Death Valley in a '51 Powerglide - part 5 - Stovepipe Wells

Old Stovepipe Wells

 

I awoke in the back seat of the Bel Air to find I was the last one up for mom and dad were already outside the tent cabin having breakfast and talking to Dave Frey the proprietor. I quickly performed my duty of winding the Chevy's clock (30 turns, no more) and made for the outhouse (a fancy two hole-er). Inside the cabin tent was an old windup Victrola and to play on it Dave had brought by a 78 of Vaughn Monroe doing Ghost Riders in the Sky to help get us all in the mood to see that song's author Stan Jones over in Furnace Creek later on. I played it again and again, almost getting two plays out of a windup.

 

Mom seen cooking while Dave turns about for the photo.

 

Dad and Dave continued to hit it off well and were in total agreement about how much 'walkin' around money' a man needs. Not the cash in your wallet but front pocket tender to keep at the ready. Then they returned to the subject of the landmarks we were going to and Dave gave us new directions and a short cut to Old Stovepipe Wells nearby, noting that we'd be walking part of the way due to sand. Also, he said we should drop the landmark endeavor for a few hours and go to Scotty's Castle for it was well worth the trip.

 

All packed up, we gave a wave to good old Dave and said goodbye to the little resort of Stovepipe Wells.     

 

The stovepipe well. You have to cross the mesquite dunes to get to it and after a spell on the dirt road that came to a washout, and with our recent experience of getting stuck in these same sands, the Bel Air stayed put and we walked. Mom turned back after a few hundred yards, a few more Chesterfields and a paperback at the car were more appealing. We press on with dad recalling most the lyric to the recent Sons of the Pioneers song 'Cool Water'

The words made the desert scorching hot on that cool day as we continued across the faux burning sands with no provisions whatsoever. For me that meant the 1950's standard boys equivalent to civil war hard tack; a PPJ on Wonder Bread and a 6 ounce Coke, stuffed in jeans back pockets.

 

Over and over dad sang: 'All day I face the barren waste without the taste of water,
Cool water.
Old Dan and I with throats burned dry and souls that cry for water,
Cool water.'

 

By the time we arrived the song had the 60 degree morning feeling more like 120 and my visions of pools of bubbling artesian wells were dashed as we found nothing but a rock and cement base with a pipe sticking out of it. Dad made the best out it and to perk me up told me how that method of marking spots in the desert helped grandfather cross on the old plank road many years prior. With two way traffic on eight foot wide wood planks over sand dunes they'd put up 4x4 lumber real high to mark the turnouts. After figuring out that you could tell time by the pipe's shadow, we returned to find mom engrossed in Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, just out in print.

In reality the water at Stovepipe Well was never pleasant, here's one prospector's account:

"My canteens were exhausted when I arrived there [old Stovepipe Wells], and I disregarded the admonition and drank. The water is very low in the spring, is of a yellowish appearance and intensely nauseating in taste. Its odor is very disagreeable, and it can be smelled for half a mile away. Nevertheless, I filled my canteens, and drank of it while there. As I proceeded on my journey my legs became unsteady and I found it difficult to continue my usual pace. I lay down thinking to gain strength, but no improvement was noticeable. The distance between Stove Pipe and Hole-in-the-Rock is about 14 miles, and I fully realized that it was by all odds a case of make this or die . . . . I struggled forward, my legs becoming more and more uncertain…"

 

NO. 826:  Old Stovepipe Wells   

Plaque inscription: This waterhole, the only one in the sand dune area of Death Valley, was at the junction of the two Indian trails. During the bonanza days of Rhyolite and Skidoo, it was the only known water source on the cross-valley road. When sand obscured the spot, a length of stovepipe was inserted as a marker.

From State Hwy 190 (P.M. 92.1) go N 2.8 mi on (unpaved) Sand Dunes Access Rd, 6.1 mi E of Stovepipe Wells, Death Valley National Monument

 

Death Valley in a '51 Powerglige - part 4 - Eichbaum Toll Road

Eichbaum Toll Road

 

 

 

It had been a long and eventful day and with having to turn back and check on the iron back home on my suggestion that it may have been left on, we found ourselves in Stovepipe Wells and not in Furnace Creek as setting winter sun turned the hills to brilliant gold. Since Stan Jones' campfire shindig wasn't until the next night, being behind the pace wasn't much of an issue. However, there was the issue of food and lodging for the night, and since it looked like some other folks were hunkering down nearby, we went back across the road to the general store where we met the proprietor Dave Frey who was happy to take care of our needs.

Considering how far the Stovepipe Wells General Store was from any competition, Dave's prices were quite fair. Smokes for mom and dad were still 25 cents, bread was .19, and a half gallon of milk for 45 cents. He even had sirloin at 76 cents a pound but mom decides on hot dogs, figuring we can roast them over the campfire Dave said he has for the guests every night.

Out back were the 'cottages', which were old military GP tents draped over a wood frame. Dave said he got the idea from living and working at Camp Curry in Yosemite and the tents they had there. As coincidence would have it, it turns out in conversation that back in the 1940's, Dave had also owned a small store and cottages right by our current place near Idyllwild. It went bust in '47 largely due poor roads leading there, and this was where dad and Dave really hit it off as neither could understand why people don't carry shovel and boards in their cars at all times.

 

 

Dad mentions the landmarks we've gone to and wonders where the next one, the Eichbaum Toll Road, might be. To this Dave said it was a funny thing, we only had to look back across the road and it was right next to the 'Burned Wagons' landmark about 100 feet to the right. Another funny thing about it said Dave was that the landmarks was all about this store's predecessor, old Bob Eichbaum and his toll road that opened up Death Valley to tourism back in 1926 and enjoy stay with Bob and his wife Helene at what they called 'Bungalette City' 

 

Old Bob got 'em with a toll going both ways, with a renaming to 'Mt. Whitney Toll Road on the other side of the overhead sign. The tolls stopped when the state took the road over in the 1930's.

 

At the campfire that night were Dave and his wife Louise, a half dozen French tourists who spoke no English, and us. With mom and dad's pianos at home (they each had their own) and fortunately my accordion as well, we had no instruments, so dad decides a little acapella sing along is in order and he launched into some Lefty Frizzell favorites with 'Long Black Veil' and 'Always Late'. To this the confused  French countered with Edith Piaf's 'La Vie en Rose' and the latest Gallic pop hit, the melody to a song we'd later know as 'Let It Be Me' from the Everly Brothers. A good time was had by all, and with the news that the Stan Jones event was just a day away, everyone was excited about heading to Furnace Creek for the event.

With a new block of ice in the cooler, we settle in, or rather mom and dad settle in the tent and it's decided that I'd be better off sleeping in the Bel Air.

Laying there in the back seat that night turned out to be feast for the senses, stoked like Dave's poker had just done livening up the campfire embers to flame. It was totally different than laying down in the back seat of a moving car. First, I found a little switch hidden halfway down on the herringbone cloth below the armrest behind the driver's door. It turned on the dome lights. Who knew? Couldn't wait to tell dad in the morning. Then there were the chrome strips crossing the headliner and emulating supports for a convertible top. Since I knew all GM hardtops had them, I wondered if Cadillac had more of the chrome strips. On average back then, the guy at the top of a company made about seven times as much as the guy at the bottom, and with Chevy, Pontiac, Oldsmobile, Buick, and Callilac, General Motors had a car for every step along the way.  Called hardtop convertibles then I was to learn later that the cars were actually convertible bodies and not sedans and that they'd simply weld the tops on after making the rest of the car.

 

Then there was the clock. The windup ticker sat up in the middle of the dashboard and in the quiet desert night, was really loud. I'd heard the Cadillac clock was now electric and thought how nice that would be, as it was becoming a bit like Edgar Allan Poe's 'The Tell Tale Heart' I'd just read. Then the action scenes from 'It Came From Beneath The Sea' where a '51 Chevy is chased across a bridge by a hideous giant squid play over and over in my head. The car didn't make it. And I'm in a '51 Chevy. Eventually, soothing thoughts began like Dave's mentioning earlier that the term 'dashboard' came from the wagon days and was the plank a driver would rest his feet on and used to 'dash' away the mud and dirt and such tossed up from the road and I fell asleep to a gentle breeze and yips of coyotes in the distance.

 

 

Plaque inscription:

NO. 848  Eichbaum Toll Road

In 1926, H. W. Eichbaum obtained a franchise for a toll road from Darwin Falls to Stovepipe Wells, the first maintained road into Death Valley from the west. It changed the area's economic base from mining to tourism and brought about the creation of Death Valley National Monument seven years later.

Location: 100 ft S of State Hwy 190 (P.M. 85.83), Stovepipe Wells , Death Valley National Monument

 

Death Valley in a '51 Powerglide - part 3 'Burned Wagons Point'

Burned Wagons Point

  

We were back in the Bel Air and headed north on the Trona - Wildrose Road about 65 miles to reach the Death Valley Road cutoff, with its sweeping turns and panoramic desert vistas in every direction and a growing realization that the hum of the Chevy six and the banter of the people within it were the only signs of life on this day as far as the eye could see.

 

"On curves ahead
Remember, sonny
That rabbit's foot
Didn't save
The bunny
Burma-Shave"

 

"The place to pass
On curves
You know
Is only at
A beauty show
Burma-Shave"

 

That was all the roadside poetry I could recall to recite at the time, the tank was dry. Mom however picked up the slack and  was quite chatty after two Cokes and some Chesterfields and going on and on in her terminology about 'this, that, and the other thing', to which my dad in his quest to always minimize vocabulary would say 'hmmm' if he didn't know the answer, or what she was talking about, or 'uh-huh' when he did. This went on for 45 miles or so as we came down to and crossed the desert floor and then the road went away.

 

Apparently a rainstorm had washed away our little byway at the low point for five miles or so and repair wasn't much of local priority. It would have been nice if someone had mentioned this back in Trona. The dirt washboard surface was passable but slow and bouncy when 'short cut' dad decides the smooth dirt to the side was the way to go, and of course we got stuck in the sand.

 

Not to worry, because as mentioned in earlier dispatches, we were short cut trained and had boards and shovel in the trunk. With several years experience installing snow chains on trips to the mountains of Idyllwild, California and with a flip of the hidden lever underneath, I had the fender skirt off in a flash, boards under the wheel,  and the slushy Powerglide automatic had the car out of sand in no time and we were on our way again. This time staying to the center.

 

We finally met the road to Death Valley and went up, down, and around, though mostly up, till at the high point just before descending to the valley floor, the Cokes caught up with me, I couldn't take it any longer and had to pee. Afterwards, dad went to start the car but nothing happened, so since it was downhill all the way to Stovepipe Wells from this point, dad figured we'd simply roll there in neutral. It was a bit like Woody Guthrie's 'Talkin' Dust Bowl Blues':

 

'Way up yonder on a mountain curve

This was way up yonder in the piney woods

I gave the rollin' Ford a shove

I's a gonna coast, fer as I could

Commenced to coastin'

Pickin' up speed

There's a hairpin turn

I..............didn't make it.'

 

Well actually we did make it and rolled right to the service station at the Stovepipe Wells General Store where the mechanic looked under the hood, and then took the Coke from my hand and poured the contents over the corroded battery terminals and the Bel Air's battery was good as new as she started right up. This was the day mom stopped drinking Coke and switched to Dr. Pepper.

 

Right across the street was Burned Wagons Point and the next landmark on dad's list. Another monument dealing with the lost '49's, this time being the spot where they burned their wagons and continued on foot, taking the same path we had just rolled in on and the famous slogan 'Goodbye Death Valley' was spoken, quite possibly at the very hilltop spot I'd just made water.     

 

 

No 441 Burned Wagons Point

Plaque inscription:

Near this monument, the Jayhawker group of Death Valley Forty-Niners, gold seekers from Middle West, who entered Death Valley in 1849 seeking short route to the mines of central California, burned their wagons, dried the meat of some oxen and, with surviving animals, struggled westward on foot.

 

Death Valley in a '51 Powerglide - part 2

Valley Wells

 

The 'Trophy Blue' and 'Moonlight Cream' topped 1951 Chevrolet Bel Air hardtop was a smooth ride. As the old Fred Hutchinson song states: "The Chevrolet six just can't be beat." The three speed column shifters got 90 horsepower and the Powerglide automatics, 105 horses. That infamous 2-speed transmission herded many of those horses to corrals unknown before reaching the wheels, so the extra power was necessary. Power being a relative thing. The 'stovebolt six' as they called it had been around since the '30's and a Ford V-8 could make mince meat out of a Chevy and whiz by on the old suicide passing lanes. When that happened dad would recite:

"A guy Who drives
A car wide open
Is not thinkin'
He's just hopin'
Burma-Shave"

The only hope was to pass an occasional Plymouth, which took a fair amount of exposure in the two-way middle lane as the 'Thriftmaster' single barrel carburetor would gasp for more air and fuel. Ah but who cared, the Bel Air hardtop had Cadillac class and Harley Earl style. And pillarless 4 X 60 air conditioning; four windows down and sixty miles an hour. Besides the Powerglide, the other factory options were a radio and a heater. We had it all. Plus a backup light from the dealer.  

 

Dad aims the Chevy back through town to the library where Stacy the librarian gathers some information for my dad's newly perked interest in landmarks, figuring it was likely there'd more along our way. And if there might be a short cut besides the known road north. Stacy said there wasn't but it was funny he should ask about a short cut for there was a landmark dealing with that very issue of short cuts just five miles ahead. In fact it was those very people the landmark talks about, the 'Lost 49'ers' that named Death Valley. Exciting news for some but at the time I couldn't care less. I wanted a Coke. Mom agreed and we stop by the market and pick up a six ounce six pack for thirty seven cents and drop it in the metal Colman cooler. Dad had taken a mental snapshot of the landmark locations ahead and we were off,  for as always, he felt a man does not ask directions and does not need a map. What he needs as stated in the previous dispatch, is a good short cut.

 

As Stacy the librarian had noted, we were at our next landmark, 'Valley Wells' in no time at all. The short story is that in Utah a big piece of a wagon train outfit became upset with the slow but safe pace and track the guide had chosen and broke off, and with a new guide who was said to have a map of John Fremont's, made off for a short cut. This group had yet another tiff and it broke in two as well with the adventurous ones heading across what is now Death Valley in the winter of 1849. Nice weather but food and water were hard to come by. As they left, one person wrote down: "As I look back at Death Valley" ....and the name stuck.

 

They were getting pretty desperate and the Sierras were looking formidable from where they stood, so when they spied what we now call Searles Lake to the south they were elated, only to find it salty and undrinkable. Too bad, for had they stayed put they'd have been far wealthier than throwing in the placer mining crowd. Potash just doesn't have the attraction of gold. The real gold in California then was in making a good wheelbarrow like John Studebaker, or borax like John Searles, Our lost wagon train pressed on however and was eventually rescued down around Newhall. 

 

 

NO. 443 VALLEY WELLS - In this area, several groups of midwestern emigrants who had escaped from hazards and privations in Death Valley in 1849 sought to secure water from Searles Lake. They turned northward and westward in despair when they discovered its salty nature, and with great difficulty crossed the Argus and other mountains to reach settlements of Central and Southern California.
Location: Trona Wildrose Rd at Valley Wells Rd, 5.5 mi NE of Trona

  

Two landmarks down and the Bel Air continues north to complete our short cut and meet the main road into Death Valley and the Stan Jones shindig at Furnace Creek.

 

Death Valley in a '51 Powerglide

Death Valley in a '51 Powerglide - part 1

 

Back in 1955 the Elks Hall in Long Beach, California was the kind of place where working class folk from the aircraft assembly plants and oil refineries could gather, mix, dance it up, and take the wide-eyed kids along. And what a night it was when Stan Jones came down from Los Angeles and brought Eddie Dean's boys, 'The Plainsmen' to accompany his western songs, with 'Ghost Riders In The Sky' being the most famous. By then, it seemed like most everyone had recorded it.

 

While on a break, Stan and dad got to sharing a little hooch in the parking lot from the trunk of the Bel Air and Stan gets to the story of how he was discovered. Of his many occupations, one was as a park ranger in the Death Valley National Monument and the task to act as a consultant to a John Sturges movie on location there fell in his lap. Around a campfire one night, Stan got to playing his songs about the west and the movie boys said: "You've got to take that 'Ghost Riders' song down to Los Angeles." Well, he followed that advice and before long, Stan was off to another career as a songwriter, actor, and performer. With his break over and back on stage and newly inspired he announced: "Me and the boys have talked it over and we're going to stage a big campout in Death Valley at Furnace Creek, it'll be just like in the movies and we're hoping you all can come along." Well, that was all dad needed to hear and the adventure to the enchanted desert had begun.

TRONA

The first leg of any journey in our small family was always hampered by the same complication, and it was my fault actually. I just couldn't help it. As the blue '51 Bel Air would glide well into its first hour of travel I'd stand from the back and lean over the front bench seat and mention in my 'shy' voice a ruse from the arsenal; "Hey mom, did you leave the iron on?"  Once planted, the statement would brew in my dad's mind, sort of like making a pot of coffee and when done we'd be headed back home for another inspection of the homestead's potential catastrophes. All because the original walk through had mom and I waiting in the driveway for twenty minutes while hatches were battened down. I couldn't let it go. And that went on for years.

Under way again, and this time with the 'saturate before using' Desert Brand burlap water bag hanging from the front bumper, we headed north to our first goal and one of several paths to Death Valley, Trona. We headed that way for three reasons; The Pinnacles, Julio & Bufungo, and the third I've forgotten. Wait, I remember now, dad considered it a short cut.

And that short cut part started out well with the seldom used Trona Road bypassing Ridgecrest and heading straight for a town named after a mineral, and the annual tourists making this a destination can be counted on one hand....us. Why?

 

 

Reason #1; Julio & Bufungo were former cowboys (their cowboy names...no one knew their real ones) that Stan Jones said he hung and rattled with back in his rodeo days that were now working for Kerr-Magee in Trona. Dad felt it important to rustle up these boys for the shindig in Furnace Creek. Reason #2; short cuts.....dad always took them. The more unsubstantiated, the better. We'd learned the hard way to always travel with boards, shovel, ponchos, water, gas, Shell X-100 motor oil, fan belts, and ropes & chains. 

 

For reason #3, we first ran by the Pinnacles, the lunar landscape and green screen for many a space film venture....and perhaps later, a Neil Armstrong footprint or two. Dad took a photo or two of the area on the Argus. We walked around a bit, I had counted three scorpions under lifted rocks when mom yelled "SNAKE" and we side stepped past the knurled twig wedged in a pinnacle crevasse. Though it was a false alarm, there were plenty of rattlers on this high desert floor for sure, and sure enough, as we made it back to the car, one was curled up on the ground and warming itself on the ground directly under the Chevy's motor, and we drove on. I thought about telling mom the viper may have crawled up in the engine to get dad's mind percolating again but we'd lost enough time already...we needed lunch.

 

As we came around a bend, the experience of seeing Trona in the split windshield panorama to the left and Searles Lake to the right for the first time was below our modest expectations, and the antithesis of viewing my favorite spot of June Lake from the bend at Oh! Ridge further up highway 395.

When a man got a good paying job here at this Kerr-Magee (now Searles Valley Minerals) company town and brought the family, the wife would cry. You were paid in script. The school football field as well as the golf course were dirt. Grass does not grow here. What is found is trisodium hydrogendicarbonate dihydrate or Trona for short, or 'rotten eggs' smell for real. You get sodium carbonate and potash from the stuff and it's America's only reliable source. No gunpowder without it, or Alka-Seltzer for that matter. If you were going to Trona however, it was a good day, for it was cool, in the high 40's, and that scrambled the rotten egg smell.

The locals happily used terms like:

'Use a gun, go to Trona'

'Siberia of the desert'

'Eau de Trona'

Why they were self deprecating yet cheerful we found out shortly. Still, when we saw the abandoned cars that had rusted clean in two, one had doubts about the place.  

Dad had called ahead and we were to meet up with Julio & Bufungo at Cowboy Bob's restaurant on their lunch break. We ordered, but for some reason I couldn't find an egg salad sandwich on the menu. The boys showed up and Lucky Strikes and conversation were exchanged and we learned a thing or two from them. It turned out the people were cheerful there because more wealth had been taken from Searles Lake than all the gold in California since the Gold Rush of 1849 began. There's money to be made. Teachers were the highest paid in the state and pay at the plant was the best for that field of work. In that dried and dusty lake bed are 98 of the104 known chemical elements...including the one that eats cars. Just when I was thinking these were some pretty smart fellas, Bufungo mimics mom's earlier comment and yelled "SNAKE"....and everyone scurried about for a bit. Julio said he did that for effect once every few hours.

 

They thought seeing old Stan in Death Valley was a great idea and with pleasantries exchanged they said that before we go we should check out the landmark down the street for more information about this town without which there would be no Boraxo. We sauntered down Trona Road a tad to Church Street, where there was no church, just the potash plant with smokestacks chuggin' on the other side of the road, and came to a little turnout where the state landmark resided. An official looking bronze plaque stated the following:

 

NO. 774 SEARLES LAKE BORAX DISCOVERY - John Searles discovered borax on the nearby surface of Searles Lake in 1862. With his brother Dennis, he formed the San Bernardino Borax Mining Company in 1873 and operated it until 1897. The chemicals in Searles Lake-borax, potash, soda ash, salt cake, and lithium-were deposited here by the runoff waters from melting ice-age glaciers, John Searles' discovery has proved to be the world's richest chemical storehouse, containing half the natural elements known to man.

No one said much to amplify this serendipitous event, probably because no one knew what that word meant then. Especially dad, who liked to keep vocabulary to a grab bag of 500 words or so. Still, his interest was perked with this landmark thing and he wondered if there were others along our journey, and that sparked a trip to the Trona library we had passed along the way, to be the gateway to our next Landmark Adventure.

 

 

 

Pioneer Odd Fellows

Photo of the more appealing Snoeshoe Thompson Monument




Alpine County August 4, 2009

With this landmark we bid farewell to Alpine County and five of the six state landmarks within….gonna get to Ebbetts Pass (the 6^th) someday down the line. In retrospect, Ebbetts Pass not being down the line is the reason it was pushed to the way-back of the station wagon. You see, most everything around here of historical significance deals with trying to get out of here one way or another, and puts us on the route of many names; Carson Pass, Route 88, 1862 toll road, Amador/Nevada Wagon Road, etc. Unlike its other two lane brethren that cross the Sierra, 88 stays open year round, except for extreme snowstorms, and is the alternate to US 50 when it closes due to avalanche or flood. From the time of the Pioneer Odd Fellows inscribing their names here in 1849 till 1869 when the Transcontinental Railroad was completed, this was the equivalent of Interstate 80.

On January 3, 1944 this site was designated California Historical Landmark #378 for the simple reason that some guys inscribed their names on a rock in the pass nearly 100 years prior. Bigger things have happened. It’s confusing, for it isn’t as if these were the first Odd Fellows to California, a lodge was already established.    



Who are the Odd Fellows? Well, an unofficial mission statement would go like this: ‘Independent Order of Odd Fellows aims to provide a framework that promotes personal and social development. Lodge activities aim to improve and elevate every person to a higher, nobler plane; to extend sympathy and aid to those in need, making their burdens lighter, and to be a great moral power and influence for the good of humanity.’ The boys at E Clampus Vitus on the other hand, who likely put this landmark on the map, profess absolutely none of that.

Plaque inscription: NO. 378 MEMORIAL TO PIONEER ODD FELLOWS - On some large rocks near Carson Pass, a group of pioneers inscribed their names and the emblem of the Independent Order of Odd Fellows in 1849.
Location:  On State Hwy 88 (P.M. 5.3), 14.4 mi W of Woodfords
GPS 38.692184,-119.986008

Kit Carson Marker

Kit Carson

Alpine County August 4, 2009

From the Old Emigrant Road marker we head east on highway 88 for three miles. It was this route Kit Carson had picked using information obtained from Washoe Indians to guide the Fremont expedition out of Nevada and over the Sierra to Sutter’s Fort in winter conditions in early 1844. And sure enough, as the Washoe had warned, there was no food or game along the way the they had to resort to eating some of their dogs, horses, and mules.

'Kit Carson Marker' actually denotes the spot he carved his name on a tree.

John C. Fremont

There’s a pastoral place in Snake Valley, Utah named Pruess Lake, not for the hybrid Toyota but for Charles Preuss, the melancholy ‘old guy’ cartographer on the Fremont expeditions. While it seems as if everything in sight was either named Carson or Fremont from these early expeditions, the best Mr. Preuss could get was that small body of water in rural Utah…and misspelled at that.

Charles Preuss

As well as being a mapmaker, Preuss was an artist, and the illustrations he made of the expeditions were engraved and accompanied the published reports, for just like Facebook or a blog, it’s simply better with pictures. The maps and guidebooks from the expeditions became best sellers and helped the country expand to the Pacific. But again, all Preuss got out of it was temporary employment.

It was a bit like a serial western, with Fremont as the heroic Lone Ranger and Kit Carson as Tonto, his trusty sidekick. And then there was Preuss as the grumbling tenderfoot they needed to bring along.


To that trio of main characters, Fremont hired a group of cherry-picked civilians that were French-Canadian and American, seasoned hunters and trappers that could endure the hardships without complaint. Just about all of them were illiterate, so written record of the goings on were confined to Fremont’s notes and Preuss, who kept a diary for his wife. Biographers had to rely on Fremont field notes which were remembered and often enhanced after the fact, for the existence of Preuss’ notes were unknown. It turned out they had remained in his family and were found in the early 1930’s in his native Germany after a derivative ‘memoirs of a northern California pioneer’ was published. Attempts to retrieve the notes came to a halt with Hitler coming to power and eventually they were found in the American Memorial Library in Berlin in the 1950’s.

As it turned out the notes were mostly complaints about food and long hours in the saddle, along with tart observations of Fremont’s leadership and decision-making process. When combined with Fremont’s notes however, a good account of the first three of the four expeditions can be had. Preuss diary also exposes his weltschmertz;  that unique German word meaning roughly a growing world-weary sadness. That sadness eventually got to Charles Preuss and he committed suicide in 1854 at the age of 51.





The fold out from the 1845 report showing the 1844 route of the winter crossing of the Sierra Nevada. It begins on the East Fork of the Carson River near Markleeville, Ca (on the right) and ends at Sutter's Fort at New Helvetia (Sacramento) near the American and Sacramento Rivers.

Plaque inscription: NO. 315 KIT CARSON MARKER - On this spot, the summit of the Kit Carson Pass, stood the Kit Carson Tree on which the famous scout Kit Carson inscribed his name in 1844 when he guided the then Captain John C. Frémont, head of a government exploring expedition, over the Sierra Nevada. The original inscription was cut from the tree in 1888 and is now in Sutter's Fort, Sacramento.

Location:  On State Hwy 88 (P.M. 5.2), 14.5 mi W of Woodfords

GPS 38.694889,-119.989007

Old Emigrant Road

Alpine County August 4, 2009
From Coulterville in Mariposa County we’re going to magically skip across Tuolumne County 125 miles to the winding scenic landscape viewed from state highway 88 in Alpine County. When formed in 1864, Alpine County had a population of 11,000, due to the Comstock rush, but today is reduced to a tenth of that, and like Mariposa, has no incorporated cities. Additionally, Alpinians have no traffic lights, no college, no high school, no fast food, no gas stations, no theatres, no convenience stores, no dentist, no supermarkets,no banks, and no ATM’s. In other words, you might consider being self contained when you come here 

Also apparently missing is the Old Emigrant Road plaque that we’re headed to. Dedicated on November 5, 1958, it stood by the highway telling passers by of the path to Placerville till some road agent of questionable ethic made off with it the spring of 2011. Sadly, unless there is local effort and financing, it will not be replaced, for even when economic times were good, the state has shown little interest in maintenance or replacement..

For a time, this was the most popular route over the Sierra Nevada range with 120,000 people passing through from 1849 to 1852. And later in 1859 there was a second run when silver was discovered in Virginia City.

Originally the improved route came to be when the Mormon Battalion on their return to Utah sought an alternate to the Truckee River Route the Donner party used. The earliest white explorers through the region included all-stars Jedediah Smith and Joseph Walker, but it was John Fremont and Kit Carson, in their famous midwinter trip across Alpine County and the Sierra Nevada in 1844 that brought attention to possible travel routes across the range. Since it was Alta California at the time, you could say these explorers were immigrants and not emigrants.

Plaque inscription: NO. 661 OLD EMIGRANT ROAD - Here the Old Emigrant Road of 1848 swung down across the meadow now covered by Caples Lake (Twin Lakes) and climbed along the ridge at the right to the gap at the head of the valley. From this summit (9,460 feet) it descended to Placerville. This rough and circuitous section became obsolete in 1863 when a better route was blasted out of the face of the cliff at Carson Spur.
Location:  Lake Caples, on State Hwy 88 (P.M. 2.4), 173 mi W of Woodfords
GPS 38.706699,-120.043847
Marker not well displayed but great view of lake.  No G-13 500' apporoach signs.

Coulterville

Mariposa County – August 25, 2009

From the Hornitos (landmark #333) we backtrack and go up Highway 49 which they’re calling around these parts the ‘Golden Chain Highway’  fifty two miles to the gold rush town and commerce center of Coulterville. You can easily walk the old town area, and check out the Chinese store (Sun Wo Col), tour the Hotel Jeffery, and cap things off with a sarsaparilla at the Magnolia; where patrons have been passing through those swinging doors since 1851.

Inside the Magnolia




You don’t really notice it at first, but they’ve buried the utilities here and that helps preserve the look of the many old structures still standing. Like clockwork, the town burned down three times, always in July and always twenty years apart; in 1859, 1879, and 1899.

It was after the 1899 fire that the ‘Gold Rush of 1899’ came. The story was that one of the residents had hidden his gold coins in the walls of one of the structures that burned and after that rubble was used for potholes in the streets, winter rains began uncovering the coins. The rush was on and the streets were soon impassible.

Coulterville had a lot going for it, not the least of which was its crossroads location and proximity to other towns, mines, and camps, making it a natural center for commerce. That’s what brought George Coulter and family here in the first place. Also, after placer mining faded out Coulterville got a second boost by the fact it sat on huge deposits of gold baring quartz, and that hard rock mining yielded gold for years to come.

Coulter built a hotel to accommodate the new traffic and came up with an ingenious water system for it consisting of a pump driven by a flywheel that was forty feet around and had a two foot rim. He then trained he two black Newfoundland dogs operate it by running inside the wheel, and when the water tank became full, the wheel stopped automatically and the dogs were free to resume duties and waiters and bellhops. Note to patrons: ‘Go easy on the bathwater;.  

This is the last dispatch for Mariposa County as we’ve already covered Yosemite Valley early on and all that remains is Savage Trading Post, which will hopefully be visited sometime down the line as part of a sweep of gold country’s landmarks that have been passed by on previous trips. So long, butterfly.

Plaque inscription: NO. 332 COULTERVILLE (S)- George W. Coulter started a tent store here in early 1850 to supply the hundreds of miners working the rich placers of Maxwell, Boneyard, and Black Creeks. He also built the first hotel, water for it was pumped from a well by two Newfoundland dogs. Originally called Banderita from the flag flying over Coulter's store, the settlement became Maxwell Creek when the post office was established in 1853, but the name was changed the following year to honor Coulter. The family of Francisco Bruschi, who erected the first permanent building here, provided the town's leading merchants for over eighty years. Despite their crude methods, and with only wood for fuel, the nearby quartz mines operated for years and produced millions of dollars worth of gold, Andrew Goss built the first stamp mill for crushing their ore.
Location: 5004 Main St. Coulterville, 95311 County Park, NE corner of intersection of County Hwy J20 and State Hwy 132 (P.M. 44.8), Coulterville N 37° 42.684 W 120° 11.853 Marker is at the intersection of State 49 and Main Street, on the right when traveling south on 49.
GPS: 37.710307,-120.197017