Michigan City

California Gold Rush Camps

The Book Club of California 1998 Keepsake

Miner Sick
Upon a bed of sickness, now--
No loving friend is there;
How much he needs a sister's aid--
A mother's anxious care

"A few of the old homes [in Michigan Bluff] were burned in 1980 during the last big forest fire so it is really almost Ghost," the Placer Nugget reflected on June 1, 1966. Although the Bluff is semi-ethereal, its 1848 predecessor, Michigan City, is entirely spiritual - but with enough substance through the historical record to confound the unwary.

THE COMMUNITY 0F MICHIGAN CITY rested high on a brow of the canyon of the Middle Fork of the American River, overlooking El Dorado County to the south. It seemed to cling to the steep slope of the Forest Hill Ridge from 1,500 to 2,ooo feet above the yawning gorges of the Middle Fork and North Fork. Behind it towered Sugar Loaf, about 250 feet above the main street of the town, given its name by miners from the state of Michigan.

The first settlement on this ridge was Bird's Valley, where a group of sailors took up mining in 1848 -- one mile to the west of the future Michigan City. They reported their rich findings at Sutter's Fort and soon a second group of Argonauts set out from there, armed only with butcher knives, iron spoons, an occasional steel bar, and pans.

In 1849, a few Argonauts camped on the little flat area to the east, where Michigan City sprang up. Though miners located many claims in the deep gravel diggings, little serious development was made until 1852, when several ditch companies wore organized to bring in water. In the spring of 1853, water from Volcano Canyon, about five miles away, arrived in a fifty-inch trough at the diggins - at a cost of a dollar an inch.

The first mines in Michigan City wore on a large flat area where the town was first built, bounded by Skunk Canyon on the west, Poorman's Gulch on the east, with Richenor's Ravine and Dutch Gulch intervening. One shaft sunk in 1854 went I so feet into the face of the earth.

In one short year Michigan City grew from a settlement of six houses and thirty people to a town of 2,000 people and 250 houses; a post office opened there on February 19, 1854. "It is now the largest town in Placer County," Wells Fargo agent Charles T. Blake remarked. Though winter was "the dullest season of the year," the rich site had over six hundred claims recorded. Blake bragged, "I buy nearly all the dust, sell all the checks, and have nearly all the deposits"- over $20,000.

"I send you today," Charles T. Blake wrote home on August 13, 1854, "some engravings of Michigan City, which I have had struck off" in Sacramento by wood engraver Edmund L. Barber and arust George H. Baker. The view, he explained, "is taken from the head of the street as you come into town, just above our big reservoir." Miners walked down this sloping main street, through the lower part of Michigan City hidden from view, to reach "the diggings." Blake added prophetically, "The whole town is laid off into mining claims, and will be washed off some fine day." [Courtesy California Historical Society]

This burgeoning community contained two banks, three express offices, five attorneys, four physicians, a watch maker, ten carpenters, three blacksmith shops, two machine shops, five restaurants, six hotels, four bakeries, ten general stores, eleven clothing stores, a drugstore, and a bookstore. It also had four "gambling saloons"- as such places of recreations and entertainment were called - and a church. One of those merchants was Leland Stanford, there from 1853 to 1855.

On July 22, 1857, fire devastated Michigan City. In a single hour most of the town was destroyed a prelude to its demise a year later. "As I was washing my hands," Wells Fargo's Blake wrote, "I heard a man say 'Fire' in a sort of inquiring tone, and looking out of the window, saw the fire coming out of the roof of the shed behind Matzenbach's; I gave the alarm." In the express office, "we took the scales apart, caught up the books and put them in the safe, and got out the two desks full of papers and the scales. It certainly was not three minutes from the time I first saw the fire until the whole office was wrapped in flames."

With all the hydraulic mining going on, it wasn't long before the ground around the rim of the town was washed away or stripped so badly that water in the shallow reservoir on the town's only flat area began to percolate through, undermining the city. In 1858 the entire town site began settling and shifting downward. Building walls cracked and the stability of every structure within the limits of the town was affected.

Today - after walking around the Big Gun Mining Company sign warning off trespassers, one can retrace the acres of exposed white rocks, eroded hillsides, and gullies of Michigan City with the scars from its hydraulic mining still visible up and down the mountainside.

Michigan Bluff

In 1858, miners abandoned Michigan City and built Michigan Bluff, a half-mile up the hill. There is a great deal of confusion about those two towns, owing in part to the fact that the area was often referred to as "the Bluffs." As early residents moved up the hill and resumed their lives, many regarded Michigan Bluff as little more than a renamed Michigan City.

In 1875, Michigan Bluff, with a population of about 500, had a blacksmith shop, meat market, shoemaker, saloons, a general drygoods store, livery stable, tinware shop, millinery store, doctor's office, post office, boarding house, and the Phoenix Hotel, the regular stagecoach stop.

Today there are more than two dozen houses - some nearly new - in Michigan Bluf£. Mail is still delivered to Michigan Bluff residents from the post office in Foresthill.

NORMAN V. TUTOROW, PH.D.

NORMAN E. TUTOROW, Ph.D., author of a noted work on Leland Stanford and several bibliographies, is Visiting Fellow, 1996-1998, at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University.