Whiskey Hill

California Gold Rush Camps

The Book Club of California 1998 Keepsake

Washing Day
The washing dirt for gold is well,
When well the make it pay
But few attraction unto them
The red shirt washing day.

THE WORD "WHISKEY," that highly desirable, sought-after, and well-utilized liquid, that celebratory, medicinal, and philosophical liquid, has appeared in the names of no fewer than eleven mining camps and towns in California's counties during the California Gold Rush:

Whiskey Bar in E1 Dorado and Nevada counties; Whiskey Diggins in Sierra County;
Whiskey Flat in Butte, Kern, and Mariposa counties; Whiskey Gulch in Yuba County;
Whiskey Slide in Amador and Calaveras Counties; and Whiskeytown in Shasta County.

Although the name "Whiskey Hill" occasionally appeared in the Northern Mines, the only surviving town named Whiskey Hill (now renamed Woodside) is located in San Mateo County.

In 1832, William Smith, an Englishman, settled in what was originally Ohlone Indian territory, but was then unnamed and recently under the Mexican flag, to fell and saw lumber for sale and trade. Some years later a British "ship-jumper," James Pease, joined Smith in a partnership as "open-air" sawyers.

On August 4, 1840, the future Whiskey Hill townsite became part of Rancho Canada de Raimundo, granted by Governor Alvarado to John Copinger. Copinger's wife, Maria Luisa Solo, received the property, 12,545 acres, in 1859, jointly with her daughter Manuela Copinger, after Copinger's death and after she had been remarried to John Greer. The author's grandparents lived next to the Greers from 1908 through the 1950s, and the author recalls, fondly, harassing the Greers' pigs. The newer Greer house (ca. 1895) still stands, surrounded by "Eichlers," in Palo Alto.

In 1847, Charles Brown built the first saw mill on the banks of Alembique Creek at the base of the redwood-rich Santa Cruz Mountains to process the felled trees into lumber, timber, and shingles. Brown, originally from Baltimore, Maryland, had jumped ship from a whaler in Yerba Buena in 1833. Brown's mill was water powered and similar in design to Sutter's mill in Coloma. The first saw mill (State Registered Landmark No. 478) is located on Portola Road between Sand Hill Road and Woodside Road. History is still made in the area. On the nearby Dorsey/Hannes Schroll estate, the very first annual Whiskey Hill-Atherton-Menlo Oaks Ballooning & Sporting Society (WHAMOBASS) Balloon Rally was conducted on Sunday, November 21, 1965.

A ten-ox team pulls a "snake" of redwood logs over a greased skid road towards a Whiskey Hill sawmill during the late 1880s. The driver, with an eye on the oxen and whip in hand, plus his grease monkey, stand to their left. Often after a long day "whacking" teams, greasing skids, and quenching thirst, driver and monkey would drop in place, giving nse to the term "skidroad bums," soon bastardized to "skidrow bums." [Courtesy San Mateo County Historical Museum]

The Woodside Store, State Registered Landmark No. 93, was the first store between San Francisco and Santa Clara, opened in about 1851. The present structure was built in 1854 by R.O."Doc" Tripp, a dentist, and M. A. Parkhurst, who both had been cutting shingles from 1849 to 1851 in the Whiskey Hill area. In 1869, Tripp's Store was a two-hour, $2 stage fare seven miles from the railroad at Redwood City. The stage passed through Our House and Greersburg and, after checking with S. L. Knights, Wells Fargo & Co.'s express agent, proceeded a couple of miles to Searsville.

By the late 1800s there wore fifteen sawmills within five miles of "Tripp's Woodside Store" and over one thousand lflmberJacks received their dentistry, mail, supplies, and whiskey from Doc Tripp until he died, in 1909. Today, the store, at the corner of Kings Mountain and Tripp Roads, belongs to the San Mateo County Parks and Recreation Division. The San Mateo Historical Association maintains it as a living history museum with docents, tours, and a gift shop under Curator Tom Couch.

With the growth of the San Mateo County wood-related industry, serving San Francisco and Alviso via barges and ships from the Redwood (City) Embarcadero and other locations via teamsters, the commercial center moved from the Tripp Woodside Store to about one and one-half miles east (toward San Francisco Bay) to the area called Whiskey Hill. It got that name because of the three saloons and two hotels, one run by Peter Hanson. Those enterprises, plus a blacksmith shop, had been created to supply the demand at that busy crossroads.

But let's consider the "industrial" use of whiskey. In the early 1850s when teams of oxen dragged felled trees out of the Santa Cruz Mountains and down to the mills in the vicinity of the Woodside Store, the drovers stopped at Tripp's for a tot of whiskey to "cut the dust" and to quench their parched throats. Later, as teamsters drove wheeled wagon-loads of milled lumber from those local San Mateo County mills to the Redwood (City) Embarcadero, they regularly stopped at Whiskey Hill (after a haul of from two to four miles) to fortify themselves for the downhill pull (of six or seven miles) into the Redwood Embarcadero or south, toward Santa Clara and San Jose.

Today, Whiskey Hill is lively and thriving, with the Pioneer Hotel and saloon and the Village Pub still vending and pouting spirituous elixir, and Roberts Market sells whiskey, as well as other foods, in bulk. The Whiskey Hill Branch of Wells Fargo Bank does business at the intersection of Whiskey Hill and Woodside Roads. The Woodside Town Center, including Independence Hall (1886), and many other businesses flourish at that historic intersection, which is today part of "Downtown Woodside."

The lumber camp and town of Searsville is marked by SRL No. 474, located at the intersection of Portola and Sand Hill Roads, near the western terminus of the Stanford Linear Accelerator. John Sears settled there in 1854, and the camp grew into a town with a hotel, school, store, blacksmith, and both tent and wooden dwellings. The town was dismantled in 1891 to make way for the rising, dammed waters of Searsville Lake on Stanford lands. Sears also pioneered the first road (Old La Honda Road) over the Santa Cruz Range and founded the town of La Honda in 1861.

Winomaking occutred in the Whiskey Hill/Woodside area as early as the 1860s. In 1882, C. Scalmanini owned more than 1,OOO acres of grape vines, producing Burgundy, Malvasia, and Zinfandel.

Finally, history-loving locals from southern San Mateo County and Palo Alto/Stanford still say "Whiskey Gulch" when they refer to the commercial area of University Avenue, north, across San Francisquito Creek in San Mateo county. The area got its name about 1900, when Jane Lathrop Stanford's will demanded that "no alcohol" be served within one mile of the Stanford Campus. Her will, however, was filed in Santa Clara County and did not hold sway in San Mateo County. Bars, saloons, and liquor stores flourish there to this day even though the anti-liquor provision of Jane Stanford's wil1 was overturned in the 1970s. Hail progress!

DEKE SONNICHSEN

Renaissance man DEKE SONNICHSEN is a world-renowned balloonist and pilot examiner, anvil-firer, X Noble Grand Humbug of Yerba Buena #1 E Clampsus Vitus, and chair of the board that advises the San Mateo County Board of Supervisors on historic resources.