W. Bone described himself in 1854 to his favorite girl. "Oh! You would laugh no doubt to see me in my present costume, which consists of hickory shirt (washed by my-self), buckskin pants, and the remains of what were once a pair of boots." Let's join Bone on a tour of thirteen California Gold Camps.
[San Francisco Wasp, December 22, 1888]

California Gold Rush Camps: Ephemeral to Substantial

NOW IS THE TIME FOR MAKING MONEY, Ann Eliza Brannan asserted in I848. Husband Sam single-handedly boosted the California economy by inflaming San Franciscans: "Gold. Gold! GOLD!! On the American River!" That cry shaped the California we live in I50 years later.

"A man can Dig his money himself," a miner announced, as thousands rushed in. "Such a medley as wore never thrown together in the world before," A. J. McCall observed in June 1850 at Coloma, where millwright and amateur geologist James Marshall made his fortuitous discovery on January 24, 1848. "Cities spring up in a night," McCall remarked, as an overlander proved his observation true: "Wee have stoped in a new place fifty miles on this side of Sacramento Citty," James Gentry wrote from "Goald Digins" on September 29, 1850. "There was a few that had stoped when wee got in and now there is fifty housis." A baker's dozen authors resurrect such spontaneous settlements to commemorate a golden sesquicentennial.

Names reflect spirited imagination: Murderer's Bar, Humbug Canyon, Rat Trap Slide, Love-Letter Camp, Chuckle Lead Diggins, and Skunk's Misery. Often such settlements were ephemeral: Gary F. Kurutz's Bidwell's Bar is submerged; Richard H. Dillon's Timbuctoo exists as a fenced pile of rocks; and Dr. Raymund F. Wood's Agua Fria shows dim, dirt outlines. For a reminder that such flimsy canvas creations needed at least wood framing, Deke Sonnichsen describes an I850s San Mateo lumber camp where water turned the mills, oxen sledded redwood logs, and whiskey fueled the lumberjacks. Its name? Whiskey Hill!

Wives came gradually to isolated habitations. "Almost every woman in town does some washing," one wrote in 185 6. "They are all alike, anxious to make money." Those without families longed for them. "It doesn't seem natural to live with no children about," Wells, Fargo & Co's Express agent Charles T. Blake complained in December 1855 from Michigan City - detailed ably by Dr. Norman E. Tutorow. "Occasionally one strays around, and we make a great pet of him." A year later, Blake rejoiced: "There must be very near one hundred children here under the age of fifteen."

On Sundays, miners poured into town to sell gold dust, buy provisions, and rejoice. "I reached Knight's Ferry by about 91/2 o'clock P. M.," the Reverend George S. Phillips informed his wife in I854. Not only must he pay $3 at the hotel, but "the Landlord was an unpleasant churly Englishman." However, ferryman Dent gave Phillips a fifty-cent discount fare, whereupon he became "a gentleman in the fullest sense of the term." Robert D. Livingston tells more of this Stanislaus River town.

Young, rebellious rowdies, however, demanded excitement. "Our amusements here on Sunday," Alabaman J. S. R. Bowen wrote from Mormon Camp on May 4, I 850, "are Drinking, swearing, fighting, and gambling." This tough customer boasted, "I eschew all, but fighting. Can't help it. Must defend myself. I do it up in short order, either with a knife or club."

Such reckless acts led to miners' tribunals. "The morning is devoted to the trial of a robber named Corrigan, who had stolen $ 10,000 worth of gold," a diarist recorded on April 8, 1849, at Jamestown, delineated by native son Ferol Egan. "It took place in a large tent, kept as a store and hotel by James & Co.," where, amid "the greatest order," a jury ordered the prisoner lashed one hundred times and banished.

More indulged in all-pervasive gambling. Monte, a three-card game using the two red aces plus the ace of spades - similar to finding a pea under a shell - prevailed. One gold-seeker said with a mid-western twang: "Gamboling Has Ruind many. If a man can't play poker Here, he can't come in, So they all lern & Som Yong Men, it takes all they make to tern, and then [they still] Don't Know how."

Working in wet diggin's six days a week led on the seventh to paid companionship. "We have American women, Chile Women, French Women, Dutch, Irish, Scotch, English, Chinese, and digger [Indian] and a few decent women," Arthur Van Dusen wrote in October 1856 from Negro Hill, the subject of Dr. Rudolph M. Lapps's contribution. "i got a crack at a very hansom girl last Sunday," Simon Stevens bragged to his Maine cousin in 1853. "It only cos mee a 20."

Far to the north, Frenchmen at Rich Bar commemorated the Revolution of 1848. "They made quite a picturesque appearance as they wound up the hill, each one carrying a tiny pine tree, the top of which was encircled with a diadem of flame," effused Dame Shirley, the Bar's most famous resident. Marlene Smith-Baranzini portrays this Feather River camp.

Some adventurers preferred botany and spelunking. Jules Rupalley, who sketched Greenwood - here painted in words by Dr. Claudine Chalmers - also collected and gave his name to a rose-red California lily. Volubilis Rupalleya, now known as Dichelostemma volubile, lives up to its common designation of Twining Brodiaca as eight-foot stems crowned with bright flowers snake through gardens. Author Ann Whipple grew up exploring Cave City.

Winter sports enticed others. "There has been snow enough to ride down hill once or twice," ditch-tender Dudley Cornell wrote on February 12, 1860, from Big Oak Flat- described more fully by the late Dr. Mary Grace Paquette, with an assist from Claudine Chalmers. As Cornell looked over a landscape "thickly dotted with Miners Cabins," down the slope he sledded "on a shovel!" North, the Gibsonville Ridge popularized skiing, according to Dr. Albert Shumate.

Gold camps had to be tough. "Michigan City has gone the way of all California towns," Charles Blake wrote in 1857, "having burned up clean, in about twenty minutes." The fire, he added, "commenced at four o'clock P. M., and an hour before sun down you could make your way through the street, and some of them even commenced clearing off their lots." Blake was one. At 5:30, he relocated and reopened the Wells Fargo office–complete with a new sign. "The town is rebuilt better than ever," he penned three weeks after the conflagration, "and business is unusually brisk for summer." In that rich vein, we mine I 50 years of the historical past for thirteen Gold Camps.

ROBERT J. CHANDLER

DR. ROBERT J. CHANDLER, a Director of The Book Club, is chairman of the Quarterly News-Letter Committee and specializes in Civil War California.