Knight's Ferry

California Gold Rush Camps

The Book Club of California 1998 Keepsake

Miner Cooking
Returning from their daily toil,
Though tired as dogs the feel,
Contentedly they build a fire
And cook their evening meal.

EARLY CAEIFORNIA SETTEER WILEIAM KNIGHT was far-sighted when he located an ideal site where Gold Rush miners in later years could cross the Stanislaus River as they headed from Stockton to the Southern Mines. It was in this picturesque town that a bullet would end his colorful career, yet his name lives on in Knight's Ferry and Knight's Landing, Yolo County.

A native of Indiana, Knight migrated to New Mexico, where he became a Mexican citizen. Involvement in a premature move for independence in 1841 made it advisable for him to join the Workman-Rowland party seeking new homes in California. The next year he returned to New Mexico to move his family to Los Angeles. They proceeded north in 1844 and settled along the Sacramento River at a place obviously called Knight's Landing. Knight participated in the Bear Flag Revolt.

In the winter of 1848-49, after James Marshall's discovery of gold at Colama, Knight returned to the north side of the Stanislaus River to establish a ferry and town. After his death in a gunfight on November 9, 1849, his partner, James Vantine, disposed of Knight's interest in the ferry and townsite to Lewis and John Dent. They advertised "the best and most frequented ferry on the Stanislaus" and added that they had erected a restaurant and boardinghouse. The Dents laid out the town and became its principal developers. By Jane of 1851, a post office located there. When the Dents received visits from their brother-in-law, Captain U. S. Grant, in 1852 and two successive years, the brothers were charging $2 to cross the 150-foot stretch of river. Travelers paid $1 to savor dinners at their establishment, and miners crowded their general store to sell gold dust.

Knight's Ferry might have remained only a way station had it not been for the discovery of rich gold deposits nearby. The construction of ditches and flumes a few years later enabled prospectors to widen their search for gold. As the town prospered, Wells, Fargo & Co. located an office there in 1855, with George Dent, another brother, as first agent.

The Dents proposed to erect a bridge at a flour mill upstream from the ferry in order to accommodate the majority of wheat growers on the south side of the river. John Locke and interested citizens preferred to have it at the ferry site; however, they completed the truss structure that the Dents had started and opened it to the public in 1858, adding additional traffic to the town.

In 1860, Knight's Ferry moved from San Joaquin County into Stanislaus County. For ten prosperous years after 1862, it was the country seat. Modesto gained the honor in 1871 because of its location on the new railroad line that Southern Pacific extended southward.

The pictorial Sacramento Union, July 4, 1854, showed how Knight's Ferry received its name. Now the town is known for the longest covered bridge in California, erected in 1863 after the massive 1862 floods carried away its 1858 predecessor.

During the winter of 1861-62, disaster struck. Almost fifty inches of rain fell, and the swollen river became turbulent. An upstream dam broke, and the swirling river carried logs with such force that they demolished the bridge along with the flour mill and a sawmill. The loss of homes and stores was devastating, but rebuilding started immediately.

Locke and his associates planned to construct a more permanent bridge. They decided it should be eight fect higher above the water, strengthened by iron truss rods and overhead cross-bracing, covered to protect the timbers. At 360 feet in length, it was (and is) the longest covered bridge in the western United States. After fifteen months of construction, the new bridge opened to traffic on May 30, 1863.

A proposed railroad from Oakdale to Jamestown loomed as a consolation prize, but when construction started in 1897, it by-passed Knight's Ferry by running south of the Stanislaus River, as did the highway. This was a final blow to the economy, and, in the same year, Wells, Fargo & Co. closed its office there. Kittie Parker McCabe was the last agent, having succeeded her husband to that position.

For most of the present century, Knight's Ferry has remained home to long-time residents. Visitors continue to drive from the nearby Oakdale - Sonora highway to walk across the famous bridge and visit the historic town.

My own attraction to the area stems from a friendship with a former resident of Buena Vista, which lies at the south end of the covered bridge. Beth Williams Shaper was known as Knight's Ferry's "protector of local history." She delighted in telling stories about the older structures and, as a trustee of the local cemetery, tales about its occupants. Publications concerning Knight's Ferry are available at The Store (continuously operating since 1852) and other locations.

The Sacramento District Corps of Engineers maintains an information center near the bridge, which is no longer open to vehicular traffic, and manages nine recreations areas along a fifty-nine-mile stretch of the Stanislaus River. Knight's Ferry, a link to California's Gold Rush days, has not lost its lure.

ROBERT D. LIVINGSTON

ROBERT D. LIVINGSTON, a retired Wells Fargo Bank regional manager, amassed 1,500 Wells Fargo documents to aid his research and has written extensively on the banking and express company for Western Express, the journal of the Western Cover Society, and Golden Notes, the Sacramento County Historical Society quarterly.