_MARIPOSA HILLS_
Following the significant work of the early overland fur traders there
came a decade of immigration of bona fide California settlers. The same
forces that led the pioneer across the Alleghenies, thence to the
Mississippi, and from the Mississippi into Texas, explain the coming of
American settlers into California. Hard times in the East stimulated
land hunger, and California publicity agents spread their propaganda at
an opportune time. Long before railroads, commercial clubs, and real
estate interests began to advertise the charms of California, its
advantages were widely heralded by the venturesome Americans who had
visited and sensed the possibilities of the province. The press of the
nation took up the story, and the people of the United States were
taught to look upon California as a land of infinite promise, abounding
in agricultural and commercial possibilities, full of game, rich in
timber, possessed of perfect climate, and feebly held by an effeminate
people quite lacking in enterprise and disorganized among themselves.
The tide of emigration resulting from this painting of word pictures
began its surge in 1841 with the organization of the Bidwell-Bartleson
party. Other parties followed in quick succession, and many of the
pioneer fur hunters of the preceding decade found themselves in demand
as guides. The settlers came on horseback, in ox wagon, or on foot, and
with the men came wives and children. They entered the state by way of
the Gila and the Colorado, the Sacramento, the Walker, the Malheur and
the Pit, and the Truckee. Some journeyed to the Mono region east of
Yosemite and either struggled over difficult Sonora Pass just north of
the present park or tediously made their way south to Owens River and
then over Walker Pass. The Sierra Nevada experienced a new period of
exploration, and California took a marked step toward the climax of
interest in her offerings.
This pre-Mexican War, pre-gold-rush immigration takes a prominent place
in the history of the state, and the tragedy and success of its
participants provide a story of engrossing interest. They had forced
their slow way across the continent to find a permanent home beside the
western sea, and their arrival presaged the overthrow of Mexican rule in
California. The Mexican, Castro, stated before an assembly in Monterey:
“These Americans are so contriving that some day they will build ladders
to touch the sky, and once in the heavens they will change the whole
face of the universe and even the color of the stars.”
In one of the parties of settlers was a man of no signal traits, who, by
a chance discovery, was to set the whole world agog. This was James W.
Marshall, an employee of John A. Sutter of the Sacramento. On January
24, 1848, he found gold in a millrace belonging to Sutter. About a week
later the inevitable took place. California became a part of the United
States.
The news of the gold discovery spread like wildfire, and by the close of
1848 every settlement and city in America and many cities of foreign
lands were affected by the California fever. Gold seekers swarmed into
the newly acquired territory by land and by sea. The overland routes of
the fur trader and the pioneer settler found such a use as the world had
never seen. From the Missouri frontier to Fort Laramie the procession of
Argonauts passed in an unbroken stream for months. Some 35,000 people
traversed the Western wilderness and 230 American vessels reached
California ports in 1849. The western slope of the Sierra from the San
Joaquin on the south to the Trinity on the north was suddenly populous
with the gold-mad horde. On May 29, the _Californian_ of Yerba Buena
issued a notice to the effect that its further publication, for the
present, would cease because its employees and patrons were going to the
mines. On July 15 its editor returned and published an account of his
personal experiences as a gold seeker. He wrote: “The country from the
Ajuba [Yuba] to the San Joaquin, a distance of about 120 miles, and from
the base toward the summit of the mountains ... about seventy miles, has
been explored and gold found on every part.”
By 1849 the Mariposa hills were occupied by the miners, and the claims
to become famous as the “Southern Mines” were being located. Jamestown,
Sonora, Columbia, Murphys, Chinese Camp, Big Oak Flat, Snelling, and
Mariposa, all adjacent to the Yosemite region, came to life in a day.
Stockton was the immediate base of supply for these camps.
The history of Mariposa is replete with fascinating episodes. May
Stanislas Corcoran, a daughter of Mariposa, has supplied the Yosemite
Museum with a manuscript entitled “Mariposa, the Land of Hidden Gold,”
which comes from her own accomplished pen. From it the following brief
account is abstracted as an introduction to the beginnings of human
affairs in the Mariposa hills.
In 1850, Mariposa County occupied much of the state from Tuolumne County
southward. A State Senate Committee on County Subdivision, headed by P.
H. de la Guerra, determined its bounds, and a Select Committee on Names,
M. G. Vallejo, Chairman, gave it its name—a name which was first applied
by Moraga’s party in 1806 to Mariposa Creek.[1] Gradually through the
years, the original expansive unit was reduced by the creation of other
counties—Madera, Fresno, Tulare, Kings, and Kern, and parts of Inyo and
Mono counties.
Agua Fria was at first the county seat, but even in the beginning the
town of Mariposa was the center of the scene of activity. Four mail
routes of the Pony Express converged upon it. Prior to the arrival of
Americans, the Spanish Californians had scarcely penetrated the Sierra
in the county, but these uplands were well populated with Indians. One
of the strongest tribes, the Ah-wah-nee-chees, lived in the Deep Grassy
Valley (Yosemite) during the summer months and occupied villages along
the Mariposa and Chowchilla rivers in the winter.
Mariposa proved to be the southernmost of the important southern mines.
Of the people who were drawn to it during the days of the gold rush,
many were from the Southern States. They brought “libraries ... horses
from Kentucky ... silk hats, chivalry, colonels, and culture from
Virginia; and from most of the states that later became Confederate,
lawyers, doctors, writers, even painters—miners all.... Pennsylvania,
Massachusetts, New York, and Europe also sent representatives, and there
were Mexican War veterans, such as Jarvis Streeter, Commodore Stockton,
Colonel Fremont, and Capt. Wm. Howard.” By Christmas, 1849, more than
three thousand inhabitants occupied the town of Mariposa, which extended
from Chicken Gulch to Mormon Bar.
In February, 1851, a remarkable vein of gold was discovered in the
Mariposa diggings, first designated as the “Johnson vein of Mariposa,”
and extensive works were developed from Ridley’s Ferry (Bagby) to Mount
Ophir. These properties were acquired by a company having headquarters
in Paris, France, which became known as “The French Company.”
The Frémont Grant, also known as the Rancho Las Mariposas, was a vast
estate of 44,386 acres of grazing land in the Mariposa hills, which
Colonel J. C. Frémont acquired by virtue of a purchase made in 1847 from
J. B. Alvarado. It was one of several so-called “floating grants.” After
gold was discovered in the Mariposa region in 1848, Frémont “floated”
his rancho far from the original claim to cover mineral lands including
properties already in the possession of miners. The center of Frémont’s
activities was Bear Valley, thirteen miles northwest of Mariposa.
Lengthy litigations in the face of hostile public sentiment piled up
court costs and lawyer fees. However, the United States courts confirmed
Frémont’s claims, and other claimants, including the French Company,
lost many valuable holdings. Tremendous investments were made in stamp
mills, tunnels, shafts, and the other appurtenances related to the
mining towns as well as to the mines which Frémont attempted to develop.
In spite of its phenomenal but spotty productiveness, the Frémont Grant
brought bankruptcy to its owner and was finally sold at sheriff sale.
The town of Mariposa, which was on Frémont’s Rancho, became the county
seat in 1854, and the present court house was built that year. The seats
and the bar in the courtroom continue in use today, and the documents
and files of the mining days still claim their places in the ancient
vault. They constitute some of the priceless reminders of a dramatic
period in the early history of the Yosemite region. In these records may
be traced the transfer of the ownership of the Mariposa Grant from
Frémont to a group of Wall Street capitalists. These new owners employed
Frederick Law Olmsted as superintendent of the estate. He arrived in the
Sierra in the fall of 1863 to assume his duties at Bear Valley. The next
year he was made chairman of the first board of Yosemite Valley
commissioners, so actively linking the history of the Mariposa estate
with the history of the Yosemite Grant. Olmsted continued his connection
with the Mariposa Grant until Aug. 31, 1865, at which time he returned
to New York and proceeded to distinguish himself as the “father” of the
profession of landscape architecture.
His son, Frederick Law Olmsted, Jr., born July 24, 1870, has continued
in the Olmsted tradition. As an authority on parks, municipal
improvements, city planning and landscape architecture, and the
preservation of the American scene he has exerted a leadership
comparable to his father’s pioneering. He has entered the Yosemite
picture as National Park Service collaborator in planning and as a
member of the Yosemite Advisory Board, to which organization he was
appointed in 1928.
One of the few members of the small army of early miners in the Mariposa
region who left a personal record of his experiences was L. H. Bunnell.
His writings provide most valuable references on the history of the
beginning of things in the Yosemite region. He was present in the
Mariposa hills in 1849, and from his book, _Discovery of the Yosemite_,
we learn that Americans were scattered throughout the lower mountains in
that year. Adventurous traders had established trading posts in the
wilderness in order that they might reap a harvest from the miners and
Indians.
James D. Savage, the most conspicuous figure in early Yosemite history,
whose life story, if told in full, would constitute a valuable
contribution to Californiana, was one of these traders. In 1849 he
maintained a store at the mouth of the South Fork of the Merced, only a
few miles from the gates of Yosemite Valley. Now half a million people
each year hurry by this spot in automobiles; yet no monument, no marker,
no sign, indicates that the site is one of the most significant,
historically, of all localities in the region. It was here that the
first episode in the drama of Yosemite Indian troubles took place. The
story of the white man’s occupancy of the valley actually begins at the
mouth of this canyon in the Mariposa hills.