Mariposa, California: Small Town America

Story and photography by
Nancy & Eric Anderson 

 

It’s a Gold Rush town still finding gold – in tourism. And it’s a town that’s doing well, too, as if heeding the Gold Rush advice for latecomers, “To get rich in gold mining, don’t mine the land, mine the miners!”

Mariposa marks the southern end of the Mother Lode, the hard rock gold deposit that stretched for 120 miles one to four miles wide all the way from Georgetown in the north. Georgetown was originally called “Growlersburg” because there were so many heavy gold nuggets in the river sediment they growled in the miners’ pans.

At the time of the 1849’ers the central valley was swampland with yellow fever and the county of Mariposa occupied one fifth of the state of California. Later 13 counties were created out of this one fifth. John Charles Fremont, the famous surveyor whose explorations in the American West gave him the name “the Pathfinder,” had bought land in the Sierra foothills before gold was discovered. It made him wealthy.

In the Mother Lode roads were crooked but Fremont laid out the town on a grid. That makes exploring the town easy. Like Jacksonville, Florida the town is also the county, the county occupied by the southern half of Yosemite National Park. The park’s proximity surely helps tourism. It’s said the town has only “18 thousand inhabitants and they make the miracle of almost four million visitors happen.” This is a town without any stop lights and only one fast food restaurant. “Burger King got in by mistake,” a resident told us.

What to see

Fremont’s surveying instrument and some of his wife’s furniture is on display at the Mariposa Museum and History Center. The Smithsonian has called the museum “one of the best smaller museums west of the Mississippi (or “in America” depending on which local is telling the story). It certainly is special -- it’s a packrat’s dream: rooms and rooms filled with the story of America and the history of California. Its Gold Rush exhibits are particularly strong. Letters and diary entries from miners lead to a one-room miner’s cabin. Mining equipment and, of course, the inevitable gun collection and a Reward notice are also on show. The museum was created in 1957 but the store is authentic: it was donated by members of the Gagliardo family from their 1884 store in nearby Hornitos, a town that was also home to the first Ghiradelli store. Exhibits show the life of the local tribe, the Miwok Indians, and demonstrate what a one-room schoolhouse and a saloon of the period were like. There is a research room for scholars interested in the American West.

Displays of old mining equipment and other artifacts lie on the museum’s grounds. The 1865 Counts House (home of a county official, not a European count) contrasts with the only working example in California of a 5 stamp mill. This mill crunched quartz ore 100 times a minute with 1000 lbs of pressure. The stamps themselves weighed 300 lbs and would be worn down in a week. The wet sludge was treated with mercury to extract the gold. The mercury was an expensive integral part of the process and had to be recovered, a dangerous step as the fumes were deadly enough to kill in ten days if the miners were careless.

“Now we use cyanide!” says Ed Drechsler, one of the docents.

The former home of the Mariposa Gazette is situated in the grounds. News was so important to the miners that in the 1860s they’d pay $2 for a copy of this publication. The Gazette is California’s oldest weekly newspaper in continuous publication.

A bit to the north stands the famous 1854 Courthouse, California’s oldest court of law and the oldest in continuous use west of the Rockies. It was built in less than four months by unskilled labor. The walls, sugar pines cut locally some with the bark still on them, were raised without any machinery and somehow fitted into each other. When electricity became available copper wiring was installed in1907; the wiring was examined in a 1987 restoration with the inspector’s report cheering the town: “Perfect job. Good for another 100 years.” The 292 lb bell and the clock were brought around the Cape from England. Landmark mining law suits heard here paved the way for Congress to pass the First Federal Mining Act of 1866.

Eight blocks to the south stands a building nine years younger, St. Joseph’s Catholic Church consecrated in 1863. Prior to this priests preached to miners in tents.

A little out of town at the Mariposa Fairgrounds is the largest State mineral collection in the United States, the California State Mining and Mineral Museum. The collection of more than 13,000 objects began here in 1880 after residing in San Francisco for 100 years (we bet there’s a story there!). The exhibits include the famous 13.8 pound “Fricot Nugget,” the largest remaining intact mass of crystalline gold from 19^th century California. Across the grounds from the museum you’ll find Native Earth, a company that makes shoes, exporting some to as far away as Japan and, beside its store, the Mariposa Brew Co.

The brewery is starting to make a name for itself. “Hops grow well here,” says Steve, the owner. “We’re at 2,300 feet elevation, the same altitude where hops grow so well near Munich in Germany. And the water is not just great for breweries, it’s from the Merced River that flows from Yosemite, it’s perfect.”

The brewery opened in April 2008 and made its first batch in December the same year. It’s just been picked up for the Beer of the Month Club. “It’s great to be a local business that exports,” Steve says with a smile. “In the old days every small town had its brewery. Y’know … the butcher, the baker, the candlestick maker, the brewer…”

Mariposa started as a result of the Gold Rush and its attendant mining, then agriculture became important and now tourism. Yosemite National Park made a huge difference. By 1969 the county was seeing 2 million visitors annually. Until 1975 it was all small inns, gas stations and small stores all the way from Merced to Yosemite. What changed the area was the advent of air conditioning and Highway 140 open all year round in the Valley.

What to do

Explore. Walk Main Street. Talk to the locals. Some are real characters. Ron Loya, for example, and fellow docents Gary Williams and Ed Drechsler will explain solid rock mining to you; Peggy Donkersley will tell you marvelous stories of the Courthouse; and Ruth Burney will clarify why she brought her family from Merced to Mariposa: “I wanted my children to grow up in a small town. My high school son saw a property advertised as a ‘handyman delight!’. We came here to water ski on July 4 and were completely moved in by July 18!”

We checked out Yosemite Gifts on Main. Built in 1850s it has been, a mercantile, a Western Auto Shop, an antique store and a saloon (the present store cedar counter has a railing in front for feet – it was the bar, and what was a cedar faced refrigerator still stands behind it. The present shop has a cornucopia of surprising objects: Hadrosaur eggs about 70 to 100 million years old, pieces of Woolly Mammoth hair, Lycoptera fossils from Lioaning, China 120 million years old from the Jurassic era.

“Wow! How to you get this stuff?” we ask the saleslady. “The owner travels a lot,” is the reply.

We find the Mariposa 1901 Hotel Inn and walk up the creaking stairs to check out the “six rooms all individually decorated.” The story of how Lyn Maccarone developed the inn makes a wonderful read. The beautiful rooms look as if a stay here would be fun but this time we are staying at the Miners Inn Hotel near the Visitor Center on the north side of town. It had great comfortable rooms, a restaurant and a pool.

We walk down below the hotel to the stores on Main Street. One, a bookstore, shows its preferences on shelves: Tarot Sets, Personal Growth, Spirituality, Wiccan, Crystal, Gifted Children, Feng Shui, Health & Healing, Tools For Intuition, Oracles, Shaminism, Numerology, Herbal Remedies, Energy Essences. This is not your grandfather’s bookstore!

If the walking is giving you an appetite try the Butterfly Café on Main. Mariposa got its name from the butterflies (mariposas) the Spanish explorers found in the creek when they first came here.

Notice the other visitors. “The real story here is European,” says Leroy Radanovich, a former county commissioner, historian and author. The value of the dollar has dropped against the pound so the UK comes here. And they almost speak English!’

He grins until we criticize local government and the pathetic attempts to clear the highways around the west entrance to the park that have been partially obstructed by rock falls for several years. ”Takes time,” he agrees. “There is a process in California – and it leads to very little.”

Maybe we have to be patient. The damage from the 100 year flood that hit the park in 1997 has still not been completely resolved. Yosemite is perhaps a work in progress. Fremont, the surveyor, started things, John Muir saw the Valley’s future, and Stephen Mather, the first Director of the National Park Service, even used his own money to develop accommodations. Furthermore it took Nature at least 10 million years to uplift the Sierra Nevada Mountains. And maybe we can all enjoy Yosemite for longer than that.