Sunday, December 29, 2019

THE STEVENS TRAIL / NORTH FORK OF THE AMERICAN RIVER

Looking Downstream to Mineral Bar

My intent with this blog is to write about the Yuba and Bear Rivers in the Sierra Nevada in California, but there are other beautiful, interesting and exhilarating rivers nearby.  The North Fork of the American is a designated Wild and Scenic River and the Stevens Trail is on the National Register of Historic Places.  The trail is in a steep and rugged canyon located only a few miles south of the Bear River and I visit it often because it’s in the neighborhood.

Be forewarned that the Stevens Trail has become extremely popular and can be very busy in good weather.  Part of its popularity is because the trailhead is on a major highway and therefore easy to get to, also in the spring the hillsides are ablaze with colorful wildflowers.  The trail is a 3.7 mile descent of 1,200’ from the trailhead to its terminus at Secret Canyon followed by a return walk back upslope to the trailhead making it a 7.4-mile hike.  It’s a well-designed 19th century pack trail that’s doable by a wide spectrum of hikers, even those who seldom hike.

I generally avoid crowds, so I seldom use this trail in pleasant weather unless I leave early in the morning or hike in the winter when it’s just as gorgeous.  Because of the heavy use it’s important that you leave no trace and pack out trash left.  This trail is a gift and deserves respect.

How to get there:
Colfax, California is on Interstate Highway 80 between Auburn and Emigrant Gap.  Take the Colfax Exit and get on North Canyon Way on the east side of the highway.  Drive north for less than a mile, past the cemetery, to the clearly marked trailhead.  Some people have homes adjacent to the trailhead so don’t block driveways or trespass – be neighborly.

The Stevens Trail

The Stevens Trail connected the supply and transportation hub of Illinoistown with the hydraulic mining town of Iowa Hill and other mines on various tributaries.  In between these two settlements is the North Fork of the American River located at the bottom of a steep canyon.  The ridge dividing the Bear River and the North Fork of the American climbs northeasterly from Auburn to Illinoistown.  Illinoistown was located about a mile south of present-day Colfax and was also known as Upper Corral and Alder Grove.  The Placer Herald of September 18, 1852 said that it was named Illinoistown in October of 1849 when the miners had a grand dinner in this “town of four houses”, and since most of them were Illinoisans, “… they by acclimation and a bottle of whiskey, named the place Illinoistown.”  The same article describes two productive steam operated sawmills and a fruit orchard – by 1853 they also had a Post Office.

The earliest references to Illinoistown describe it as lying within a small valley which, of course, was valuable to the indigenous Nisenan people as well.  This valley, and others like it were within forests of Sugar Pine, Douglas Fir, Incense Cedar, Yellow Pine and Black Oak providing a mosaic of diverse ecosystems and environmental nooks that were essential ingredients for the Nisenan version of the good life.

The industrious inhabitants of Illinoistown immediately went to work dropping trees, digging holes for gold, creating big corrals and allowing livestock and horses in streams and meadows and other native ecosystems.  Despite this rude behavior the Nisenan people were never consulted.  The interlopers never asked for permission, never offered a trade, never even had a meeting to disclose their intent.  They simply ignored the indigenous people.  When the Nisenan responded by nicking cattle and horses the whites retaliated with extreme measures, eventually burning the native's winter stores in several locations and forming a militia called the California Blades, who burned entire indigenous settlements and posted Indian scalps along the trail between Auburn and Illinoistown.  This particular episode of barbaric behavior is well documented in the historic record.

Secret Canyon and the North Fork of the American

The ridge itself is still a major route from the Sacramento Valley and Auburn to Donner Summit and the east side of the Sierra Nevada.  There was trade and communication between the west-side Nisenan and the east-side Washoe for centuries and there is archaeological evidence of trade and occupation for thousands of years by the unnamed people who preceded them.  In the historic era, Illinoistown was the eastern terminus of navigation for wagon traffic, a place where goods and people were transferred to pack animals who descended into the canyons to supply miners on the Bear River and the North Fork of the American and its tributaries. The trail between Illinoistown and Iowa Hill was built in anticipation of the transcontinental railroad (Central Pacific Railroad) which was completed in 1869.

John Rutherford allegedly began work on the trail in 1867 and immediately took on a partner named Truman Stevens who, by 1870, was the sole owner of the trail.  Prior to the railroad there were already rudimentary trails into the canyons used by both the indigenous people and gold miners, but the Stevens Trail was an investment.  In 1866 a Post Office was opened in Colfax, while the one in Illinoistown was closed.

Iowa Hill is 9 air-miles southeast of Colfax on a ridge between the North Fork of the American and Indian Creek at an elevation of 2,860’.  Gold was discovered near Iowa Hill in 1848 but the area was propelled into prominence by the discovery of deep gravels in 1854.  These tertiary gravels were mined by hydraulicking and later by drift mining.  In its heyday there were 15 stores and 18 hotels with a population of approximately 1,000.  By 1880 the Iowa Hill mining district had produced $20 million in gold but was considered “worked out.”

Slaughter Ravine

As you begin your descent from the trailhead there is mostly Canyon Live Oak above and below the trail.  In the wet months the tread can get a bit soggy.  Where the trail crosses Slaughter Ravine there are wildflowers in the spring and summer along with introduced plants like Tree of Heaven, Periwinkle and fruit trees.  Before long you’ll find yourself on a dirt road that was created in 1978 and remains the only disturbance to an otherwise pristine trail.  Easy to find signs will direct you back to the trail.

At Robbers Ravine the trail splits into an upper trail and lower trail.  The upper trail is the more scenic of the two, but it can be difficult to navigate in the wet season.  From the upper trail is a good view of Cape Horn where Chinese laborers, while secured by ropes, picked and blasted a ledge for the Central Pacific Railroad tracks.  Cape Horn is a steep bluff with a 75° slope, 1,400’ above the North Fork of the American River.  There is a popular story about Chinese workers in baskets hanging over a cliff to do this work, but this can’t be substantiated by research and this geologic feature is not really a cliff, but a dome with a dramatic slope.  Baskets would shred if they were lowered and raised along this rocky slide.  Author Maxine Hong Kingston tells a story about a man, who supposedly worked on this project, describing the lowering of baskets to get Chinese workers in position to set dynamite.  I doubt its accuracy as history simply because there are no records. Also, reminiscences, in their continuous retelling, change and tend to amplify the “good parts.”  Maxine Hong Kingston is a contemporary artist informed by tradition, who freely admits that some of her work is outside of the sphere of academia and wouldn’t necessarily stand up to Western critical analysis but this does not diminish her art in any way.  There is an interesting discussion of this topic on the Central Pacific Railroad site (cprr.org).

Facing Cape Horn From Robbers Ravine

After the two trails merge, you’ll come to a place where the trail becomes a rock ledge with a mining excavation adjacent to the trail.  Don’t bother exploring, it wouldn’t be an abandoned mine if it were productive.  Continue walking out to a point with a great view of the North Fork of the American downstream where you can see the bridge at Mineral Bar.  In 1851 a ferry crossed the river here on the wagon road between Illinoistown and Iowa Hill.  Charles Rice built the Mineral Bar and Iowa City Turnpike Road in 1854 and worked as the superintendent and toll collector for the next 30 years.  Tolls across the 110’ bridge ranged from 25 cents for a pedestrian to $6.50 for six yoke of oxen and a wagon.  It was a 10-mile trip that took four hours.  Placer County purchased the road in 1906 and today Mineral Bar is a Bureau of Land Management managed recreation area.

From this expansive vista the Stevens Trail descends to the east, with curvy river views and some steep drops downslope.  On September 4, 1884 the Placer Argus published an article titled “Fatal Fall” in which they report the arrival of a riderless horse in Iowa Hill prompting the formation of a search party.  “Honorable J. H. Neff found a hat known to belong to E. Webster on the Stevens Trail about a mile from the river on the Colfax side.  Mr. Webster was about 60 years old and a native of Maine.  His body was found well below the trail.  It is supposed that his hat fell off, and he dismounted and stumbled over the bank, a distance of over 200 feet.”  In November of 1890 the same newspaper reported the shooting of a 7’ long, 125-pound mountain lion on the Stevens Trail.  The message is the usual one for outdoor activities, enjoy yourself but remain alert, for things can change in an instant.

Hikers on the Stevens Trail

There are long shade-free areas as you descend to Secret Canyon so wear a hat, use sunscreen and bring enough water.  It can get hot here in mid-summer.  When you get close to the river at Secret Canyon, there is a rocky ledge below the trail with a few bedrock mortars and some rusted wire rope.  This was the location of a wire rope suspension bridge across the river that was used extensively from 1871 to 1895; in 1914 it collapsed and was never rebuilt.  Andrew Hallidie, renowned for his invention of the San Francisco cable cars, made the first wire rope produced in the West for the Bay State Mine on the Middle Fork of the American River in 1856.  In the following year Hallide established a plant to produce wire rope in San Francisco’s North Beach.  By 1869 A.S. Hallidie & Company had built a 320’ bridge across Deer Creek in Nevada City and a 225’ bridge across the Bear River, among others.  Years ago I walked the trail from Iowa Hill to this place and it was dense with vegetation and less scenic than the north side but I can’t vouch for its condition now.

Wire Rope from the Suspension Bridge that Crossed the River (1870-1914)

In addition to the bedrock mortars found at the bridge site here there are many more on the river’s edge just above the stream in Secret Canyon.  In the early 1980s we counted over 50 bedrock mortars at this location.  In the intervening 40 years many of the mortars have filled with sand and gravel due to the accumulation of silt and the periodic placer mining that takes place here.  This is such a beautiful spot.  Imagine the Nisenan gathered here where the river is shallow and there is a gravely bottom, perfect for salmon spawning.  The men may have been fishing here, while the women were possibly drying salmon and pounding fish bones into a powder suitable for soup stock, while caring for the children swimming nearby.  I don't think I'm reaching to say that they enjoyed and appreciated this place and I can easily imagine them singing, swapping stories and sharing jokes as they worked.  This is obviously a seasonal campsite and I wonder what trail they used to get here.

Bedrock Mortars Alongside the North Fork of the American

When you get out of the canyon you may be hungry and ready for some regional hippie-mex food available at Homie Joe’s Tacos on North Canyon Road a stone’s throw from the Colfax Cemetery, near Highway 80’s Exit 135.  There are some trade offs, but there is a unique and savory menu, plenty to eat, and great ambiance.  I appreciated being addressed as “Brother-Man” and I intend to return.

Hank Meals will be hiking the Stevens Trail on January 12, 2020, For more information contact laura@hiking4good.com.

• • •

Sunday, December 1, 2019

CANYON CREEK TRAIL ON THE NORTH YUBA RIVER

Bedrock mortars at Cut Eye Fosters Bar


[It just dawned on me that I talked about this trail in an earlier post (Indian Valley/September 2018) but, just like I’ve walked this trail many times, what harm is there in writing about it more than once?  Compare the two posts for different renditions].

How to get there:  From Nevada City, California travel north for 30 miles on State Highway 49 to the bridge over the North Yuba River and make an immediate left to the trailhead parking area.  On the way there you will cross the South Yuba and the Middle Yuba Rivers.

The Canyon Creek Trail is a pleasant all-seasons trail that parallels the North Yuba River on a sidehill trail through a lush forest at about 2,300 feet in elevation.  Along the way there are many places to find solitude and/or splendid swimming holes.  The walk to Shenanigan Flat is a bit over a mile, it’s about 2 miles to Cherokee Creek and about 3 ½ miles to Canyon Creek.  The trail begins on a gated road just after crossing the Highway 49 bridge over the North Yuba River.  In the late 1960s this dirt road transported campers to Shenanigan Flat where the Forest Service maintained a campground, but has since closed it.  The road itself was created in the 1860s, probably just after the big flood in the winter of 1862 when all of the bridges on the Yuba River were swept away.

As you hike take notice of the rock retaining walls on the downslope side of the road.  Of course, the real attention getter is the North Yuba – it’s beauty, speed and, in the wetter months, it’s sound.  This whole stretch of the river, from Indian Valley down to the mouth of Canyon Creek is inaccessible by vehicle and idyllic to visit for a swim, an ousel’s song or for pure wanderment.  There are few trails to the river from the main trail but much of it is approachable.  I urge you to respect this, and all rivers, you’re just visiting.

  Near Shenanigan Flat

The river makes a noticeable turn to the northwest at a place called Shenanigan Flat, a wonderful name whose origins are lost to the void of history.  I did find a few basalt flakes left behind by a stone age tool maker but the earliest historical presence I could find was a record of the mining claim of Michael Cortes & Company in 1874.  It’s a relatively flat bench sitting above the river, opposite Indian Creek, and must have made a sweet summer camp site for centuries before gold miners arrived.  There is an active, but low-key, mining claim nearby and there are the remains of concrete fire pits left from its days as a campground.

I have a friend who lived for a summer at the Shenanigan Flat campground in the late 1960s.  He was there with his family trying “to get back to the land.”  In hippie dialect that meant they had “dropped out” and were poor, but proud of it.  Their neighbors in the campground were a family who were trying to make some money by small-scale gold mining – they didn’t dress, act or talk like hippies.  Both families were polite to each other but not real friendly.  Their kids sometimes played together, but it was casual. 

The other neighbor worth noting was a large rattlesnake “seen around camp fairly often.”  My friend and his family were “OK with the snake” because it hadn’t displayed any territoriality.  In fact, they were almost in a state of grace because they lived near danger by being alert and harmonious with nature.  In other words, no one had been threatened or bitten.  Everyone was aware that the snake was there because it was acknowledged in manly conversations consisting of short sentences and grunts.

In time the mining family had gotten used to their natural neighbors and invited then to dinner around the campfire.  This blatant hospitality couldn’t be ignored, and the hippie family was determined to be a good neighbor, even if they were served Spam and canned string beans.  Instead, it was a big surprise when their host started frying a rattlesnake, while offering that it was “the big one.”  When faced with a spiritual conundrum it’s best to accept the hospitality, which the hippie family did.  I’m sure this qualifies as a shenanigan.

As the trail proceeds downstream to the northwest it assumes the width of the earlier wagon road that still extends to Cherokee Creek where there was once a toll bridge across the North Yuba.  The two historical maps that show the bridge location differ – the topography suggests that the bridge was on the east (upstream) side of Cherokee Creek.  On the opposite ridgetop, a few miles north of Camptonville, was a place called Depot Hill which was the highest and easternmost extent of freight wagon navigation in 1850.  Here wagons were downloaded to pack animals for the steep descent to Cherokee Creek and Cut Eye Fosters Bar on the North Yuba where there was another pack trail coming upstream from Fosters Bar (no relation to Cut Eye), which is now under water behind New Bullards Bar Dam.  At this point you’re probably annoyed that I’m not using possessive apostrophes when describing historic mining locations.  That’s because it’s a local convention not to – they were never used on maps, in contemporary newspaper accounts, mining journals or even Post Offices – I’m only perpetuating a local custom.

Near Cut Eye Fosters Bar

While mining at Cut Eye Fosters Bar in the summer of 1849 Philo Haven was approached by an Indian named Lo who offered to trade gold nuggets for some exotic miner’s cuisine.  Farris and Smith’s, 1882 History of Sierra County described the occasion this way: “Mr Haven began frying pancakes. The company began having visions of a famine. Even the great American pie-eater would have hung his head in shame had he beheld the delicate mouthfuls and the quantity of food devoured on this occasion. But even an Indian’s capacity was limited, and the feast was finally finished, greatly to the relief of the gold hunters.”  The next day they headed upstream to a place that would eventually become Downieville only to find that Hedgepath & Company had staked out claims already but there was plenty of good mining ground left.  

Cut Eye Fosters Bar was the most upstream place to obtain provisions on the North Yuba in 1850.  Newton Miller and company used a wing-dam to mine here from January 1851 to July 1852 and called it “a lively place.”  Cut-Eye Foster was described as a professional horse thief who employed Indians and kept a corral of pack animals.  California historian, T. H. Hittell remarked, that Foster had no problems with the local Indians because he had no prejudice against them.  “Judging by his own experience, he did not think there was any danger to be anticipated as long as they were not molested.”  William Downie had dealings with Cut Eye Foster and said he was philanthropic, but dishonest, “… prices were absolutely ruinous to his customers. He charged three dollars per pound for potatoes and butter, two dollars for flour, and so on in proportion, making everybody recognize that, if life was worth living, we certainly had to pay dearly to sustain it.”

The North Yuba Canyon from the Brandy City Trail


Cherokee Creek is a beautiful stream with plenty of riparian vegetation.  It has been heavily mined because it erodes the auriferous gravel deposits near Brandy City, a formerly productive hydraulic mining community.  Cherokee is the most popular Indian name for mining properties in California even though their homelands are in southern Appalachia.  In 1829 placer gold was discovered in their territory, from which they were eventually moved, but not before learning something about gold mining.  They were savvy miners when they arrived and I’m sure they took advantage of their knowledge.

You may or may not spot the trail to Brandy City that takes off from the Canyon Creek Trail below Cherokee Creek because it’s no longer maintained and there was ferocious logging on the upper reaches of this trail in the 1960s.  There’s not much to see there anymore because all the buildings are gone, although there is a small cemetery.  At one time this was an important hydraulic mining center with a sizable French population.  The Sierra Democrat of July 3, 1858 reported on a “Grand Ball at Brandy City – formerly Strychnine City – on the evening of the 27th given by the Canyon Creek Ditch Company, and others, and you can bet it was a fine affair.  Seven of the ladies were taken to the Ball in a Concord A No 1 four horse coach. The balances were carried on horse and mule flesh and danced all night to broad daylight.

Brandy City, 1900

Cross the foot bridge across Cherokee Creek and continue downstream to the south, then westerly, through a healthy forest of Douglas fir, yellow pine, incense cedar, black oak, live oak and broad-leaf maple.  This part of the trail is narrow and undulating like the original pack trail.

It was on this part of the trail on a narrow ridge toward the river where, in the late 1960s, you could see a tipi incongruously perched in a dense forest of oaks and conifers.  According to local rumors there was an attractive young woman who lived alone in that tipi.  Mister P., who worked for the Forest Service, heard the rumor and decided that he should investigate.  He told me that he found the tipi alright and as he walked toward it a nude woman stepped out to greet him.  Now Mister P. was a first-generation Italian American and a practicing Catholic who became quite agitated even as he was telling me the story.  He stood up and muttered “Mama Mia, Jesu Santo", and crossed himself several times before, red in the face, he made the universally understood “big boobs” gesture.  Actually, you had to have been there to fully appreciate his kinetic approach to storytelling.  Mister P. never told me what he and the woman talked about, but he was obviously concerned because he went to fetch the Ranger.  When they returned the Ranger verified Mister P.’s description of the situation and they apparently had a long conversation about safety.  It’s reassuring to know how responsive Forest Service management can be when the situation warrants it.

After crossing the small stream in Brummel Ravine, the trail descends to a dramatic confluence where Canyon Creek enters the North Yuba at Kelly Bar.  There’s a great swimming hole and campsite here.

Canyon Creek entering the North Yuba at Kelly Bar

• • •

Thursday, September 19, 2019

Mt. Lola / North-Central Sierra Nevada


“Exercise, not philosophically and with religious gravity undertaken, but with the wild and romping activities of a spirited girl who runs up and down as if her veins were full of wine.” - Lola Montez

THE MOUNT LOLA TRAIL
It’s mid-September and there’s a light rain in the Deer Creek watershed this morning.  Pluviophiles are ecstatic and the aroma of moist and earthy petrichor is positively swoony – meanwhile it’s snowing on Mt Lola.  A few days ago it was warm and we hiked to the summit from the east side so that’s what this blog will be about.  Mount Lola, at 9,143 feet is located in the extreme northeast of the South Yuba watershed and is its highest peak.  Immediately below and to the west is White Rock Lake.  On the east and north sides of Mount Lola, Independence Creek and Coldstream Creek flow to the Truckee River.

How to get there:
To get there take Highway 89 north from Truckee for 17 miles to the Jackson Meadow Road. Travel west for 2 miles to the well-marked Independence Lake turnoff. Drive 0.7 mile and cross the bridge over the Little Truckee River, then take the first right. This road is a segment of the historic Henness Pass Road. Drive 3.2 miles to the clearly marked trailhead and parking lot at Perrazzo Meadows.


This 5.4 mile long trail (one way) ascends Cold Stream Creek, a tributary of the Little Truckee River.  At the lower segment there is some logging evidence but there are also wildflowers and beautiful Cold Stream Meadow.  Above the meadow the slope becomes steeper climbing through stands of red fir and mountain hemlock.  Right alongside the trail is the largest red fir that I’ve ever seen.

Coldstream Meadow

From the eastside Mount Lola is a 2,500-foot climb, and worth it. As for degree of difficulty, well that depends.  This hike was an epiphany for me – when I last hiked this trail three years-ago I don’t remember it being particularly strenuous but now that I’m older (much older that most people reading this) it was difficult for me.  Men don’t want to admit that their performance is fading, but for me there was no denying it, and I had the realization that I might not do this hike again.  While I was humbled by the mountain and my own mortality, it didn’t diminish my experience, but my knees hurt.  From now on I’ll be factoring my own frailty into planning for future hikes.  All things considered this is valuable information for keeping hiking pleasurable for as long as possible.

Coming up the East Side of Mt Lola

The views from the summit are fabulous. On a clear day you can see Mount Lassen to the northwest and the distinctive Sierra Buttes in the same direction but only 20 miles away on the North Yuba River.  To the west are Grouse Ridge, Fall Creek Mountain and the Black Buttes in the Grouse Ridge Roadless Area.  Looking south you can see Basin Peak and Castle Peaks, and along the summit continuing southward to Donner Pass and Tinker Knob.  To the east is Mount Rose and to the northeast is Sierra Valley.  At the base of Mount Lola is White Rock Lake to the southwest and Independence Lake to the east.

White Rock Lake is the highest body of water in the South Yuba watershed.  Originally it was an aboriginal campsite, then in 1850 it was dammed when the water rights were claimed for gold mining.  The Pacific Crest Trail passes just south of White Rock Lake where there is a 2 ½ mile spur trail that ascends about 1,300’ to the top of Mt. Lola.


 Dusk on Mt Lola. Looking southwest to White Rock Lake

SURVEY HISTORY
On the summit of Mount Lola you’ll see a small rock structure and may wonder what it’s doing here.  In 1878 the newly named Coast and Geodetic Survey was surveying the west by triangulation, using very large constructs known as Davidson's Quadrilaterals with sides ranging from 57 to 142 miles in length. To do this work a station was established on Mount Shasta to measure the side between Mount Shasta and Mount Helena, which at about 192 miles would make it the longest triangulation line ever observed. The line Mount Lola to Mount Helena, one of the sides of Davidson's Quadrilaterals, 133 miles in length, was selected as the base for the triangle.

George Davidson was chosen to make the observations at Mount Lola and Benjamin Colonna was chosen for Mount Shasta. In his journal for August 1, 1878, Colonna described a momentous event:
At sunrise, I turned my telescope in the direction of MT LOLA, and there was the heliotrope, 169 miles off, shining like a star of the first magnitude. I gave a few flashes from my own, and they were at once answered by flashes from LOLA. Then turning my telescope in the direction of MT HELENA, there, too was a heliotrope, shining as prettily as the one at LOLA. My joy was very great; for the successful accomplishment of my mission was now secured.

In the center is the base of the heliotrope used in 1878


This series of flashes, through the wonders of trigonometry, allowed the team of surveyors to accurately calculate that the distance between Mount Shasta and Mount Helena was 192 miles. Colonna was ecstatic about besting the French, and wrote in his journal, “And the glory is ours; for America, and not Europe, can boast of the largest trigonometrical figures ever measured on the globe.”  So, these rock features are the foundation for the heliotrope and a shelter George Davidson used while waiting for optimal conditions in the summer of 1875.  Positions held by Davidson include president of the California Academy of Sciences from 1871 to 1887, Honorary Professor of Geodesy and Astronomy, and Regent of the University of California from 1877 to 1885.  He became the first professor of Geography at the University of California, Berkeley and was one of 182 charter members of the Sierra Club in 1892 and served as a member of its board of directors from 1894 to 1910.  This bit of scientific history may or may not be of interest to you, but surely you want to know who Lola Montez was?

Lola Montez 1850
Photo by Southworth and Hawes

Mount Lola was named for the legendary Lola Montez, who was born in Ireland in 1821 and originally named Elizabeth Rosanna Gilbert.  As part of a military family she spent her childhood in India and married for the first time at age 16, apparently to get back to Europe.  After her first marriage she traveled to Spain and developed a persona as a dancer, named herself Lola Montez and toured northern Europe.  She was, by all accounts, a mediocre dancer but what she lacked in talent she made up for in chutzpah.  Her fiery temperament, audaciousness and ambition landed her in the company of Franz Liszt, Robert Peel (son of the English Prime Minister), the French newspaper editor Alexandre Dujarier, Marius Petipa (the creator of Swan Lake and The Nutcracker), the Earl of Malmesbury, the Count of Schleissen, Lord Brougham, Jung Bahadur (the Nepalese ambassador to London) and other less notable men.

In 1846 she traveled to Munich and became a dancer with the Bavarian Opera.  When King Ludwig I of Bavaria saw her he wrote, “Today I saw Lola Montez dance. I am bewitched. In this Spanish woman alone have I found love and life.”  She thrived on scandal and she created enormous celebrity, even inspiring imitators. Some of her biographers claimed that Lola Montez garnered more press than Queen Victoria herself.  King Ludwig was totally enthralled, while Lola shamelessly manipulated him.  In August of 1847 he made her the Countess of Landsfeld, which assured her a salary, but the citizens of Munich were embarrassed by the foolishness of their King and distrusting of Montez. By 1848, under pressure from a growing revolutionary movement, Ludwig abdicated his throne and Lola fled Bavaria, alone.

From 1851 to 1853 she performed as a dancer and actress in the eastern United States.  One of her biographers said that she received higher fees for her lectures than Charles Dickens who was on tour at the same time.  Her most popular play was a trite, self-promotional story about her affair with King Ludwig.  She then moved to San Francisco in May of 1853. While there she performed her suggestive “Spider Dance” in which she pretended to be attacked by spiders and searched for them in her clothing.  Reviews of her performance were pretty bad, but they generated publicity, nevertheless.  She married Patrick Hull in July and they moved to Grass Valley, California, in August.

Lola Montez 1858
National Portrait Gallery – Smithsonian Institution
Photo by Henry Meade 

Glamorous and boldly unconventional, Lola attracted an enthusiastic following based more on her cultivated persona and her beauty than on her talent – she definitely had her wild side.  In the summer of 1854 one of the most famous camping trips of the era occurred in the vicinity of what would later become Mt Lola and Lola Montez Lakes. She, and some companions, left Grass Valley for a sojourn to Donner Summit and Truckee Meadows (now Reno, NV). The party, which included Alonzo Delano, famous humorist and Grass Valley’s first city treasurer, set off with an animal pack train in mid-July and ran into difficulties after several rough days on the trail.  The horse carrying the provisions bolted and dumped all their food in a stream.  If that wasn’t bad enough, the imperious Lola quarreled with the other campers and antagonized them to the point where many of them left in a huff.

While living in Grass Valley she held salons in which the local intelligentsia gathered to meet artists, actors, writers, entrepreneurs and adventurers.  Her benefactor at this time was John Southwick, manager and part-owner of the Empire Mine.  By the time she arrived in Grass Valley she had been married twice and had many amorous alliances.  She was also fluent in several languages, was abreast of contemporary literary and artistic trends and mixed with Gautier, Alexander Dumas, George Sand, Walt Whitman and others.  The salons at her house included rich feasts with champagne.  Guests included, businessman Sam Brannan; US Supreme Court Justice Steven Field; William M. Stewart, later a U.S. senator from Nevada; the great Norwegian violist, Ole Bull and humorist Alonzo Delano, among many others. Biographer Ralph Freidman (Lola Montez in Grass Valley, 1951) commented, “…she was probably the least provincial person to ever reside in Grass Valley.”  When she left town in 1855, W.B. Ewer, editor of the Grass Valley Telegraph said “Lola is no ordinary person.  She is possessed of an original mind, one decidedly intellectual and highly cultivated.  She delights in change and excitement and is bound to create a sensation wherever she goes.”

In May of 1855 Lola Montez and an actor named Augustus Noel Follin decided to take a theatre company to Australia where gold had recently been discovered.  The foray created more scandal and notoriety but no wealth.  In June of 1860, while living in New York, she suffered a stroke that resulted in partial paralysis.  She then found religion, but contracted pneumonia and died in 1861 at the age of 42.

Lola Montez, despite her infamy, created her own myth and wrote herself into history by the force of her own personality.   The many biographies written about her dwell on her outrageous behavior, but I’m sure she was also charming and interesting to be with.  Unlike many other women in the Victorian era, who may have been notable because of their birth, or marriage, she invented herself.  Lola Montez described herself best when she dedicated her 1858 book, The Art of Beauty, to “those who are not afraid of themselves, who trust so much in their souls that they dare to stand up in the might of their own individuality to meet the tidal currents of the world.”

Dusk on Mt. Lola. Sierra Buttes to the Northwest

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Tuesday, August 20, 2019

SUGAR PINE


"No traveler, whether a tree lover or not, will ever forget his first walk in a sugar-pine forest. The majestic crowns approaching one another make a glorious canopy, through the feathery arches of which the sunbeams pour, silvering the needles and gilding the stately columns and the ground into a scene of enchantment." – John Muir

“I would feel more optimistic about a bright future for man if he spent less time proving that he can outwit Nature and more time tasting her sweetness and respecting her seniority.” – E.B. White


For 18-year old Dick Hotchkiss it was an exhilarating experience to drive a Robinson & Sons logging truck in the Grass Valley, California July 4th parade in 1956.  On the truck was a single sugar pine log, 11-foot in diameter and 32 feet long, that had for hundreds of years lived in the canyon of the Middle Yuba River.  It was a trophy, a demonstration of the faller's craft and symbolic of a traditional skill that supported families for generations. The big log was also a cultural affirmation and a display of pride for work well done.  The last hard-rock mine in Grass Valley, until now a reliable employer, had just closed and those workers were probably transitioning to logging, or lumbering to use the traditional term.  Logging had become the economy of the western slope of the Sierra Nevada in an era recently described to me by an old-timer as the “timber rush.”  After WW II there were returning veterans who deserved houses and those houses were made of wood.  In the 1950’s and 1960s the foothills were peppered with sawmills, many of which were small operations with the owner and a few employees on site.

When I started working for the Tahoe National Forest in 1975, most employees were in the “timber shop” and the forest-wide concern was “getting out the cut.”  My job as an archaeologist was created by regulations and requirements of the National Environmental Protection Act (NEPA).  The concerns of wildlife biologists, botanists, hydrologists, ecologists, archaeologists and others were initially seen as an impediment to getting the cut out.  It took some time and attrition for foresters and road engineers to get beyond their purely productive patriotic stance.

In the mid-1850s when Bayard Taylor, a 19thcentury traveler, poet and literary critic, was riding on Washington Ridge, northeast of Nevada City, he noted an unbroken forest of “pillars two hundred feet high and six feet in diameter.”  He likened their splendor to a “grand natural cathedral.”  Taylor was awe struck: “No Doric column could surpass in beauty these stupendous shafts. They are the demigods of the vegetable world”.  The forest that Taylor was describing was a forest probably dominated by sugar pines.  Subsequent lumbering and silvicultural practices have since created a more “productive forest” on that ridge, one that favors faster growing ponderosa pine and Douglas fir.  We take them for granted, but trees, whether we know it or not, provide in addition to “forest products”, habitat for many species and spiritual support for humans.  Sugar pine was once an abundant species in the Yuba and adjacent watersheds but that is no longer the case.

Sugar Pine is the largest pine in the mixed conifer forests of the Sierra Nevada.  In the North-Central Sierra they are found between 2,500’ to 7,500’ where they reach heights of 175’ to 200’ with diameters of 36” to 60” and they can live from 300 to 500 years.  Their cones, typically 10 to 20 inches in length, are the longest of any conifer with a mature cone producing an average of 150 seeds or nuts, with the best nuts found in the cones of the oldest trees.  Intervals between heavy cone crops averaged four years.  Sugar pine, gray pine, and piñon pine are considered the best tasting pine nuts in California.

In the early 1980s some of my friends formed work crews and contracted for forestry-related jobs like tree-planting, thinning, wildlife habitat improvement, trail construction and maintenance and erosion control.  It was hard work but rewarding.  My least favorite job was cone-gathering in order to provide a seed crop for tree nurseries – I’m not happy working high-up in trees.  The cones of sugar pines are way out on the ends of tapering branches – by far the most difficult to collect.  It fascinates me that indigenous people were gathering sugar pine nuts without spikes to climb with, belts, belay rope and pole pruners.

Sugar pine in the North Yuba canyon on Fiddle Creek Ridge

Sugar pine seeds/nuts were a favorite and abundant food for the local Nisenan and Washoe and they knew the location of reliable seed producing trees. Traditional burning practices favored sugar pine regeneration – it is very resistant to low-to moderate-severity fires and has adapted a thick, fire-resistant bark and open canopy that retards aerial fire spread.

It’s difficult to imagine how indigenous people were able to gather cones because branches begin in the upper third of the tree and the cones are located at the end of long, supple branches.  The Nisenan climbed sugar pines by hooking young trimmed sapling over a lower limb and the cones were pulled loose with a stick that had a projecting branch at the end.  Lizzie Enos, a Nisenan traditionalist, said that in the Sugar Pine Hill area, on the south side of the Bear River, men dislodged the cones by jumping up and down on branches.  Another method is for the climber to press down with his foot to get the branch moving in a rotary manner causing the cone to drop by virtue of its own weight.  The Sierra Miwok propped a dead tree against the trunk or used a special climbing pole.

Gray pine grows at a lower elevation usually in a savannah or oak woodland setting.  Edwin Bryant, while traveling the Emigrant Trail, wrote in his 1847-48 diary, “We saw in a number of places, ladders erected by the Indians for climbing the pine trees to gather the nuts, and the poles used for the same purpose.”  He was only a few miles from Johnson’s Ranch so these would have been gray pines

When the Nisenan and Washoe harvested sugar pine seeds they used campsites that had been used for generations.  Ideally the site would have a spring or stream near a knoll or meadow in a transitional zone where there were also berries, grass seeds, vegetable matter, tubers, medicines, plants used in basket-weaving and firewood. 

In the Yuba River watershed there are hundreds, maybe thousands, of bedrock mortars in sugar pine habitat.  Nut hunters would often camp at a favorable elevation then search for the most productive trees.  Archaeologist David Hunt applied GPS data and statistical analysis to the location of Nisenan and Washoe campsites in the watersheds of the Middle and South Forks of the American Rivers and determined that sugar pine nuts were collected at many locations and processed at numerous small bedrock mortar locations.  In his opinion sugar pines probably extended farther westward than they do now.  This is substantiated by the observations of USGS forester, John Lieberg in 1902, ”Old stumps of sugar pine standing among Digger (gray) pine and oak, where not a sapling or seedling of the species is to be found, show a more extensive westward range within recent times.”

Sugar pine cones. Cherry Hill/Middle Yuba

Sugar pine nuts and acorns were very valuable because they could be stored.  In the winter of 1849-1850 a group of vigilantes calling themselves the California Blades destroyed a group of Nisenan settlements and camps on the divide between the Bear River and the North Fork of the American River.  They claimed it was retribution for stealing horses and mules and boasted about destroying extensive caches of acorns and sugar pine nuts.

While sugar pine nuts are small compared to acorns they were valued for their taste and the extra effort required to get them was considered worth it.  Even the intruders enjoyed the flavor of sugar pine nuts.  J. D. Borthwick, an artist visiting the Nevada City area in 1854 remarked, “… they have a taste even sweeter than that of filbert.”

The unique quality of sugar pine lumber caught the attention of miners, lumbermen and builders.  With few lower branches most of the wood is clear, or free from knotholes.  Theodore Judah, who surveyed the Central Pacific Railroad route noted, “It is well known that the sugar pine of these lands often runs 125 feet high without a limb, and often measures eight feet at base – while a tree is seldom found measuring less than three and a one-half feet at base.”

When the transcontinental railroad was completed in 1869 it opened additional markets and greatly accelerated the amount of lumbering.  With the railroad, lumber could easily be transported to the east as well as to valley and coastal cities in California.  Narrow gauge railroads, constructed specifically for lumbering, were used extensively in the upper reaches of Deer Creek, on the Dutch Flat Divide and in the Truckee River basin.  Typically, lumbermen constructed mills in the best timber stands then constructed their narrow-gauge railroads to connect with the standard gauge transcontinental railroad.  According to historian David Beesley, everything marketable was cut, creating a two-and-a-half to three-mile circle of devastation with no seed trees remaining.

By the end of the 19th century the loss of trees and the resultant erosion was clearly detrimental to forest health and water quality.  John Leiberg, inventoried and reported on federal forest reserves including Yuba River country.  He observed, “… where the cut is exhaustive a great change has taken place.  Of the sugar pine in the region examined, the tree is losing ground at a rapid rate on all the areas logged, … the coming forest will contain only 2 or 3 per cent at the most.  The deficiency of sugar pine in the reforestation is due to one general cause, and that is wasteful and unscientific logging methods – everything capable of yielding immediate profit being cut, without the slightest provision for sparing a sufficient number of seed trees to restock the cut-over areas.”

Shake manufacturing at Clipper Mills/Slate Creek/North Yuba (1907)

Bob Paine, a former Nevada City journalist, spent summers in the early 1920s with his uncle at the Hegarty Ranch, near Graniteville.  He noticed that two Chinese men living on the property were engaged in manufacturing shakes from sugar pine.  The shakes were dried and bundled then floated downstream in the Milton Ditch where they were stored on a landing downstream then transported to market by a wagon.  Shakes were split from a round of sugar pine, or sometimes cedar, by using a froe, which is a wedge-shaped blade with a handle that is hammered with a hardwood mallet.  Dimensions vary, but in the Sierra Nevada roof shakes were typically 32” by 5”.  Shakes shingled the roofs and were often the siding of historic structures. They were also used to make door and window sashes and crates. 

Clear lumber from sugar pine was in great demand.  Lumbermen despised shake makers, calling them “highgraders”.  When the U.S. Forest Service was created in 1906, shakes were the most valuable forest product maintaining a market value well above dimensional lumber.  “Shakes were produced only from the choicest sugar pines, and only from select portions of the bole – no more than 40 percent.” Swift Berry, a member of the U.S. Forest Service timber management staff wrote, “Since most of the shakes are made from the most valuable species, sugar pine, and only the best and straightest trees will rive, the shake-maker constantly lowered the value of the stand by skimming out the best trees.”

Shake structure at French Bar/North Yuba

Abuses of the mineral laws, for logging purposes, was common on the California national forests.  From 1902 to 1918 lumber companies filed mining claims for no other purpose than to gain surface rights to the timberlands.  The Forest Service contested a large number of these so called "sugar pine mining claims" which were particularly rampant in areas adjacent to railroad rights-of-way.

After WW II there was a period of “intensive management” on National Forests that included clear cuts and the cutting of remote old growth “decadent” trees made possible by increased road building followed by plantations and herbicide application.  By 1960 the Multiple Use–Sustained Yield Act and in 1964 the Wilderness Act were the first in a series of environmental laws that sought to recreate a healthy forest ecology.  Sugar pine is no longer logged in the Tahoe National Forest – even the most business-oriented foresters recognize the extent of the damage done.

Meanwhile we are learning that trees and other plants are connected with each other in numerous ways to promote the stability, or equanimity, of the greater community.  Suzanne Simard, professor of forest ecology at the University of British Columbia’s Department of Forest and Conservation Sciences, studies communications between plants through mycorrhizal networks from one plant to another, usually from a sufficient plant to a plant in need.  Simard’s research shows that biological science and indigenous knowledge share some common ground.  “The science of plant communication and behavior is only scratching the surface of how nature works, but what we are seeing is nothing short of amazing.  This scientific understanding, suggestive of sentience in forests, resonates with indigenous wisdom, which calls for respect and learning from the hitherto unseen law of the forest, our teacher”.

Cabin at Loney Meadows/South Yuba with a shake roof and walls made of split-cedar log uprights. The cabin finally collapsed in the winter of 2018 -2019.  
• • •

This is a revised and expanded version of an essay I wrote for Tree Rings/Yuba Watershed Institute a few years ago.


Select Bibliography

Bayard Taylor. Eldorado: or Adventures in the Path of Empire (1850).
Ralph L. Beals. The Ethnology of the Nisenan (1933).
John W. Duncan. Maidu Ethnobotany (1961).
Glen Farris. Quality Food: The Quest for Pine Nuts in Northern California (1993).
Kat Anderson. Tending the Wild: Native American Knowledge and the Management of California’s Natural Resources (2005).
David Hunt. The Power of the Acorn: Late Holocene Settlement and Resource Distribution in the Central Sierra (2000).
John B. Leiberg. Forest Conditions in the Northern Sierra Nevada. (1902).
Myron Angel. History of Placer County (1882).
Theodore Judah. Preliminary Report of the Chief Engineer, Central Pacific Railroad (1862).
David Beesley. Crow’s Range: An Environmental History of the Sierra Nevada (2004).
Kevin S. McKelvey & James D. Johnston. Historical Perspectives on Forests of the Sierra Nevada and the Transverse Ranges of Southern California: Forest Conditions at the Turn of the Century (1992).
Swift Berry. Shake Making and Tray Mills in California’s National Forests.(1913).
Turrentine Jackson. History of Tahoe National Forest: 1840-1940: A Cultural Resources Overview History (1982).
Suzanne Simard. Conversations in the Forest: The Roots of Nature’s Equanimity (2015).