Tuolumne County: A Land Where Gold Once Glistened in the Sun

Story and photography by
Nancy & Eric Anderson 

 

When James Marshall picked up a shining yellow lump in the foothills of the High Sierras on a cold January 1848 morning he started the greatest mass migration in American history: Eighty thousand restless people poured into the Sierras the next year and by 1854 the new state of California had a population of 300,000.

This relatively recent history is easily explored within the 200 miles that stretch along the Sierra Nevada’s western slopes. Although more than half of the 546 Mother Lode towns disappeared when the gold ran out, many can still be found in Tuolumne County. Of the eleven counties that shared in the Gold Rush, Tuolumne produced the most gold.

Miners found gold in Columbia, Tuolumne County 14 months after Marshall’s discovery at Sutter’s Creek 30 miles to the north. Six thousand people poured into town in six weeks. In eight years Columbia mine shipments totaled $87 million and the town became the 8th largest city in California. At one time it had 13 newspapers running. Gold initially was so plentiful that when miners sent a young boy empty handed into town to buy beer for them, they instructed him to keep looking to the edge of the trail and grab any gold he saw to pay for the purchase. The town subsequently declined but didn’t die. With wooden buildings and careless people it had many fires. “Fire and a lack of water caused a constant loss of buildings. You can only do so much with buckets of water,” says Hoyt Elkins, a local guide.

The town kept making comebacks. Even as late as 1890 an entrepreneur bought the old brick Masonic Hall for a nominal sum, tore it down, sold the bricks and mined the lot underneath getting $55,000 in gold in just 30 days. During the Great Depression miners returned to scratch in the earth again for a living and once more Columbia became a town of foreigners. Even today given the likelihood that most people you’ll meet here are out-of-towners having fun, don’t be too surprised by those you might bump into in the boutique shops.

Elkins cautions that Gold Rush numbers are unreliable; many miners, especially the Chinese laborers, did not report their findings. “When you ask questions about that period -- from goats to gold -- you have to believe local legends,” he says, “but one thing is certain: Columbia is the best example of a Gold Rush town in America.”

Columbia was a geological anomaly. Erosion and weather over the millennia created a gold field where the precious metal was close to the surface and, although gold was 16 times heavier than anything else in water, sometimes heavy nuggets would roll around in the streams as if floating. To begin with, the mining was easy then as the miners went deeper they used elaborate water pressure hoses to blast away the earth. When they got down 35 to 45 feet they hit bedrock and then the gravy train was over.

Says Elkins, “The amount of effort people made to find the gold was over-rated compared to the amount of gold you ended up getting. But 80 percent of the miners were literate, educated and had assets. The smart ones opened up a business and guessed what people needed and wanted.”

Indeed some historians say “American consumer society started in California. In Europe regulations would have destroyed the Gold Rush as we know it. Its spirit still endures and has made America what it is today: rambunctious, optimistic and entrepreneurial.”

There are 77,000 historically recognized places in the United States but only 2,500 qualify to be a Historic Landmark District. Columbia is one. Columbia is beautifully restored with a small live theater, several boutiques, the Fallon Hotel with its 1860 ice cream parlor and, for even sweeter tooths, a small chocolate factory.

Hollywood has visited many times; it was, for example, the location of the movie High Noon. The town was also the source of the anecdote used in Paint Your Wagon where penniless miners harvested gold dust that had dropped through the cracks in the local saloon.

Movie producers have similarly shown interest in nearby Jamestown (like Columbia now a state historic park). Jamestown was a railroad terminal; its steam engines, atop rolled steel tires on cast iron wheels, have appeared in more than 300 movies. The movie industry in fact saved this famous landmark starting as far back as 1919 when an engine starred in the silent movie serial The Red Glove. Engine #3 enlivened High Noon, Petticoat Junction, The Virginian, Back to the Future III and Little House on the Prairie. Engine #28 was used in Unforgiven. Railtown 1897 State Historic Park, home to the Sierra Railroad, lies on the southeast edge of town. Every weekend from April to October it runs its trains on a 40 minute 6-mile roundtrip through the Californian Gold Country.

This railroad, still functioning, is one of the only two in America (the other is in Pennsylvania) without a break in service. Jim Mullin, a guide, clearly loves rail. “In the development of America,” he says, “No major city grew that was not connected to the railroad. Even coastal cities or those along the Mississippi that used barges needed the railroad to bring their products primarily agricultural ones to market.”

Visitors interested in seeing what 44 pounds of gold look like should drive to the township of Murphys. There, a nugget, 98 percent pure gold worth $3.5 million and once sought by the Louvre museum ended up in the Heritage Museum at Ironstone Vineyards.

Tourists can pan for gold with tour operators in Jamestown for the ‘real” experience and spend any gold they find at the Mi-Wuk Indian Black Oak Casino. The Mi-Wuk tribe prospered in this area until some working for Charles M. Weber discovered gold along the Stanislaus River. Thousands of miners rushed in with gold fever. Says Elkins, “This area, now called Sonora, had so many shootings every day that people just went about their business stepping over the bodies.” It’s been said that when local communities were over-run with waves of European miners, they died of European diseases -- and bullets.

Sonora, the county seat of Tuolumne County, three miles from Jamestown has 19th century churches and homes to explore and further along Route 108 lies the little mountain village of Twain Harte named in 1924 after its two most famous authors.

Almost 4000 feet above sea level, today Twain Harte attracts visitors and retirees who come to experience an unusual phenomenon in California: four seasons. Twain Harte, though honeycombed with old gold mines, is atop a more recently incorporated community than surrounding towns. But it still has its history: One town, Long Branch, where horses were changed for the long drag from Sonora to Bodie (itself now a ghost town) nor does Whisky Hill nearby – a murder a week -- no longer exists.

Gary Bogolea, in the Twain Harte’s sheriff’s office winces when we ask about today’s murders. “Doesn’t happen,” he says. “I’m a redneck conservative and the county reflects that too. We’re not liberal like the Bay Area. I’m here to get away from all that nonsense and the traffic. Here we don’t get gangs or muggings or bank robberies. Though occasionally we have to help someone who gets drunk in public.”

Michael McCaffrey, with his wife, Stephanie, runs the nearby McCaffrey House B & B. They clearly are happy in their roles. In their warm and inviting kitchen hangs a framed memo. It says it all. “Because Nice Matters.

McCaffrey is a wealth of local and historical knowledge. A teaspoon of gold about an ounce would fetch $10, he tells us. And a shot glass of gold $100. A claim eight feet by eight feet might bring in $300 a day. But costs were high too. An egg cost $1 and a shirt $25.

McCaffrey is a real Tuolumne County booster. Asked why tourists should come, he replies that in warm weather there are all kinds of outdoor activities like fabulous fishing for trout and kokanee salmon, and in winter spectacular skiing. But all the time, he says, we have the historical immigrant wilderness where the wagon trains came in 1852, and not only are we the center of the 11 counties involved in the Gold Rush but the Columbia State Park is the best preserved Gold Rush state park. Additionally, says McCaffrey, the Tuolumne County pleasure for him is his proximity to what he calls the National Park Big Three: Grand Canyon, Yellowstone and Yosemite. “Yosemite is the payoff” he says, “I get to visit it in four seasons.”

We tell him what the deputy sheriff told us about Twain Harte. He grins. “Twain Harte doesn’t take itself too seriously,” he says. “For example, the SOB Yacht Club on the lake near here caters to those without boats who just want to Sit On the Beach.” On the other hand, visitors who want to get on the water should head down to Moccasin Point on Lake Don Pedros and rent a houseboat from Forever Resorts to explore the 160 mile shoreline of the man-made lake.

From Moccasin Point route 120 swings into another little town with its famous 1849 Groveland Hotel, the hotel with the ghost of Lyle, a Spring Gulch miner who slept with a case of dynamite under his bed in Room 15. Despite that story his room remains one of the most popular in this delightful Old World inn. Groveland is worth an overnight stay. Peggy Mosely, the co-owner with husband Grover, is like him from Tennessee and – she actually went to school with Elvis! Groveland claims the oldest continuously operated saloon in California, the Iron Door Saloon.

And beyond Groveland lies the grandest attraction of Tuolumne County, Yosemite itself.