L. Burr Belden San Bernardino Sun-Telegram September 6, 1959
In 1861 the county of San Bernardino contracted with John Brown to build a toll road through the Cajon Pass from Devore to Cajon Summit. That would do fine to get wagons and freight between San Bernardino and the Mojave Desert. At the same time the county also approved a subscription road to be built by Jed Van Dusen from near the summit through the mountains so equipment and supplies could be freighted to the mines in Holcomb Valley.
History in the Making
Mountain Road Cost Miners $2,000 in Gold
Brown’s Toll Road
Back in the early 1860s the gold rich but food poor miners of Holcomb Valley decided the number one need for their mountain metropolis was a road. in typical pioneer fashion instead of looking to San Bernardino, Sacramento or Washington these miners resolved to build the road.
At the time supplies for Holcomb Valley were brought up by way of a packed train trail up Santa Ana Canyon from the San Bernardino Valley and thence to Holcomb Valley by trails threading either Polique or Van Dusen Canyons. these trails served for burros, mules or horses but the only way to get a wagon to the gold mines was to take it apart and load its pieces on pack animals.
Toll Road up Cajon
John Brown Sr.
The Holcomb Valley mines were reputedly among the richest in California. Free gold, as the placers were known, was becoming hard to obtain in quantities up in the worked over streams of the Mother Lode and accordingly thousands of footloose miners poured into Holcomb Valley making an increasingly heavy strain on the thin supply line.
Down in San Bernardino John Brown Sr. a resourceful Rocky Mountain man, who was one of the leaders in the settlement both during and subsequent to the Mormon regime, had an experienced eye for trade routes. Brown was probably one of the first to vision San Bernardino as a trade center due to its central location and proximity of favorable mountain gateways.
Brown saw that San Bernardino could obtain an even better share of overland travel with better roads. Accordingly he planned to make the Cajon Pass gateway the preferable way east. He applied to the Board of Supervisors and was granted a toll road franchise. His road utilized the East Cajon route which he improved so it could accommodate wagons. Then Brown went farther and started a ferry over the Colorado River at Fort Mohave.
Builder Paid $2,000
Van Dusen Road/ Coxey Truck Trail from Cajon Summit to Holcomb Valley
The Brown Road diverted Holcomb Valley traffic away from the Santa Ana trail. A new trail was blazed down Holcomb Creek, Willow Creek and Arrastre Creek to reach the Mojave Desert floor in the vicinity of Deadman Point. From Deadman Point it was an easy open path to Brown’s road.
Van Dusen Road at east bank Mojave River
Miners and supply men who used the new trail saw that it could be widened to accommodate wagons. The usual method of making a road would have been for the Holcomb Valley miners to turn out with their picks and shovels, but that meant leaving their claims just when water was high enough for gold washing. Accordingly a person of $2,000 in gold dust was raised and Jed Van Dusen, the camp blacksmith, was hired to build the road. He did just that. Van Dusen was a resourceful fellow. He had assembled a wagon from parts brought up to Holcomb Valley by pack train. In between running his smithy he had some good claims he worked in the canyon that has been given his name. Van Dusen’s chief claim to fame, however, was neither his skill as a road builder, blacksmith or miner. it rested on the fact he was father of a very pretty little girl named Belle.
Dead Man’s Point
Daughter Honored
When the miners cast about for a name for their town in Holcomb Valley they found W. F. (Billy) Holcomb reluctant to have it named for him. Then someone had an idea. Why not name the camp for Jed Van Dusen’s little girl? So Belleville became the name of the big roaring mining camp that had almost as many residents as the rest of the county.
Lucky Baldwin’s Gold Mountain
For a dozen years or so the Van Dusen built road carried the heaviest traffic in the county. The travel to the mines, of course, was a great help to the Brown tollway. Heavy machinery needed for quartz mining was hauled over the road as gold veined ledges were discovered. The latter included two of the most famous gold mines San Bernardino County history, E. J. (Lucky) Baldwin’s Gold Hill property and Richard Garvey’s Greenlead.
During Civil War days the Van Dusen – built road carried a strange assortment of passengers and cargo. Liquors for Greek George’s notorious saloons and dance halls, staple goods, the inevitable blasting powder and large bullion shipments. Strangest of all travelers, however, was a ragged troop of filibusters recruited in Visalia who called themselves Confederate calvarymen and commanded by Mariposa County’s stormy Assemblyman Dan Showalter. Showalter and his motley horsemen were trying to reach southern lines in Texas but a few weeks later ran into California volunteers near Warner’s Ranch and were taken prisoner.
This was the same Showalter who had recently slain San Bernardino County’s Assemblyman Charles Piercy in a duel at San Rafael. The duel was fought with rifles at 40 paces. First shots of both antagonists went wild and Showalter allegedly jumped the gun and shot the second time at the count of two, killing Piercy. Showalter was a fugitive when he was in Holcomb Valley but secessionist sentiment plus that of roughs who wanted no government at all served to protect the fact it was San Bernardino County’s legislator he had slain.
The roughs around Belleville ran things with a high hand, at least until Greek George fell mortally wounded from the knife of ” Charlie the Chink” in the drunken aftermath of a Fourth of July celebration. In a reminiscent account written 35 years later Billy Holcomb told of that fatal July 4 and of George’s killing three men before his fatal combat with the celestial.
Van Dusen Road
It was members of George’s gang, left more or less leaderless, who held up an outgoing stagecoach and relieved the Wells Fargo messenger of $60,000. It was the disgusted miners, anxious to drive out the roughs, who pursued the highway men and killed them all. The last bandit was slain a bit too quick for he died while trying to tell where the $60,000 was hidden. As far as is known it has never been found, a sizable cache of gold bars that has lured treasure seekers unsuccessfully for something like 90 years.
Baldwin Garvey Feud
The Van Dusen Road carried the ballot boxes in the weird election when Belleville tried to become county seat, and probably succeeded in polling a countrywide majority but lost on the official count by the “accident” of a Belleville precinct’s box being lost in a bonfire down in San Bernardino.
After the richer placer deposits had been worked Belleville and upstream Beardstown dwindled in size. The emphasis’s one to hard rock mining which required less men more capital and tools. In the hard rock field the giant was Baldwin, who at one time was running a 40- stamp mill at Gold Hill and the operation was supporting a good-sized town, the town of Doble.
Elias Jackson “Lucky” Baldwin
Next in size to Baldwin’s operation were those of Garvey. Garvey had owned Gold Hill at one time and reportedly sold it to Baldwin for $200,000. The Garvey family always contended that Baldwin took a bill of sale for the mine but neglected to pay the Irish-born Garvey all the promised money. Garvey trusted his supposed friend.
Garvey held onto the Greenlead, which is almost at the side of the Van Dusen Road in lower Holcomb Valley. When hard times depressed Los Angeles real estate Garvey found he owed $300,000 on the land no longer worth the amount of the mortgages. Three shifts worked the Greenlead and Garvey paid all but $90,000 of the $300,000 debt. The family held onto the Greenlead. It had been leased, sold and worked from time to time. The new owner from Sherman Oaks was on the property a year ago with plans for reopening the long tunnels where there is still said to be quantities of ore rich enough to pay for mining even under current costs.
Long Cattle Drives
In the wake of the minors cattlemen moved into the San Bernardino Mountains. The old road to Holcomb Valley saw huge drives in both spring and fall as cattle were moved from desert ranges to the mountains and back again.
When the first dam was built at Bear Valley in the 1880s A. E. Taylor hauled supplies over the old road, then completed and used the road up Cushenbury direct to Bear Valley. Advent of the Cushenbury gateway, now Highway 18, and the later Mill Creek and crest routes serve to diminish the importance of the old route but it was not closed.
Coxey Meadows
Halfway down to the desert, at the well-known landmark of Coxey’s Ranch, the Forest Service had one of its early ranger stations. It was one of the picturesque log cabin structures typical of such stations 40 years ago. A search for the station earlier this summer disclosed that he had reverted to the status of a guard station and that two or three years ago it was burned when a gasoline lantern or stove exploded. The old corral remains Coxey’s. Today’s guards camp out and have telephone service.
The old road is a popular one with Forest visitors who like to get away from the pavement and camp out. There are public grounds at Horse Springs, Big Pine Flats, and that Hannah Flats. Numerous Springs make the route a well watered one that it is no place for a pavement driver with a low center car.
Sometimes the fastest way from point A to point B would be a straight line.
To the uninitiated, there is something rather uncertain about the reasons why a person will take time to view a location or an artifact. Ask the visitor why they make the trek or handle an object. The response may take the form of a smile, and perhaps the timeworn cliché ” because it was there.” That smile in phrase only does partial justice in explaining personal gratification.
Why should we visit sites where history of any magnitude happened? Perhaps it is because a fresh vista creates a more objective insight in pursuit of historical knowledge. Personal enjoyment and related benefits require one to approach a subject with a receptive and determined mindset.
In stories about stagecoaches and freight wagons we may be entertained or learn about animals, load, dust, storm, good, evil, driver, passenger, comedy, sadness and so forth – a whole range of emotions. a writer may have captured our imagination in words, but obtaining a complete and satisfying grasp of the event is a personal quest.
Salt Lake Wagon Road
Often our inquisitiveness may provide answers only by standing on the spot, embracing the environment, and getting the feeling of how it may have been back when. Imagine sound, the smell of man, equipment noise in animals doing the work. Anticipate the next riser dip the road and how it must have affected progress. Consider the impact on those traveling in good, bad, or indifferent weather. Envision people, dress, available tools, and reasons for passing this way. Think of small but important details, such as animal harnesses, conveyancing station construction. Perhaps the preceding thoughts may help create for you a new perspective and enjoyment of history.
from: Indian Wells Valley Stage and Freight Stops 1874 – 1906 Comments and Directions by Lou Pracchia Historical Society of the Upper Mojave Desert
The Walters family is an important part of Hesperia history. Starting with George Francis Walters, who moved his family from Illinois to California because his wife, Harriet C Finigan Walters had asthma.
Hesperia Hotel
The family first settled in the Riverside area where he went to work for the Santa Fe Railroad. According to Bolton Minister, son of George O Walters Minister, George was offered a transfer to Hesperia to manage the Hesperia Hotel.
The Walters family consisted of George and his wife Harriet, and their children, in birth order, Georgia Henry had to Walters Minister-Henry, Verial W. Walters Ormond and Roy Edward Walters.
According to Mr. Minister, both the daughters went to work in the hotel. They were later joined by Laura McClanahan who in 1921 transferred from the Goodsprings Hotel, in Goodsprings, Nevada.
Roy & Laura Walters
Verial was postmistress, until she moved away when she got married, and then her position was given to her brother Roy.
Roy ended up marrying Laura McClanahan and having a daughter, Geraldine Henrietta Walters. Geraldine married first, Yeager and second Schwartz.
According to Mr. Minister, George Francis Walters built the Walters house in the Walters general store according to Geraldine, her grandmother Harriet was the midwife in the delivery of 32 Hesperia babies.
When George passed away the store was handled over to Roy, who operated it for many years.
I do not know where George and area Walters or Barry. However, I do know that Roy and Laura are buried at the cemetery in Victorville.
With the passing of time, their store had deteriorated and will eventually disappear from Hesperia. As eventually, the Walters name will.
The most famous lost mine in the Death Valley area is the Lost Breyfogle. There are many versions of the legend, but all agree that somewhere in the bowels of those rugged mountains is a colossal mass of gold, which Jacob Breyfogle found and lost.
Mesquite Flats Sand Dunes – Death Valley
Jacob Breyfogle was a prospector who roamed the country around Pioche and Austin, Nevada, with infrequent excursions into theDeath Valleyarea. He traveled alone.
Indian George, Hungry Bill, and Panamint Tom saw Breyfogle several times in the country around Stovepipe Wells, but they could never trace him to his claim. When followed, George said, Breyfogle would step off the trail and completely disappear. Once George told me about trailing him into the Funeral Range. He pointed to the bare mountain. “Him there, me see. Pretty quick—” He paused, puckered his lips. “Whoop—no see.”
Breyfogle left a crude map of his course. All lost mines must have a map. Conspicuous on this map are the Death Valley Buttes which are landmarks. Because he was seen so much here, it was assumed that his operations were in the low foothills. I have seen a rough copy of this map made from the original in possession of “Wildrose” Frank Kennedy’s squaw, Lizzie.
Breyfogle presumably coming from his mine, was accosted near Stovepipe Wells by Panamint Tom, Hungry Bill, and a young buck related to them, known as Johnny. Hungry Bill, from habit, begged for food. Breyfogle refused, explaining that he had but a morsel and several hard days’ journey before him. On his burro he had a small sack of ore. When Breyfogle left, Hungry Bill said, “Him no good.”
Incited by Hungry Bill and possible loot, the Indians followed Breyfogle for three or four days across the range. Hungry Bill stopped en route, sent the younger Indians ahead. At Stump Springs east ofShoshone, Breyfogle was eating his dinner when the Indians sneaked out of the brush and scalped him, took what they wished of his possessions and left him for dead.
Ash Meadows Charlie, a chief of the Indians in that area confided to Herman Jones that he had witnessed this assault. This happened on the Yundt Ranch, or as it is better known, the Manse Ranch. Yundt and Aaron Winters accidentally came upon Breyfogle unconscious on the ground. The scalp wound was fly-blown. They had a mule team and light wagon and hurried to San Bernardinowith the wounded man. The ore, a chocolate quartz, was thrown into the wagon.
Resting Springs
“I saw some of it at Phi Lee’s home, theResting Spring Ranch,” Shorty Harris said. “It was the richest ore I ever saw. Fifty pounds yielded nearly $6000.”
Breyfogle recovered, but thereafter was regarded as slightly “off.” He returned to Austin, Nevada, and the story followed.
Wildrose (Frank) Kennedy, an experienced mining man obtained a copy of Breyfogle’s map and combed the country around the buttes in an effort to locate the mine. Kennedy had the aid of the Indians and was able to obtain, through his squaw Lizzie, such information as Indians had about the going and coming of the elusive Breyfogle.
“Some believe the ore came from around Daylight Springs,” Shorty said, “but old Lizzie’s map had no mark to indicate Daylight Springs. But it does show the buttes and the only buttes in Death Valley are those above Stovepipe Wells.
“Kennedy interested Henry E. Findley, an old time Colorado sheriff and Clarence Nyman, for years a prospector for Coleman andSmith(thePacific Borax Company). They induced Mat Cullen, a rich Salt Lake mining man, to leave his business and come out. They made three trips into the valley, looking for that gold. It’s there somewhere.”
Francis Marion “Borax” Smith
At Austin, Breyfogle was outfitted several times to relocate the property, but when he reached the lower elevation of the valley, he seemed to suffer some aberration which would end the trip. His last grubstaker was not so considerate. He told Breyfogle that if he didn’t find the mine promptly he’d make a sieve of him and was about to do it when a companion named Atchison intervened and saved his life. Shortly afterward, Breyfogle died from the old wound.
Indian George, repeating a story told him by Panamint Tom, once told me that Tom had traced Breyfogle to the mine and after Breyfogle’s death went back and secured some of the ore. Tom guarded his secret. He covered the opening with stone and leaving, walked backwards, obliterating his tracks with a greasewood brush. Later when Tom returned prepared to get the gold he found that a cloudburst had filled the canyon with boulders, gravel and silt, removing every landmark and Breyfogle’s mine was lost again.
“Some day maybe,” George said, “big rain come and wash um out.”
Among the freighters of the early days was John Delameter who believed the Breyfogle was in the lower Panamint. Delameter operated a 20 mule team freighting service between Daggett and points in both Death Valley and Panamint Valley. He told me that he found Breyfogle down in the road about twenty-eight miles south of Ballarat with a wound in his leg. Breyfogle had come into the Panamint from Pioche, Nevada, and said he had been attacked by Indians, his horses stolen, while working on his claim which he located merely with a gesture toward the mountains.
Subsequently Delameter made several vain efforts to locate the property, but like most lost mines it continues to be lost. But for years it was good bait for a grubstake and served both the convincing liar and the honest prospector.
Nearly all old timers had a version of the Lost Breyfogle differing in details but all agreeing on the chocolate quartz and its richness.
That Breyfogle really lost a valuable mine there can be little doubt, but since he is authentically traced from the northern end of Death Valley to the southern, and since the chocolate quartz is found in many places of that area, one who cares to look for it must cover a large territory.
From: Chapter XXII Lost Mines. The Breyfogle and Others Loafing Along Death Valley Trails by William Caruthers
They belong to the occupants while they live there, and the first man to move-in is the next owner. It is not a written law, but is a habit and custom of the country and is respected by rich and poor alike.
It started with Dobe Charley when he needed a home. A tent was too hot in summer and too cold in winter. he pondered the problem through one cold windy winter and one hot desert summer.
When “camping out” became too unbearable he took refuge in an old deserted mine tunnel a few miles from Shoshone, and was comfortable. He was protected from all weather hazards, but it was too isolated to suit his tastes.
Shoshone, Ca.
” Why not make a tunnel in a hill closer to town?” the idea grew, and he looked all over the hills close around. Finally he picked out what he considered an ideal place.
It was a cliff of hard adobe mud, within easy walking distance of the general store and post office. Not that he intended to walk, that is, that while his motorcycle would run.
He dug out a whole as big as a medium sized room and put a door on it. When it was finished to his satisfaction, he moved in and became the envy of all the loafers in the little desert oasis on the fringe of Death Valley.
Joe Volmer, a retiring, middle-aged man, got himself a dwelling nearby. His consisted of several rooms connected by tunnels. To enter one of the rooms one must pull aside a cupboard and go a short distance down a ladder through a narrow passageway.
Ashford Brothers
The Ashford brothers, Harold and Rudy, decided to follow suit. They were dapper little fellows, very English and very neat and clean. Their cliff dwelling reflected them, neat and across the gulch from the others. like its occupants, it stood a little apart from its companions.
Bill, big and lazy, liked Doublin Gulch, but hadn’t the ambition to dig a dwelling. He built his one-room shack on a level place against the cliff.
Crowly, aggressive and authoritative, look it over and chose the point of the hill, a position dominating all the other cliff houses. An imposing location, but like its builder, it was untidy.
Crowly appointed himself a sort of Mayor of Doublin Gulch. If the others resented it they gave no indications. Mostly they did not mind as long as no one interfered with their way of life.
Cool in the summer–and a great view!
Other men settled along the cliff. Thrown together by circumstances, these men were a variable lot. For the most part their past was a closed book. Some, no doubt, came to escape this or that, but on the whole they lived as they pleased, working at the nearby mines until they had saved a stake, returning to their cliff dwelling to live the leisurely until it was gone.
When one has finished with this life and needs his home no longer, another drifter, perhaps fleeing from his past or maybe just tired of the sorrows and troubles of the outside world and finding solace in the desert, moves in.
Thus these cliff dwellings of Doublin Gulch have passed from one occupant to another.
Who can tell what secrets they have hidden or what sorrows have been soothed by the quiet and solitude of these rugged refuges thrusting their doors from the face of the cliff like turtle’s heads from under their shells.
Ghost Town News Knott’s Berry Place Buena Park, Calif. December 1944
“Warm in the winter, cool in the summer, the caves carved into the soft material of the banks of this wash were home, at one time or another, to people … ”
from; Death Valley Historic Resource Study A History of Mining – Volume I Linda W. Greene
Probably the most publicized event in the Wingate Pass area concerns one of Death Valley Scotty‘s most infamous hoaxes, referred to as the “Battle” of Wingate Pass. Conceived as a last-ditch effort to discourage further investigations by a mining engineer who was insisting on actually seeing Scotty’s bonanza gold mine before recommending that his employers invest any money in it, the attack turned out to have almost fatal consequences for one of Scotty’s brothers, put Scott himself in and out of jail several times during the ensuing months, and ultimately, six years after the incident, resulted in his confessing in a Los Angeles courtroom to long-term and full-scale fraud and deceit. (The most concise version of this tale appears in Hank Johnston, Death Valley Scotty: “Fastest Con in the West” and serves as the basis for the following account.)
Death Valley Scotty
The escapade had its beginnings in February 1906 when a New England mining promoter, A.Y. Pearl, whom Scott had met in New York, interested some bankers and businessmen in investing in Scott’s supposedly rich mining properties in Death Valley. Before committing any money, however, the Easterners insisted that Daniel E. Owen, a respected Boston mining engineer who happened to be in Nevada at this time, personally inspect the property and give his opinion of its worth.
Arrangements were accordingly made with all the parties involved, and by February 1906 Owen, Pearl, and Scott were in Daggett preparing for the journey into Death Valley. Other members of the expedition were: Albert M. Johnson, president of the National Life Insurance Company of Chicago (soon to become Scotty’s long-term benefactor), who had recently arrived from the East and, intrigued by the stories of Scotty’s untold wealth, asked to accompany the party; Bill and Warner Scott, brothers of Death Valley Scotty; Bill Keys, a half-breed Cherokee Indian who had prospected with Scott in the Death Valley region for several years, who had found the Desert Hound Mine in the southern Black Mountains, and who several years later, after the “ambush” incident, moved to a ranch in what is now Joshua Tree National Monument [park]; A.W. DeLyle St. Clair, a Los Angeles miner; and Jack Brody, a local desert character.
The entire trip, if carried out as planned, had the potential of proving extremely embarrassing for Scott, who, after all, did not have a mine to show in order to consummate this lucrative transaction. Desperate for a solution, he turned to his friend Billy Keys and persuaded him to let him show Owen the Desert Hound instead. Although not as large as Scott had reported his bonanza to be, at least the Hound was there on the ground for Owen to see. Papers of agreement were drawn up to the effect that Scott and Keys would split the proceeds from the mine sale.
Later, fearful that Owen would reject this mine as being too small a producer to warrant investment by his employers, Scott devised a scheme that he hoped might succeed in scaring Owen away from the area and dampening his enthusiasm for penetrating into the Death Valley region as far as the mine. A shootout would be staged and hopefully be authentic enough to disrupt Owen’s intended mission.
Starting out on 23 February 1906 with two wagons fully loaded with provisions, extra animal feed and fresh water, and a string of extra mules and horses, plus a liberal supply of whiskey, the party journeyed on to camp the next evening at Granite Wells. On Sunday, 25 February, the caravan pushed on twenty-six miles toward Lone Willow Spring, site of their next camp. In the morning Scott directed his brother Bill to stay at the spring with the extra animals and told Bill Keys and Jack Brody to proceed on ahead and look for any danger. After giving these two a reasonable head start, the rest of the party began the trek toward Wingate Pass and, surmounting that obstacle, proceeded on down the wash into the south end of Death Valley. Toward dusk that evening, as the party was trying to decide where to camp, shots were heard and a lone rider appeared from the north. He turned out to be an ex-deputy sheriff from Goldfield, Nevada, who excitedly reported that he had just been fired on from ambush and his pack train stampeded.
Receiving Scott’s assurances that he could fight off any outlaws, the party warily resumed its journey. A little further up the road beyond Dry Lake, near the site of the earlier shooting, Scotty suddenly drew his rifle and fired two shots. Startled, the mules pulling Warner Scott and Daniel Owen in the lead wagon began to buck, the force tipping Owen over backwards; a sudden shot from behind a stone breastwork on a cliff to the south hit Warner in the groin. It was at this point that Scotty made the fatal blunder that, in the recalling, forced Owen to doubt the authenticity of the ambush. Upon realizing that his brother had been seriously wounded, Scotty, nonplussed, galloped away toward the “ambushers” yelling at them to stop shooting.
Establishing camp quickly, an attempt was made to close Warner’s wounds. In the morning the party headed the wagons quickly back toward Bill Scott and Lone Willow Spring, and eventually toward Daggett, leaving their provisions behind by the side of the road. Keys and Brody never did rejoin the group. Reaching Daggett on 1 March, the group put Warner on a train for Los Angeles; Scotty hurriedly took off for Seattle where he was about to star in a play, “Scotty, King of the Desert Mine.” Johnson left immediately for Chicago and, due to some fast legal work by his lawyer, was not involved in any of the ensuing litigations.
Bill Keys
The incident struck the fancy of Los Angeles newspapermen, who, however, were hard put to locate the principals involved or determine the true facts of the case. Pearl circulated a good story of fighting off four outlaws, but Owen, disaffirming this tale, and evidently convinced that Scott had meant to kill him, reported the true facts to the San Bernardino County sheriff and later to the press. Two weeks later warrants were issued for the arrest of Walter Scott, Bill Keys, and Jack Brody on charges of assault with a deadly weapon. In an attempt to determine the identify of the party’s attackers, the San Bernardino County sheriff, John Ralphs, and an undersheriff entered the Death Valley country to find Keys and Brody. Although these two managed to elude the law this time, the provisions that had been hurriedly left at the scene of the attack by the Scott party were found at Scotty’s Camp Holdout; other incriminating evidence took the form of a statement by Jack Hartigan, the Nevada lawman who had also been shot at, that he had backtracked and seen Keys running from the scene after Scott’s plea to stop shooting.
Publicity given to Scotty and the incident was becoming unfavorable, many people now deciding it was time to show Scotty up for the fraud and liar he was believed to be Scotty, working in his play out of town while loudly condemning these attacks on his character and reputation, continued to propogate the story of a bona fide attack by outlaws who were after his life and his valuable claims. Sarcastic poems and invective cartoons began to appear in the Los Angeles Evening News his primary accuser, which had earlier asked in an editorial, “What is the truth about this desert freak? He has ceased to be a joke. People are getting shot and action must be taken. . . . ” [235]
In the midst of all this attendant publicity that for a while brought full houses to his play, Scotty was arrested around 24 March by order of the San Bernardino sheriff; he was released later that night on a writ of habeas corpus, his bail of $500 having been raised by Walter Campbell of the Grand Opera House. Seemingly true to the profile presented in the News commenting that “He [Scott] occupies the cheapest room in the Hotel Portland, drinks nickel beer, and leaves no tips!,” [236] after release from jail this time Scotty asked the crowd in attendance “to have a drink. Every body had visions of wine and popping of corks, but Scotty announced it was a case of steam beer or nothing.” [237]
Scotty was arrested again two days later and again released on bail, and then on 7 April 1906 Scott pleaded not guilty to two counts of assault with a deadly weapon. Out again on $2,000 bail, more bad luck was awaiting him in the form of a $152,000 damage suit filed by his brother Warner, now out of the hospital, in Los Angeles Superior Court against Walter and Bill Scott, Bill Keys, A.Y. Pearl, and a “John Doe.” Three days later Keys was arrested at Ballarat, and, also pleading not guilty to the two charges against him, was summarily slapped in jail. Luckily for Scotty, Keys kept silent on the whole matter.
On 13 April, for the fourth time in under three weeks, Scotty was arrested; this time A.Y. Pearl and Bill Scott were also taken into custody. All ended up in the San Bernardino County jail. Out again through habeas corpus proceedings the next day, Scott rejoined his acting troupe. Then, on 27 April, only four days before the preliminary hearing on the case was to start, all charges were dismissed by the San Bernardino County Justice at the request of the District Attorney. To the disappointment of many of Scott’s detractors, but true to the luck that seemed to always rescue him from tight places, a jurisdictional problem had arisen over the fact that the scene of the shooting was actually in Inyo County, which alone had jurisdiction to prosecute the case. Because Inyo County authorities seemed loathe to proceed, all prisoners were released from custody and the final act of the long, drawn-out affair seemed over.
One newspaper article published soon after Scotty’s death (besides stating erroneously that one of the “outlaws” in the fracas had been Bill Scott) charged that Scotty himself moved the surveyor’s post marking the Inyo-San Bernardino County line. [238] This seems to be borne out by Scotty’s own version of the whole affair, which of course pursues the theory that outlaws were trying to get title to his “claims” by permanently removing him from the scene. After several supposed attempts on his life (this most recent encounter not the only one that had taken place in Wingate Pass) from which he always recovered.
Our gang, including my brother Warner, who was working for me and spying for the other crowd, came into Death Valley through San Bernardino County. The two ‘frictions’ met in Wingate Pass. They thought we was the Apache gang. Somebody began to shoot.
I said to Johnson, ‘Get back where the bullets are thickest.’ That was in the ammunition wagon.
I knew something was wrong. When I hollered, ‘Quit shooting!’ things quieted down. The other gang disappeared. We look around and find Warner has been shot in the leg. The same bullet has gone around and lodged in his shoulder. Johnson took eighteen stitches in it. We hauled Warner a hundred miles to a doctor. Had him in a buckboard. Made it in ten hours.
At this time I had a show troop. While it’s playing in San Francisco, I am arrested. I get out on a two-thousand-dollar bond.
Later I was re-arrested, and this time the bond is five thousand, but between the two arrests, I’ve had time to get things fixed. You remember, the fight took place in San Bernardino County, and i don’t want to be tried there.
I decide I’ll move the county boundary monument. When I was a boy, I’d been roustabout for the crew. that surveyed that part of the country, so I know it like a book. I go back and move the pile of rock six miles over into San Bernardino County. That puts the shooting into Inyo County.
The trial starts in San Bernardino. I say, ‘If you investigate, I think you’ll find this affair occurred in Inyo and that this court has no jurisdiction.’ The trial stopped. They investigated. Sure enough, they found the boundary marker. According to the way the line ran, the battle occurred over the line in Inyo County.
Inyo County wasn’t interested. The case was dismissed. [239]
Location of Wingate Pass with county boundary lines.
The true nature of the whole affair was later revealed by Bill Keys who admitted before his death that he and a companion (possibly the teamster Jack Brody, although according to Keys it was an Indian named Bob Belt) had faked the ambush at Scotty’s behest. The shooting of Warner had been accidental, his partner being too drunk to aim his gun properly.[240]
Warner Scott dropped his damage suit against his brother on condition that he assume the medical bill of over $1,000 owed to a Dr. C.W. Lawton of Los Angeles. Scott agreed and then promptly left the city. Lawton obtained a judgement against Scotty, but the latter proceeded to ignore it, having no tangible assets anyway.
During the next few years, Scott still had some associations with Wingate Pass, a notice being found that in 1908 he interested Al D. Meyers of Goldfield and a couple of associates in a strike made there. Notwithstanding Scott’s earlier famous experience, the men outfitted in Barstow and accompanied him to inspect the property. There is no evidence that they encountered any difficulties, though nothing further was heard of the outcome of the proposition. Bill Keys was also mining for lead ore in Wingate Pass in 1908, in partnership with Death Valley Slim. [241]
Six years after the Wingate Pass incident, however, on 20 June 1912, the past caught up with Walter Scott, and in a rather spectacular trial in a Los Angeles courtroom, Scotty was forced to acknowledge a multitude of sins. In order to secure his release from jail where he had been confined for contempt of court for not paying the doctor’s bill for his brother Warner’s medical care, Scotty was forced to confess to the shams involved in the ambush in Wingate Pass, in the big rolls of money he always carried (which he confessed were “upholstered with $1 bills”), and in the reports concerning the vast amounts of money he was reputed to have received from the Death Valley Scotty Gold Mining and Development Company. He had, he continued, never located a mine or owned one, and was completely at the mercy of mining promoters and schemers who profited from the advertising his various stunts provided for them. Exposed as a fraud and a cheat, Scott was returned to jail pending further investigation by the District Attorney’s office–a long-awaited and seemingly conclusive finale to the strange affair known as the “Battle” of Wingate Pass. [242]
235. Los Angeles Evening News, 19 March 1906, quoted in Johnston, Death Valley Scotty, p. 68. 236. Los Angeles Evening News, no date, quoted in Johnston, Death Valley Scotty, p. 70. 237. Inyo Independent, 30 March 1906. 238. Ibid., 12 February 1954. 239. Eleanor Jordan Houston, Death Valley Scotty Told Me (Louisville: The Franklin Press, 1954), pp. 72-73. 240. Johnston, Death Valley Scotty, pp. 76-77; L. Burr Belden, “The Battle of Wingate Pass,” Westways (November 1956), p. 8. 241. Rhyolite Herald, 10 June, 30 September 1908. 242. Inyo Register, 20 June 1912.
by James A. Sandos and Larry E. Burgess
Review: Linda S. Parker – San Diego State University
Willie Boy – Desparado
The authors have written an enlightening historical ethnography of the Willie Boy episode. By illuminating the frontier myth and Indian-hating inherent in the dominant story of Willie Boy, and using Chemehuevi ethnographic literature and oral traditions, Sandos and Burgess have separated myth from fact. This permitted them to develop a new white version based on historical documents. Importantly, they also present a Chemehuevi version of Willie Boy’s tale. Additionally they present Willie Boy’s own story relating to the episode.
In examining the development of the Willie Boy tale, including the stories told in Harry Lawton’s book Willie Boy: A Desert Manhunt and Abraham Polonsky’s film Tell Them Willie Boy Is Here, Sandos and Burgess show how Indian hating “shaped” the talc into a “triumph” of civilization over savagery. The authors persuasively argue that Willie Boy was not drunk when he killed William Mike. The story of alcohol involvement was accepted because it fit the stereotype of Indians who turned to liquor to solve their problems. Sandos and Burgess also suggest that one of the Indian trackers accidently killed Carlota.
After determining that Willie Boy was a mixed blood Chemehuevi and raised in that culture, the authors were able to use Chemehuevi cultural data and oral tradition to explain certain elements of Willie Boy’s story. Knowledge of Chemehuevi culture and its impact on Willie Boy make his ability to outrun the posse understandable. Sandos and Burgess indicate that bride capture, an important component of the standard story, was not practiced by the Chemehuevi. They indicate that this practice and the alleged kidnapping of Carlota was an Anglo creation. Instead she accompanied Willie Boy as a free agent who loved him and was willing to break with her culture and family by violating the tribal kinship taboo prohibiting their marriage. Although both Lawton’s book and Polonsky’ film tell about the taboo and an earlier alleged abduction of Carlota, neither are seen as significant. Sandos and Burgess explain why.
Isoleta/Carlota/Lolita
Based on circumstantial evidence, Sandos and Burgess determine that Willie Boy was a Ghost Dancer. If one accepts their conclusion, which this reviewer found somewhat tenuous, then the authors’ reasoning that Willie Boy’s Ghost Dance beliefs influenced his behavior and the actions of William Mike is also plausible. In discussing the murder of William Mike, the authors suggest that one of the reasons Mike opposed the marriage of his daughter to Willie Boy was that Mike, a shaman, rejected the Ghost Dance. Acontest over spiritual power was involved. Sandos and Burgess also maintain that Willie Boy’s suicide is understandable given the influence of the Ghost Dance. Countering the myth surrounding the events occurring at Ruby Mountain, the authors convincingly argue that Willie Boy had no reason to surrender and that he that he could have easily escaped. They speculate that Willie Boy learned of Carlota’s death at Ruby Mountain and that he committed suicide that night in order to be with her. According to Ghost Dance teachings, the best time to join the dead was shortly before dawn.
Although the author’s historical analysis is critical to explaining Willie Boy’s story, the major contribution of The Hunt For Willie Boy is its integration of Chemehuevi culture and oral tradition.
Willie Boy’s body
Linda S. Parker, Department of American Indian Studies. San Diego State University.
The Hunt for Willie Boy: Indian Hating and Popular Culture. James A. Sandos and Larry E. Burgess. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1994. Maps, photos, figures, and references. xviii + 182 pp. $21.95.
University of Nebraska – Lincoln DigitalCommons@University of Nebraska – Lincoln Great Plains Research: A Journal of Natural and Social Sciences Great Plains Studies, Center for
I went alone into the desert with only a fox terrier and a buckskin pony, for company. There was no one on the edge who knew about the interior and those that talked as though they knew did not care to go with me. I was promised plenty of trouble. Predecessors had been “caught up with” again and again. Their bodies, dried like Egyptian mummies, had been found in the sands long after by Indians. The heat and the drought were unbearable, there were sand storms, sulphurcous whirlwinds, poisonous springs, white gypsum wastes, bewildering mirages, desert wolves, rattlesnakes, tarantulas, hydrophobia skunks. I would never come out alive. But I went in, tempted Providence, off and on, for two and a half years, and still live to tell the tale. After all, the dangers were not great. I had had, as a boy, considerable experience in Indian life and was not afraid of the open. And I had no fear of being alone or getting lost. My sense of direction was as keen as that of a homing pigeon, and when I was equipped with food and had located a water hole it really made no difference to me whether I was lost or found. I always knew my general direction, and with the ever-constant sun and stars I could not lose the points of the compass There are two ways of outfitting for a trip into the unknown. The one usually followed is to pack every article of plunder that might be thought desirable. ‘chat generally results in wearing out the most enduring pack train. I preferred the other way, the Indian way, of carrying very little, going light-shod, and retaining ease of movement. So, for myself, I wore nothing but a cotton shirt and trousers, a flat straw hat, and, on my feet, moccasins. I made my own moccasins, Sioux style, with a pointed toe, of strong mule-deer hide. A pair of blankets, a small hatchet, a short-handled shovel, some rawhide picket ropes, several tin cups, a small frying pan, a rifle for large game, and a .22-caliber single-barrel pistol for birds—
The Wheeler map made in the 1880s shows a volcano between what is Victorville and Barstow.
The questions is; Is the “Volcano” either Stoddard Mountain or Bell Mountain?
Volcano location on 1880s map.This USGS map shows the location of both Stoddard Mountain (yellow dot) and Bell Mountain (blue dot).Both maps are superimposed and reconciled to critical match points.The USGS map layer is replaced with the 1880s map layer and the layer with the location dots is turned on.
So it looks as if the “Volcano” is nowadays known as Stoddard Mountain.
Stoddard Mountain
Maybe next time; Is Stoddard Mountain a real volcano?
The Old Spanish Trail had become increasingly used as a pack mule trail between New Mexico and California, and with this traffic came the opportunity for those to take advantage of the distance and desperate nature of the land.
Hundreds and sometimes even thousands of stolen horses from the ranchos would burst through Coyote Canyon beginning their ‘journey of death’ across the Mojave.
California horses were beautiful creatures, and the mules were taller and stronger than those in New Mexico and they were easy to steal. The rolling hills and plains presented clear paths to the Cajon where numerous hidden canyons and washes were available to slip into and prepare for the furious run across the desert. Horses would be stolen in herds from many different ranchos at once. Hundreds of horses, even thousands could be commandeered and driven by just a few experienced thieves.
Narrows, Crowder Cyn., Cajon Pass
Chief Walkara, ‘Hawk of the Mountains’ and the greatest horse thief in all of history along with his band of renegade Chaguanosos , and notables such as Jim Beckwourth and Pegleg Smith would work together in this illegal trade. During one raid they were said to have coordinated the theft of 3,000-5,000 horses, driving them to Fort Bridger to trade for more horses to run to New Mexico to trade again. Horses would fall from exhaustion every mile and the local bands of Paiute would feast on the remains.
The rich ranchos of southern California.
In 1843 Michael White was granted one league of land at the mouth of the Cajon Pass called Rancho Muscupiabe. At a point overlooking the trails leading into and away from the canyon he was expected to thwart the raiders and horse thieves that were plaguing the Southern California ranchos. In theory it was a good plan but in practice it did not work so well.
From the piedmont between Devil and Cable canyons, Miguel Blanco could keep an eye out for the horse thieves entering the Cajon.
He built his home of logs and earth and constructed corrals for his stock. However, the location between Cable and Devil Canyon only served as a closer and more convenient target for the Indian thieves. His family was with him, but after six weeks until it became too dangerous. He left after nine months without any livestock and in debt.
The Old Spanish Trail went down this slope to behind Miguel Blanco’s rough-hewn homestead. Indians would watch from this forest for Miguel to leave and they would slip down and steal everything that could be stolen.
Miguel sold his property, however, Miguel had misread the grant, letting the rancho go for much less than it was worth. The land described on the grant was roughly 5 times larger than Miguel thought. Blanco brought a suit but lost.
Muscupiabe Rancho
As the late 1840s and 1850s rolled by wagon roads were being developed in the canyon minimizing the effectiveness of the maze of box canyons being used to cover the escape of desperadoes on horseback. With California becoming a state frontiersmen such as Beckwourth and Peg Leg Smith would not steal from fellow Americans. Horse-thieving under U.S. law had become a crime where before it was just stealing horses from Mexicans. That was only serious if caught in the act. Americans would never extradite them. For the most part, that was the end of the horse stealing raids.
The Story of John Brown (1817 – 1899) By Edward Broadhead (Reprinted from The Pueblo Lore, January 1985)
Wrightwood Historical Society Wrightwood Roots Friday,March 4, 2005 A.D. Edited by George Tilitson Adapted by Walter Feller
John Brown (1817 – 1899)
One of the more unusual pioneers of the early nineteenth century was John Brown, born in Worcester, Massachusetts on December 22, 1817. He started west as a teenager making his way to St. Louis and getting a job rafting down the Mississippi River to New Orleans. He took a job sailing along the Gulf Coast and was shipwrecked off the coast of Galveston. We can not follow him too clearly during this period but he fought with Sam Houston in the Battle of San Jacinto in 1836. He spent two years at Fort Leavenworth and then became a trapper for some fourteen years in the Rocky Mountains. He was able to tell of his encounters with bears and with Indians in a most exciting way.
In 1842 it is believed that he helped physically to build Fort Pueblo. It is here that he made the acquaintance of such frontiersmen as James Waters, Tim Goodale, Dick Owens, Calvin Briggs, John Burroughs, and Old Bill Williams. He trapped from Colorado to the Yellowstone and met Kit Carson, James Bridger, the Bents, and the Sublettes.
Jim Beckworth, a former slave from Virginia whose father had freed him, was a noted trapper who spent several years as a member of the Crow Indian tribe, found himself a Mexican bride, Louisa Sandoval, in Taos and brought her and their small daughter, Matilda, to Fort Pueblo in October 1842. He set up as a trader with only limited success and when spring came, he set out for California, leaving his wife and daughter at the Fort. It was here that Louisa met John Brown and they decided to live together as a family. There were no clergy nearer than Taos. The marriage was certainly successful since they remained together for the rest of their long lives and had several children. Before John Brown settled down to a more quiet married life, he had had an experience with Nicolasa, apparently a fascinating young Mexican girl, and killed a Frenchman in a duel which took place in the early 1840s on a ranch of Jose Weis on the Greenhorn. It was the same Nicolasa, who incited Rube Herring to kill Henry Beer at Fort Lupton on July 4, 1843. Herring took Nicolasa to Fort Pueblo and lived with her there until James Waters stole her away from him. Not long after Waters killed Edward Tharp in a fight over the same girl. (When most of these men went to California a few years later, Nicolasa was left behind.)
From 1843 to 1845 John Brown made Fort Pueblo his headquarters. Can we speculate that he had a few successful trapping expeditions? At any rate, he moved to the Greenhorn in 1845 and opened a store. He must have found some money in order to invest in a store. It was his policy to trade chiefly with whites and not with Indians although there were times when he sold whiskey to the Indians under the counter since it was illegal to sell alcohol to Indians. The record of his accounts has been preserved in the Huntington Library in California. He noted the sales made and the names of the buyers. His first accounts appeared in April 1845. Brown stocked only what he called essentials, but did not at first include such items as coffee, sugar, and flour. He did carry whiskey and tobacco. Brown bought his goods mostly in Pueblo. With demand, he soon added flour, sugar, coffee, pants, shoes, etc. Among his customers was William Bent who sent E. Garry (Edmund Guerrier) to sell goods and to buy a steer from Brown in November 1846. William’s brother, George Bent, bought 1½ fanegas of corn. Other customers whose names appeared in his account book were Cosper (who worked for Alexander Barclay), James Grieves, William Adamson, one of Barclay’s foremen, Joseph Bridger and Rube Herring. No Indian names appear except those Indian wives of whites.
It is revealing to note that the species which Brown handled included doubloons, sovereigns, gelders, Mexican pesos, and gold pieces as well as American dollars.
Louisa was active in the store. Entries often appear in her handwriting. She also made candles and soap when a pig was slaughtered. The store was prosperous and Brown expanded his business into other projects such as farming. He built irrigation ditches and grew corn, watermelons, wheat, and hired Mexicans to herd cattle and horses. The Mexicans he hired became his customers. He built for them adobe houses and then added a grist mill between December 1846 and February 1847. The Mexicans were well treated. They were free employees, not like the peons on a Mexican hacienda who were paid only in supplies which kept them constantly in debt to the ranchero. Brown hired 3 men in 1845, 24 men in 1846, 8 men in 1847, and 2 men in 1848. Most stayed only a few months.
Not only did Brown mill his own flour, but he also accepted grain from others to be milled. He sold flour for 5 cents a pound or $8 per fanega. (One fanega was equal to 1.6 bushels.) Farmers from Hardscrabble and from Pueblo brought their wheat and corn to be ground at $1 per fanega. Barclay and Doyle rented yokes and harnesses from Brown.
Although it was illegal to sell whiskey to Indians, Brown did sell them whiskey, much watered down by four to nine times, and he even added drugs to keep the Indians quiet when they were drunk. We should not criticize Brown too severely for this practice since all traders did sell to the Indians illegally in spite of the attempts of such men as Fitzpatrick to put a stop to it. The Indians would get into brawls with one another. It has been estimated that in 1841 there were 120 Indians killed in drunken brawls and in 1842 up to 500.
One of the intriguing facts of the life of John Brown was his experience as a psychic. He had a Spirit Guide who came to him in his waking moments and gave him significant messages. On one occasion the Spirit Guide appeared to Brown and saved him and his friends Estes and Stone from a grizzly. Once when Brown was camped at the foot of Pikes Peak the Guide showed Brown an emigrant family named Washburn arriving at Pueblo along with a Mr. Waters who had a grey mare brought from the East for Tim Goodale. His friends made fun of Brown but took him seriously enough to send Goodale to Pueblo to learn whether the vision was accurate. Goodale returned with the report that every fact was correct.
On another occasion, while living in an Indian lodge with Briggs and Burroughs, the Guide told Brown that he would throw a stone and break his mule’s leg. In spite of his serious attempts to control himself, he threw a stone that broke the leg of the mule. Brown was literate and wrote a book about his spiritualist experiences called the “Mediumistic experience of John Brown, the medium of the Rockies.” The book was published in San Francisco and is very rare today.[1]
In Pueblo on February 2, 1848, in an argument over Candelaria, the wife of James Waters, Edward Tharp was killed by Waters. Waters hid out on the Fountain while his friends brought him food. He soon went to Greenhorn, where he stayed and hired a team to go to Pueblo to get his things and bring them to Greenhorn, where he stayed, grinding corn and herding cattle for John Brown. With no lawmen in the area at that time, the only crime which was recognized for punishment was that of murder. The accepted punishment was banishment.
On June 6, 1848, John Brown had a sale of all his goods and closed his store. California called! Brown started south with his wife Louisa and their son John, Jr., who had been born the previous October in Greenhorn. Those who went with them included Archibald Metcalf, James Waters, and Blackhawk leading 60 horses and mules packed with deerskins which they had traded from the Utes. They were joined by Lucien Maxwell, his servant Indian George, and Charles Town. Some Apaches attacked them and they raced to escape. Some friends (?) urged Louisa to throw down the child and escape. She clutched him tightly around the neck jumped her horse over a ravine and escaped back to Greenhorn. She held the boy’s neck so firmly that ever afterward he could not hold his head upright. All the horses and mules with the deerskins were lost to the Apaches. After this loss, some of the travelers were determined to get to Taos. Lucien Maxwell and his party decided to avoid the popular Raton Pass and take the next pass to the east of Raton, Manco Burro Pass. At the top, they were resting when the Apaches attacked. In quite a lengthy battle Indian George and Charles Town were killed. But Lucien Maxwell was one of those who managed to struggle down the south side of the pass where they were rescued by Dick Wooton who had come to look for them. Fortunately for the Browns, they did not travel with the group at that time.
Greenhorn was not completely abandoned. Kit Carson, Jesse Nelson, and ten others left Taos on June 25, 1848, and went through Greenhorn where they found only Bill New, Calvin Jones, and some Mexicans. But when they crossed St. Charles they found a few farmers including John Brown and his family, Charles White, James Waters, and Rube Herring cultivating the lowlands and living in some old houses that had been abandoned.
In June 1849 a large procession left Arkansas for California. John Brown and his family, now including three children, joined John Burroughs and Calvin Briggs and their Shoshoni wives, Lancaster Lupton with his Cheyenne wife and four children, Rube Herring without Nicolasa, Charles White, Alexis Godey, James Waters with Candelaria. They reached Salt Lake City on July 4 and arrived at Sutter’s Fort on September 1, 1849. Almost all of them decided to move south. Actually, John Brown was not comfortable in the climate of the Bay area and they all went to San Bernardino where they spent the rest of their lives as friends and became very wealthy. It was in 1851 that they boarded a schooner at San Francisco and sailed south to San Pedro where they landed in April 1852. Brown hired Sheldon Stoddard to take his goods to San Bernardino where he arrived on May 1.[2]
Brown bought a cabin from Marshall Hunt on the west side of the Mormon stockade. San Bernardino County was created on April 26, 1853. John Brown, Col. Isaac Williams, David Seeley and H. G. Sherwood were named county commissioners to supervise the first election. In 1854 Brown rented the vast Yucaipa Valley which was part of the San Bernardino Rancho of the Mormons. Brown occupied a large two-story house built of adobe in 1842 by Diego Sepulveda. He raised cattle and grain. In 1857 James Waters bought the Yucaipa Ranch lands and also Brown’s cattle. Brown moved to town in San Bernardino and built a two-story house at Sixth and D Streets. He became the Justice of Peace and Rube Herring became the first County Assessor and School Superintendent.
In 1857 when there was unrest in Utah and President Buchanan sent the army against theMormons, Brigham Young recalled all the settlers from San Bernardino. Brown and the non-Church faction now took over. With the Civil War coming on, Brown supported the Union. In 1861 the army established a string of five outposts along the Mojave Desert trails. Brown and Henry M. Willis and George L. Tucker obtained a 20-year charter from the California legislature tobuild and operate a toll road through Cajon Pass. Brown also built a ferry across the Colorado River at Fort Navajo and put Chief Sic-a-hoot in charge. The chief had trouble with money and the ferry was soon abandoned.
Brown had a contract for delivering mail to the mining camps at Holcomb and Bear Valley during 1873-74. In the 1880s Brown spent much of his time writing the treatise about his psychic experiences. His Spirit Guide had appeared to him often when he was in Colorado but failed to come to him in the latter part of his life. Nevertheless, he wished to preserve the memories of those times in the mountains. His book, which was published in San Francisco during his lifetime was entitled, “The Mediumistic Experiences of John Brown, the Medium of the Rockies.”
As one of the older residents of his area Brown became one of the founders of the San Bernardino Society of California Pioneers. He and James Waters were among the first vice presidents of the organization and John Brown, Jr. was the first secretary. Brown died on April 20, 1899. His funeral was held by the Spiritualist Society. His body was in a huge white casket with young women in flowing white robes surrounding it as an honor guard.
The obituary appeared in the San Bernardino Daily Sun in April 1899. He was survived by six daughters and four sons: Mrs. Sylvia Davenport, Mrs. Mary Denber, Mrs. Matilda White, Mrs. Laura Wozencraft, Mrs. Louisa Waters, and Mrs. Emma Royalty. The sons were John Jr., Joseph, James, and Newton.
John Brown was a man of at least three careers. As a teenager, he went west and joined the fur trappers at the height of the fur trade era. As this trade shrank he turned to the management of his store to sell goods chiefly to settlers and traders, branching out to agriculture and milling. At a time when the Indians were still a menace, he decided to move to California. Here he became a wealthy rancher and was a civil servant helping to organize the County of San Bernardino, still the largest county in the United States. He was a good business man and well liked by his fellows. It is interesting to note that several of the settlers in the Pueblo area became prominent and wealthy in California.
References 1. Editor’s note: A search for the book, published in 1897 by the Office of the philosophical Journal, found only 20 copies listed in library or university holdings. The nearest repository for a copy is the Denver Public Library, which will not release the book for inter-library loan because of its fragile condition. The book is available for examination by request at the library. 2. Editor’s note: Brown recorded in his book that when he arrived at San Bernardino he found his old friend Isaac Slover already living there. Slover’s story can be read in The Pueblo Lore, November 2001, pp. 6-10.
Bibliography Belden, L. Burr. “John Brown.” In Hafe, LeRoy R., ed. The Mountain Men and the Fur Trade of the Far West. Glendale, Calif., Arthur Clarke Co., 1965-1972. Hafen, LeRoy R. “Colorado mountain men.” In Colorado Magazine, 30:26. Hammond, George P. The Adventures of Alexander Barclay, Mountain Man. Denver, Old West Publishing Co., ca1976. Lecompte, Janet. “The Hardscrabble settlement.” In Colorado Magazine, 31:94. Lecompte, Janet. Pueblo, Hardscrabble, Greenhorn, the upper Arkansas, 1832-1856. Norman, University of Oklahoma Press, ca1978. Shaw, Dorothy Price. “The Cragin collection.” In Colorado Magazine, 25:176.
The Story of John Brown (1817 – 1899) By Edward Broadhead (Reprinted from The Pueblo Lore, January 1985) Wrightwood Historical Society Wrightwood Roots Friday,March 4, 2005 A.D. Edited by George Tilitson
The Mojave Indians were known as “the clubbers”, and their attacks were feared as exceptionally brutal and violent. Their war clubs were ball-shaped with a handle that could be held on to with both hands. The warriors would run in close and thrust the club up and under their victim’s chin breaking their jaw then grabbing the club with both hands to bash the enemy in the head on the downswing.
This story was derived from Chapter 5 of Pearl Comfort Fisher’s “The Mountaineers,” written by Dorothy Evans Noble and edited by George F. Tillitson
Dorothy Evans Noble, former postmistress at Valyermo and wife of geologist Dr. Lee Noble, wrote this memoir of the Serrano Old Man Vincent whose name was given to Vincent Gap and Vincent Saddle. Mrs. Noble wrote that the memory of the man might not be lost. She gave it to the United States Forestry Service (USFS) who graciously accorded Pearl Fisher to include it in her book, “The Mountaineers.”
Restored cabin
Old Man Vincent’s daily newspaper came to our small post office at Valyermo, California, but he never did. Our nearest neighbor, Bob Pallett, who had a cattle ranch adjoining our fruit orchards took his mail to Vincent once a month when he took supplies by horseback to the cabin twelve miles up Big Rock Creek on the slope of North Baldy Mountain (now Mount Baden-Powell). It was a steep trail from our thirty seven hundred fifty foot altitude to Vincent’s sixty six hundred foot. Bob said he was a sort of hermit who hated all women and most men, chasing visitors off his land with a rifle and spending all his time mining gold and shooting game. He liked Bob and depended on him, and Bob enjoyed sessions with the old man. We heard stories about Vincent for three years before we ever saw him.
Original cabin – 1999
The first week of April 1914, brought such frightful news of war in Europe that ranch work seemed futile and we decided on a sudden walking trip into the mountains to think things over. A geologist, Greg, was visiting us and we three set out on foot to climb Mount Baldy. We took Vincent’s mail with us. It was a long climb up to Vincent Saddle at the head of Big Rock Creek where we followed a trail high on the slope of the mountain for a mile and looked down on a neat clearing with a small gray cabin shaded by two tremendous spruce trees. We skidded down the hill, slippery with pine needles, and zoomed right to the cabin door which opened with a bang, and Old Man Vincent faced us rifle in hand.
“Who in hell are you?” was his greeting.
He was a sight to remember, a thin old man in blue jeans and a faded blue shirt that barely covered his barrel chest, with piercing blue eyes that glared from under tufted white eyebrows and a little white beard under an aggressive chin.
Before we could explain he spotted the bundle of mail my husband held out, made a grab for them, yelling “Papers? Good.”
He dashed back into the cabin, slammed the door and slid the bolt inside. We sat down for a while on his woodpile, glad for time to take in the good lines of the cabin with its steep roof and chimney, all in the shade of its sides weathered to a soft gray that blended into the bushes and pine needles around it. There was water in a moat, a small ditch that circled the cabin, fed out of a pipe at the back where icy cold water dripped into a barrel. Two small tents nearby and a big meat safe hanging from a limb of the largest spruce aroused our hope of a friendlier reception later.
Suddenly the door burst open and Vincent charged out, waving a newspaper and screaming with excitement.
“Say, is it really true, is it war?”
And when we confirmed the awful truth he was wild with joy, not distressed at all.
“Fine, fine, I ain’t died too soon. War’s the stuff I like. Maybe we still got some real men in the world after all. Let ’em fly at it, rip things up, git a little action to stir things up. Shoot, kill, that’s the life.”
Nothing was too good for us from then on. He took us into the cabin cross-questioning us as to the number of men killed so far and insisting on our spending the night with him after we climbed the mountain. He even went with us part way.
Tired by the long climb we were delighted to find Vincent busy with a pot of savory stew made of jerky (dried venison), onions, potatoes; and one of beans. He had fixed beds of boughs in the tents for us and set places in the rickety little homemade table by the stove. He let me make the green tea and wash the dishes later while the men talked war. Vincent stretched out on the bunk, Lee and Greg perched on the other and by bedtime we were all old buddies, beginning a friendship that lasted as long as the old man lived.
A loud bellowing of song woke us the next morning.
Vincent was fixing breakfast to the tune of “If you get there before I do, Tell Old Jack I’m comin’, too,” followed by “Fifteen men on a dead man’s chest, Yo-ho-ho and a bottle of rum.” He described the battle of Gettysburg while we ate, claiming that no losses in Germany could equal those bloody days. He was wounded there and sent back to Conneut, Ohio, his birthplace. He was a member of Company F, 8th Ohio Infantry and proud of it. As we left him that day he barked at me,
“Don’t you ever come back here again.” And when I gasped, he added, laughing. “Unless you stay a week here.”
I had heard of his remark to a silly Los Angeles woman who had come to thank him for letting her use water from his ditch when she camped nearby. She had minced in and grabbed his hand, saying,
“I do hope I’ll see you in the city sometime.”
His retort was, “I hope I never see you again, Madam.”
So we realized that the ice was broken for us. From then on until his death in l926 Vincent was our close friend and real companion. We often spent a week or two with him and when we found his birthday was on Christmas Day we formed the habit of having him with us for the day. The first time he came he told us that it was the first Christmas dinner he had not eaten alone in fifty years.
The last Christmas dinner he ate with us when he was feeble, but he polished off two big slabs of his favorite dessert, mince pie liberally laced with strong, homemade applejack. Bob Pallett asked him the next day how the pie “set.” Vince’s reply was,
“Swell, you bet. Course all night I thought sixteen jack rabbits was loose in my stomach but it was worth it.”
I had pulled a boner that day by saying I wished he had brought his glasses along so he could write in our guest book. He was outraged, said he never needed glasses, that no one ever would who lived outdoors and followed deer tracks instead of ruining his sight poring over books. Vincent’s sight was really remarkable for he could spot a moving object miles away, and also read close up even in his eighties. Stretched out on his bunk of an evening he put a lighted candle on his barrel chest, between the “Los Angeles Times” and his eyes pored over every item. He kept his books under his bed, a few old favorites that he read over and over. A copy of “Life of Napoleon” and one of “Treasure Island” were read most. A bottle of whiskey flanked them but he drank from it seldom.
Vincent loved to talk and he had a gift of understatement and a pungent way of expressing himself that was masterly. He wasted no words and omitted unnecessary details. His pet subject was the Civil War, particularly the Battle of Gettysburg where he was wounded in July of l863. He and a pal named Lockwood had enlisted as lads and after the war they went home, planning to set up in business together with their families’ help. This was refused so they set off for good on horseback, heading west. They left in a fury and never communicated with their kin.
The story of that trek was fascinating. They decided to prospect for gold and in Arizona they found rich claims, filed on them, built a shack and set to work. Vincent never would explain why they moved on, just said they had trouble and shoved on for California on horseback. He told of crossing a river and stopping to swim in it, leaving their clothes on a bank. They spied an Injun sneak up and make off with their clothes. He waited for us to ask how they got them back, then just said,
“That Injun never stole nothin’ more. I took off after him. I got the clothes.”
They finally reached Los Angeles, a nice little town in l868 but too citified for Vincent. Lockwood settled there, but Vince prospected the mountains for months all over the region, even going to Death Valley and the Sierra Nevada country. Nothing suited him until he happened on Big Rock Creek on our edge of the Mojave Desert and rode up its source on the slope of North Baldy Peak, camping on what is now known as Vincent Saddle, the divide between Big Rock Creek and the beginning of the San Gabriel River. His first claim was located away from the slope beyond steep, rocky Mine Gulch, and he named it Big Horn because he killed a mountain sheep there. This claim he later sold and it was developed by a mining company into a rich, high grade mine which ultimately produced many thousands of dollars.
Bighorn Mine
The location at Big Horn did not suit Vincent so he continued prospecting until he found one that did, a flat wooded place with fine big timber and a spring near enough to provide water after he had dug half a mile of ditches. He had adapted a kitten by that time, a Maltese gray, and he named the new claim he had found Blue Cat. It was near Mine Gulch, about half a mile from the flat place which meant more ditches and trails. Then he tackled building his cabin which stands intact to this day. (By the thirties it had collapsed into ruins but not until after Nancy Templeton did an oil painting of it. Maxine Taylor did an oil painting of Vincent’s Cabin in the mid l980s. Her painting is reproduced herein.)
He hand-hewed shakes (shingles) from the trees, built a stone fireplace in one end, put up the one-room, steep- roofed cabin with just one small window and a door. He made two bunks, one on each side of the fireplace, two arm chairs and a small table. He said he worked too hard to be lonely for when the cabin was finished he had the mine to timber and later made a small stamp-mill with a Pelton wheel run by water from his spring.
He had help after a few years when he sold Big Horn and that company built a good trail on the slope above the cabin so a heavy stove was moved up and cement to mix with the rocks for a cabin floor. Another prospector built a shack away from Vincent’s but “The Nigger” as Vince called him, although his name was Delancey and he wasn’t colored, and Vince fought like cat and dog. But Vincent lived on solitude by choice for forty years, working on his tunnels and ditches, hauling ore back by wheelbarrow to the stamp mill, to refine by running crushed ore over a mercury chute, then sacking the gold to take to the city once a year.
The winters must have been grim at the altitude of sixty six hundred feet, but he had a huge woodpile at hand, lots of dried venison stored up, beans and canned tomatoes, potatoes and onions laid away by late fall. Summers are lovely and cool there, and nine months of the year hunting was fine sport; deer and mountain sheep, quail, rabbits and doves all made good food and he could catch fish in Vincent Creek.
By the time we knew Vincent the cabin had every comfort heart could wish, and Bob Pallett to haul freight from Palmdale once a month he could relax and live the life of Reilly. The big screened meat safe that hung from a spruce tree, out of reach of bears, was full of venison for there was no closed season then and Vince would have disregarded if there had been. A picture of McKinley hung over the old man’s bunk and a goldpan and rifle were fastened to the chimney. Every afternoon when he came in from work he stripped to the buff and threw a potfull of hot water over his strong, rugged body, regardless of company; so we learned to vamoose. He was strong as an ox, the picture of health, thin and wiry with pink cheeks and snowy white hair. He could and did, walk for miles tracking a deer and he never fired an unnecessary shot. He loathed the city fellers that banged away regardless, when after game. Once we asked him what sort of winter’s hunting he had had, and he said,
“Only fair. I missed one shot clean. Took me six shots to get my five deer.”
When he killed he dressed the deer on the spot, packed as much on his back as he could carry home, then made trips back to get the rest. Hunting meant a food supply, not sport, to him.
He was a crank about coffee which must be strong and coal black. When I made the coffee one morning and asked him if he wanted a second cup, his answer was,
“Well, yes I do, but God it’s weak I don’t see how it gets up the spout.”
His pet comment was “Strong coffee never hurt no one, but weak coffee is pizen.”
He called Postum “Potassium” and was scornful of it, and he always pronounced boulevard “bovelard” and brooked no correction. He drank what little whiskey he imbibed straight, scorning fancy drinks. Once we took some rare old sherry up for his pleasure and sat by the fire with cups of it, expecting a nice session of talk. Vincent took one sip out of his cupful, swore, spat it angrily into the flames and threw the whole cupful into the fire.
“God, what truck,” he said. “What’s wrong with whiskey that anyone bothers with this hogwash?”
Even with the Palletts the old man was secretive, so we sensed some mystery in his past. The way he kept his cabin window boarded up unless he was inside, his fury when anyone tried to take his picture, his refusal to let anyone else go to his Los Angeles post office for his pension checks, all added up to some secret. We never dared to refer to a penciled name we once found in one of his old books, for it said “Mrs. Charles Vincent” so we supposed it concerned a wife he’d had sometime. Only once did any relative show up, a cousin from Conneaut brought to him by Lockwood, who insisted on Vincent’s attending a dinner at her home in Glendale.
Later we wormed the story out of him to our lasting amusement. He went, they had a swell meal, and then
“Durned if she didn’t get out a big book of postcards, pasted in, and she begun on ‘my trip to Europe’ page by page. I had come by trolley and I happened to see one startin’ down the street, so I said ‘Goodbye, Ma’am, here’s my car’ and I run out and hopped on it. She won’t see any more of me.”
Socialist colony ruins, Llano, Ca.
He had great scorn for the developments in southern California. He referred to the Socialist colony (Llano) that settled on the desert below us as a “nest of vermin” and he fulminated against Pasadena and other fancy towns.
“This country’s the next to git its lickin’” he once said. “I’ll bet I live to see the Japs amarchin’ up Broadway. I sure would like to see a troop bivouacked on them Pasadena lawns.”
Vincent was hipped on cleanliness and order, kept everything in its appointed place and did his washing regularly. He told me once about some campers who had stayed nearby, and his comment on the woman who cooked was
“Say, that there woman was a caution. You could plant a potato patch on the back of her neck. I often seen dough on her elbow from last week’s bakin’. Water didn’t bother her none.”
Before he dug a moat around the cabin and ran water in it he was bothered by ants, for he bought sugar by the sack, and he told us,
“Ants got all through the sack and I couldn’t sift them out. So I jes hauled it down to the M—– family, it was all right for them, they didn’t notice.”
He stayed at the cabin winters until, when he was eighty three, he carried a quarter of deer back to the cabin from away up the slope of Mount Baldy and collapsed from the effort, so we had to take him to Los Angeles to our doctor, a heart specialist. He was taken to the hospital and kept there for several months as he had a torn ligament of one of the arteries to his heart. We feared he was done for, but he came back in good style and lived for years after that, though he could no longer spend winters at the cabin and moved into a tent house by Big Rock Creek on the Pallett Ranch.
I remember his first Christmas holiday there when he came to the post office to cross question me about a geologist who had spent the holidays working on our geology.
“Say, Noble,” said he, “What kind of a dam fool was that feller anyway? I was settin’ by my tent, watching the creek in big flood with the bridge washed out and all, and I heard a big splashin’ and seen this guy wadin’ across in water up to his waist. Up he came and durn if he didn’t tip his hat and say,
“‘Excuse me, sir, but could I trouble you for a drink of water?’”
At intervals Bob Pallett would call us up to say Vincent had collapsed and we would hurry him to the city to install him in the hospital, expecting each trip to be the last. Not so, he came to time after time, and he would chortle over his fooling the doctors.
“They hung around my bed like crows around a dead horse,” he would say, “Waiting to see me die.”
The nurses took a great shine to the game old man and he was a favorite there.
“I like that place,” he said. “Best coffee in Los Angeles there.”
Once I visited him there and he introduced me to his pet nurse. I asked him her name and he said it was “Scenery.” When I looked puzzled, he explained.
“Seems as though the head nurse complained because so many nurses came in to talk, so one day they heard her comin’ down the hall and this nurse, she got excited and run. She tripped over the rug on her way out and, say, some scenery I seen. That’s been her name ever since.”
Vincent was a baseball fan and made yearly trips to Los Angeles to see the games. He would take with him the small sack of gold he had refined from the “Blue Cat” and “Little Nell”, another mine he had developed and named for his pal Lockwood’s daughter Nell; would cash it in and put in a safe deposit box. He had a post office box in the city where his Civil War pension checks came, and he would cash them, too, and put them in the box. When Bob Pallett fell on hard times and was about to lose his ranch he was astonished to have Vincent produce five thousand dollars in cold cash and present it to him.
On September 8, l926, our doctor phoned to say that Vincent was dead and was to be buried on the thirteenth at Sawtelle, the Veterans Home. He had died in the hospital and had told the doctor his life secret in order to assure his burial in the soldiers’ graveyard. So the Palletts joined us in the drive to Sawtelle where we went to the chapel, asking for the Vincent funeral.
The Veteran’s Chapel for funerals is divided by a crosswall so that two services can be conducted at the same time, one for Catholics and one for Protestants; so we made for the Protestant part only to learn that no Vincent funeral was slated for that day but a Dougherty funeral was. We were baffled. A Catholic soldier was slated for the other side.
Then a car raced up and our doctor’s secretary rushed up to tell us that Vincent’s real name was Dougherty, so the service went through as scheduled, and we all followed the body which was placed on a double gun carriage with that of the Catholic soldier and taken to Section 9, Row G, Grave 22, in the lovely green cemetery where hundreds of veterans’ graves lie in neat rows.
Bob Pallett whispered, “You’d sure have to hold Vince down if he knew he was on that gun carriage with a Catholic!”
Then our doctor told us the amazing story Vincent had told him a few days before. He had used his real name, Charles Vincent Dougherty, until a stay in Arizona in 1866 where he and his partner had found gold and staked out prospects. they planned to stay there as the claims were rich and had built a shack and worked away happily in that wild, deserted country. One evening they found three strange men in the shack.
One said he was the sheriff and was checking up on claims. Vincent and Lockwood didn’t like the looks of these men and decided to spy on them. They left the men talking in the shack and went out pretending to work outdoors, crept up at dusk to overhear them talk. The three men were laying plans to jump the claims, do away with the partners and take over. Vincent and Lockwood beat them to it, shot all three in a surprise attack and buried them there and then.
Then they lit out as fast as they could on their horses and fled to the wilder west. They expected to be followed, not realizing that no law force existed then, so they changed their names and hid out the rest of their lives though no one came after them. Vince chose his middle name, Vincent. Of course they had to abandon their rich claims, but Vince knew he could find others as he did later. That is why he never allowed anyone to take his picture, why he barred the one window in his cabin at night, why he suspected strangers, why he had a mail box in Los Angeles to have Dougherty pension checks come to.
The doctor said he would never forget that talk, the fiery old man blurting out the old, old secret, not one bit repentant; proud of his past.
Mt. Baden-Powell
He was a fighter, from his boyhood days on through Gettysburg and his trip west, and his one desire was to be buried with other fighters as he is. He was taught to kill in the Civil War; he considered the Arizona killings a matter of self-defense; he loved to show his skill in shooting but never killed an animal except for food. His unending labor made him a veritable Robinson Crusoe on a mountainside, slaving away day after day to make a comfortable life for himself. He loved the life he led. His magnificent physique kept him from illness, he was full of high spirits and was entertaining a companion as we have ever known. Always kind and generous to the few he liked, all his friends agree Charles Vincent was a Man.
September 1883 to California Southern Railroad, with Santa Fe backing, completed its line northward from National City ( just south of San Diego) to San Bernardino. The next step was to build a line to connect with the Atlantic and Pacific Railroad’s line from Albuquerque, New Mexico, to Needles, and the California Southern Extension Railroad was formed for this purpose. The A&P was known as the 35th Parallel Route and was a joint venture by the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railroad (the AT&SF railroad became the AT&SF railway in December 1895) and the St. Louis in San Francisco Railway (Frisco).
Cajon Canyon
A railroad line across the Mojave desert from Mojave to Needles, at the Colorado River, had been built by the Southern Pacific in 1882- 1883 to thwart the A&P’s westward advance, but was later acquired by the A&P in a trade wherein SP obtained Santa Fe’s line to Guaymas, Mexico. Prior to this swap, the A&P least the Needles-Mojave line from the SP beginning October 1, 1884, and its trains make connection with SP trains at Mojave.
The SP plan to build a line overcome would pass to connect its San Joaquin Valley line with its line from Los Angeles to El Paso, and kept a watchful eye for any activity that might indicate that another railroad was intending to build through the Pass. Thus, when CSRR’s chief engineer, Fred T Perris, and his survey party settled up their horses and headed eastward from San Bernardino through San Gorgonio Pass at Beaumont indents to Morongo Valley, some 40 miles (64km) east of Cajon Pass, SP observers were confident that this CSRR had a different route in mind and would not attempt to build through Cajon.
Then Perris, one certainly was not being followed, headed westward through Lucerne Valley in approach cone pass from the east by a more southerly route, where the Pass could be entered at a much lower elevation than the LA&I’s abandoned, several miles to the northwest. No tunnel would be needed along this route, but extensive cutting and filling would be required in the first few miles below the canyon rim.
by the time the SP realized what Paris was up to, his party had staked a line through the Pass, and the California Southern Extension Railroad was soon being constructed between San Bernardino and Waterman Junction (shortly to be renamed Barstow after William Barstow Strong, president of the Santa Fe) on the A&P The last spike was driven November 9, 1885, and the city of San Diego now had a rail connection to the east.
More than eight decades would pass before SP rails entered the Cajon Pass.
A network of railroads grew rapidly throughout Southern California, and in 1889 the California Southern Railroad and two other short lines were merged into Southern California Railway Company. in 1897, the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railway Company took over the A&P and reorganized it under the name Santa Fe Pacific. In 1902 the Santa Fe Pacific became just another part of the AT&SF, and in 1906 the Southern California Railway lost its name to the Santa Fe system.
from: Cajon, Rail Passage to the Pacific by Chard L. Walker Trans-Anglo Books – Glendale, California
As the first group of Mormon pioneers made their way across the Mojave in 1849, two of them looking for a water source for their livestock explored a canyon and found streaks of gold in the rock. They moved on to Southern California, purchased supplies and equipment, and immediately returned to develop the prospect.
Amargosa House
In 1852 the house was first built to provide a permanent shelter and protection for the operation. The ruins of the 3-room house on the hill aren’t much to look at, but the building more than served its purpose over the 100 years it was in use.
In late October of 1864 three miners named Cook, Plate and Gordon were working the mine and living in the house. A band of Paiute attacked the camp and killed Cook then burned the mill in the canyon below. Plate and Gordon survived the attack and high-tailed it off into the desert. Without water their deaths would be slow and painful. About 20 miles away the two men decided to avoid the agony and killed themselves.
View of mine from Amargosa House
December of 1864 (or possibly 1866) another company took over the claims. It wasn’t long until there was another Indian raid in which the mine was attacked. There was the advantage that the Indians had been spotted camped out at a nearby spring, so one of the miners made his way to Marl Springs 45 miles away to ask the military for help. The seven miners remaining had not realized the escape was successfully made and help was on its way. The next morning before dawn they attempted to make a run for it and all were killed.
Demythifying American Indians from: The Original Inhabitants – What They Lost and What They Retained ~ by Dr. Gayle Olson-Raymer
#5. The “Hindrance to Progress” Myth: In order to ensure the survival and progress of the civilized, European, Christian settlers, it was inevitable that the Indians be defeated.
Reality. European progress was impeded not because the indigenous peoples were uncivilized and incapable of living harmoniously with the settlers, but because Europeans were unwilling and incapable of accepting the American Indians’ political, social, economic, and spiritual traditions as civilized. The real obstacles that got in the way of European acceptance of Indian peoples were that they were not Christians and no visible forms of worshipping God; they made no effort to subdue the land and make it profitable; they had no understanding of the importance of private property; and they were not willing to give up their land and submit to English rule.
So what are the facts?
Many first hand accounts describe the Indians of the North continent and of the West Indies as friendly, peaceful, and welcoming.
Juan Rodiquez Cabrillo, when writing about his voyage along the Southern California coast in 1542, observed, “very fine valleys [with] maize and abundant food … many savannahs and groves” that were “densely populated” and “thickly settled” when Indians who often greeted the Spanish ships in friendship and traded with them of peaceful ceremonies. (Stanndard, 1992:23.)
If such communities were not comprised of uncivilized savages who threatened European settlement and white progress, why has the myth persisted? Several historians have flatly stated that the image of native barbarism and savagery serves to rationalize European conquest. (Francis Jennings, The Invasion of America: Indians, Colonialism, and the Cost of Conquest. Chapel Hill: Univ. of No. Carolina Press, 1975; Robert F. Berkhofer, Jr., The White Man’s Indian: Images of the American Indian from Columbus to the Present. NY: Alfred A. Knopf, 1978; and David Stannard, American Holocaust. NY: Oxford Univ. Press, 1992.)
What, then, were the obstacles that got in the way of European acceptance of the indigenous peoples:
The Indians were not Christians nor did they have any visible forms of worshipping God.
The Indians had made no effort to subdue the land – to make it profitable.
The Indians had no understanding of private property.
An 1866 massacre witness describes historic massacre
From a letter supplied by Harry L. Anderson to the Hesperia Gazette, as printed in the Victor Press, January 12, 1956:
San Bernardino, California March 31, 1866
Mrs. H. E. Parrish
Respected Madam:
According to your request, I will try to state on paper the circumstances of the death of your lamented husband. On the 22nd he came over to Mr. Dunlop’s ranch on the Mojave, 18 miles from this town across the mountains and joining reserve all went to gathering up cattle.
The foreman of Sunday the 25th myself and a Californian saw about 2 1/2 miles from the Rancho, the fresh trail of a party of the Indians – precise number then unknown.
Arriving at the house, while snatching about 2 o’clock a hasty meal, I made our discovery known, but no danger was apprehended by any of myself, and that was only to a slight extent.
Cottonwood tree at the massacre site in Summit Valley
After dinner, Mr. Parrish, Nephi Bemis, and myself started afresh after stock, but as the mule I was riding was worn down, I was dispatched to take the place of Mr. Pratt Whiteside at the herd and to tell him to go with Mr. Parrish in my stead. That was the last I saw of those poor men until we found them cold in death, the victims of savage cruelty. While guarding the herd of cattle already collected being nearest the hills, the Californian already mentioned and on whose mind the Indian sign (steering as it was for the Valley we were in) had made an impression, came from the other side of the herd around to me and said he had heard eight loud rapid reports in the foothills at a point nearer to me than him, but the high winds that prevailed blue directly towards him but past the rest of us. the shots were considered by some of the men below me to have been shots fired at a vicious cow in the chemisal, which Mr. Parrish said that day he would shoot if bothered anymore.
After bloody moments talk, I returned to my post near the ill and immediately saw the horses of Mr. Parrish and Mr. Bemis running riderless from the hills. Sparing after them, the attention of the rest was attracted and we soon got Mr. Parrish’s horse with blood on his shoulder and on the saddle. No More was needed to tell the sad tale and I immediately hurried to acquaint Mr. Dunlop, was lying sick of the house, with the facts, and to get more arms and men to finish the red fiend’s if we met them in search of our friends.
Many causes, chiefly the brushy character of the place and its extent, combined to baffle our search and it was not until sundown that we found poor Bemis–lifeless– all circumstances around, indubitably proof of the work of the Chimchueva Indians, some 30 or 40 of whom by mistake and charity, almost criminal, had been allowed to stay around this town during the past winter and prepare for such hellish deeds as this.
… on the Sabbath look to the Mountain Peaks …
Further search that evening for the other missing men proved unavailing and though much fatigued, who can sleep? Two men to whom we all felt attached, shrouded in all uncertain fate, the veil of which morning could lift and reveal.
Possibly only wounded, yet helpless, leading, alas dying instant death preferable to the anguish of a night of such a state.
Quietly as possible the next morning we marched again on our mournful errand. After about a two-hour search we found poor Whiteside, surrounded by evidence of having fought and fully, as the ground around in the uncommon number of wounded (some 23 in all) knew sad evidence of a bravery that was all in vain.
Soon we found poor Edwin– hid in a clump of young oak, and covered in rubbish, except one foot, a portion of which uncovered, by its white appearance, drew our attention. He too had died fearlessly as was shown by this stone in his right hand, which as he had no pistol or other weapon with him, he had used for want of a better.
Mr. Bemis receiving a mortal wound by the passage of a large ball, cutting the jugular vein down through the lung died instantly, or nearly so. Mr. Parrish, I think and hope suffered not long.
The Indians carried off all of Whiteside’s riding rig, also the clothes of all three of their victims and Whiteside’s pistol. His horse they ate in the vicinity that night.
Summit Valley from Highway 173 Viewpoint
But I have already become tedious in this mournful story. As its object, however, is intended to spare you the frequent recital of your husband’s sad fate, a full relation of particular’s will enable you to escape the laceration of the feeling of a widowed wife and mother by the many who do not realize your affliction.
When I came over here three months ago, I brought four copies of Desert with me. Needless to say they have become rather dogeared as I have read them from cover to cover several times, and passed them around to my friends who have enjoyed them immensely.
Desert Magazine, Oct. 1942
The last day I was in sunny Southern California (it rained all the time I was in Frisco waiting to embark), I made one last sojourn to our desert retreat—the summit of Cajon Pass. Few people know of this unique retreat, except those who pass by on the trains, and then all they see is a street-car tucked away on the side of a hill, 200 yards from the tracks.
The street-car is the former Los Angeles railway’s funeral car Descanso. A group of railfans, known as Railroad Boosters, became interested when it was known the car was to be scrapped, and decided something should be done about it. So far as we were able to tell the Descanso was the only funeral car in existence, and to delegate such an ornate car to the junk heap was not a very fitting end. The L. A. railway then told us that if we could find a place to put it we could have it as a sort of museum piece. After several months of scouting around, we decided on summit. On July 4, 1940, the Descanso was hauled up to summit by flatcar on the Santa Fe. Eight of us spent a very strenuous day unloading the car. It weighed 18 tons.
Chard Walker watching trains pass from the terrace beside the Decanso in 1954. From his book, “Railroading in the Pass”
Three weekends were spent in getting the car to its present position, by the tedious process of laying a section of track in front, pulling the car up with a truck by means of block and tackle, then picking up the section in the rear, placing it up front again, etc. Then began the process of scraping off the old paint, removing the seats, and taking out a few of the unnecessary controllers, etc.
Route 66, Cajon Pass
In the two years that have passed since its arrival at summit, the Descanso has gradually transformed from a dirty looking old streetcar, to that of a newly painted, well furnished cabin. From the exterior it still has the same general appearance of a streetcar as it still is on wheels on a section of rail, the trolley is still up, and still has the stained glass in the upper halves of the windows.
Quite a change has taken place on the interior though. Only two of the original seats are left in place with a folding table in between. A pot bellied stove, and a wheesy old phonograph well stocked with records, dominate the center of the car, while an icebox, a few chairs and another table and a small but complete kitchen take up the rest of the available space. Eventually we may put some folding bunks in one end, but due to material shortage, we content ourselves with sleeping on the floor in our sleeping bags.
We find it an ideal spot to go on a weekend, either as a home camp for a small hunting expedition, or for hiking up and down the railroad, the mountains, or just to lie around in the sun and watch the trains go by.
For anyone wishing to visit Summit, just go up Cajon Pass on U. S. 66 to Camp Cajon, and turn east (right if leaving from San Bernardino). This road is known as the back road to Arrowhead. It’s about five miles from 66 to Summit which can’t be missed as the road leaves the twisting mountain road onto the level Summit valley road. Off to the left about a quarter of a mile is the railroad station of Summit with its scattering of section houses and the post office. The Descanso is directly behind the station.
Summit
In closing I wish to extend a cordial welcome to anyone visiting Summit, and wish I could be there and meet them personally. Until the war ends I’ve got to be content to visit the desert via Desert Magazine.
From a handwritten copy on file at the Victor Valley College Library – Author Unknown
More than 30 years ago the green grass and running water of Summit Valley attracted the white people who later became the first settlers here. Mr. Houghton took up a Government claim, the plan now included in the Las Flores Ranch. Cattle were driven in from Arizona to be fattened and then driven to market San Bernardino. This entire valley was given over as a cattle range. The grassy slopes afforded splendid pasture lands and Mr. Houghton was well pleased.
Las Flores Ranch
Still there were some hardships to be endured in this new country. Many wild animals roam the hills, mountain lions stole the young cattle in the small brown bears came in droves to find what they could to eat. At times Mrs. Houghton and the children were obliged to climb into the attic of their house to be safe from the bears. After robbing the hives of honey, these bears would go back into the nearby hills and mountains, disturbing nothing more.
The Indian inhabitants of the valley were unfriendly and while Mr. Houghton owned the ranch three men were killed by the Indians in ambush.
About 30 years later Mr. Bircham bought the ranch and continued to run it as a cattle ranch. Each year more cattle were put on the range. A great many horses were brought into the valley too. These proved to be a temptation for horse thieves, who made a regular practice of stealing horses and selling them in other places. Finally, the two neighboring canyons received the names of Big and Little Horse Thief Canyon. At length, the horse thieves were driven out, but the smaller of the two canyons still retains the name of Horse Thief Canyon, the larger known as Summit Valley.
Little Horse Thief Canyon
All traveling was done with horses until a railroad called the Southern California was built. This road went through in the year 1883 and 1884 and followed the old Santa Fe Railway Company. The highest point along the road was called Summit and a station was established there at once. It was located about 6 miles west of the Bircham Ranch and became their shipping point for supplies.
At the time when it was believed that oil was hidden in the land all through Southern California, the Summit Valley was located for oil, but the government authority on oil found that it was not present in this land.
The Arrowhead Reservoir and Power Company wish to buy up lands in the mountains in order to gain the water rights attached. Mr. Bircham’s holdings of 1200 acres were bought and various other lands nearby.
The ranch was now owned by a company, it was no longer the Bircham Ranch or the Houghton Ranch, so another name was to be found. The name decided upon was “Las Flores,” meaning The Flowers, and a very fitting name it was as one looks towards Mount Baldy and its companions, the fields in the summertime seem yellow with flowers.
Summit Valley with San Gabriel Mountains
The ranch was still conducted as a cattle ranch but it was not long before the range, on which the cattle had roamed, was disputed by new settlers. In 1912, Mr. Searle and his family filed on government land for a home. Later in the same year, Mr. Blumberg’s family moved in, then Mr. Watson, and so it has been ever since that time.
There were enough children in 1913 to form a new school district and open the school. Within the next year, a post office and store were opened. Fertile land with quantities of water upon it brought about these changes in Summit Valley.
At the present time, an option is held on the holdings of the Arrowhead Reservoir and Power Company, to be closed within the next eight months. This land is to be sold with the water rights, for the purpose of irrigating 100,000 acres of land in the Victor Valley changing it into a great garden.
San Bernardino looks upon this great undertaking with interest. It will mean much to that city since this section in San Bernardino is connected by an automobile and railroad.
Scrapbook of Memories of Summit Valley & Cedar Springs from before the Tin Lizzy until after Silverwood Lake – collected by Isabelle Rue Rentfro
From the diary of Sarah J. Rousseau , 1864:
Regarding traveling with Indians across the Mojave
Sunday, November 6 … The lava that has been thrown out looks like cinders. The mountains, some of them have a grand appearance, some a red color while others have a white appearance. Some of them I think must be 400 feet high. This canyon is called Diamond. at the mouth it takes us into Santa Clara Valley which we traveled through and down a pretty dangerous hill to Santa Clara Creek where we got food and shelter for horses. Here came a number of Paiute Indians. they are a tribe that is very fond of horse flesh to eat, and will steal anything they can lay their hands on. We have came today 20 miles.
Santa Clara/Virgin River divide
Monday, November 7. Started from camp late this morning. It is a cold, windy time. The Dr. had to prescribe and deal out medicine for a little child that belonged to a Mormon Bishop. About breakfast time a number of Indians came to the camp and we gave some their breakfast. When we started four of them started with us, three of them on foot and one on horseback. They are miserable looking creatures. Some of them almost entirely destitute of clothing. I believe it is their intention to go to the Muddy with us. as for me I would rather have their room than their company. I am afraid of them. We have crossed the Santa Clara 15 times this morning, and have now camped. It is cold and windy, a real disagreeable time.
Sarah Jane Rousseau
Tuesday, November 8. A cold blustering morning, the wind blowing hard all night. Started from our camp rather late with an escort of from 10 to 15 Paiute Indians. Last night two of them stayed with us as prisoners. Our guide, Mr. Hatten, said it would not do to let them leave camp after dark, as they might get some other Indians, come back and do us some mischief. We started from camp with five, which increased to 15 of them. We crossed the Santa Clara this morning 14 times in after going 12 miles made a dry camp at Camp Springs, having filled our kegs the last crossing place. the Indian chief told the guide we must all give them something for traveling through their country, to renumerate them for using water and grass. We all gave them some flour. We intend to let them have the care of our horses tonight, they are going to take the cattle as well. The Chief with four others we kept as prisoners till morning when they bring back the stock. Then they will be free.
Virgin River
Wednesday, November 9. A pretty warm morning. Started from camp about sunup. The Indians brought back the stock safely back. Left camp with our escort, traveled over some rough roads till noon. This afternoon the road’s much better. Passed over the summit between the Clara and Virgin, went 5 miles in the canyon and camped. Some grass for the stock but no water.
Wagon Master Nicholas Earp
Thursday, November 10. A cool but pleasant morning. Last night the Indians were prisoners again. They left the stock go on to the mountains to feed. We fed five among us. All are willing to do so but Mr. Earp. He swears and cuts up about it, although he derives the same benefit as the rest of us. I fear he may cause us some trouble when we get to the Muddy. … “
In the early days, natural springs in what now is Lucerne Valley provided good camping grounds for Indians on their way into the San Bernardino Mountains together pinon nuts. The Indians resented white pioneers settling in the territory and committed some violent acts against them. Instead of discouraging the settlers, caused them to marshal forces and attack the Indians who were of the Paiute, Chemehuevi and Serrano tribes. in February 1867 a decisive battle at chimney rock caused the Indians to retreat and leave the territory to the white pioneers. (Chimney Rock is at the north edge of Rabbit Dry Lake. A quite complete story of the Chimney Rock Massacre is available at the Lucerne Valley branch of the county library.)
Rabbit Springs
In July, 1873 five men, L. D. Wilson, John E. McFee, W. S. Manning, W. P. Morrison and (?) Holmes located the springs known as Rabbit Springs. They laid claim to the Springs and 100 surrounding acres 20 acres each according to a recorded document.
In 1884 Peter Davidson operated a way station at Rabbit Springs. Travelers could get fresh water, exchange news, rest and sleep over. “Uncle Pete” died in 1906. His grave is at the corner of Kendall Road and Rabbit Springs Road.
Pete Davidson’s grave
In 1886, W. W. Brown brought his family to this valley, which was without a name at the time. Brown had the water rights at the Box S. (The Box S ranch is where the drainage ditch now crosses Highway 18.) The family stayed at “Uncle Pete’s” until an abandoned house could be moved on to the Box S property.
Box S Ranch, Lucerne Valley, CA.
In 1896 Al Swarthout acquired the Box S, intending to raise cattle. There was plenty of water but not much forage. Swarthout and a friend found a place about 15 miles to the east, that had even more water and lots of forage. after one year he gave up on the Box S and moved to Old Woman Springs Ranch. (It is said the Indians used to leave their old people camped here while the young ones went into the mountains to forage for pinon nuts.)
In 1897 James Goulding came to the Box S with his wife Anna and two small children, Mamie and George. Three more children, Minnie, Jim, and Nelly were born in Lucerne Valley. “Dad” Goulding proved the fertility of our soil with his apple orchard, vegetable garden and alfalfa fields. He also raised cows, horses and other animals. He dug a well which proved to be artesian.
Alfalfa field in Lucerne Valley
In 1905 a friend suggested to Goulding that this valley should have a name. Because of his success in growing alfalfa (also known as lucerne) he christened this place Lucerne Valley.
Dad Goulding is generally acknowledged as the founder of Lucerne Valley. In 1907 Goulding legally established Lucerne Valley School District. Hanna Brown, a cousin whose family lived in near by Oro Grande, came to live with the Gouldings so the requirement of six students could be met. The school building was a former cook shack on wheels, 8′ x 18′. With wheels removed and one end of the inside painted black for a blackboard, the school opened on September 9, 1907 on the Box S Ranch.
In the meantime, more families were settling all over Lucerne Valley, and Goulding donated property in 1910 for a new school where the Baptist Church now stands.
In 1912, people in the east end of the valley thought the school should be closer to them, so they formed a new school district to be known as Midway. Still another school district, Rodman, was formed in North Valley, in 1915.
View of Lucerne Valley from North Valley
Then, in 1916, windstorms and fire destroyed both Lucerne Valley and Midway schools. all the students attended Rodman school until the other two were rebuilt, which took a couple of years because of wartime problems. In 1920 Rodman School District lapsed and joined with Midway, which by then was in its present form.
In 1941 was certain school was condemned as unsafe and all students went to Midway. The building and grounds were purchased by the Community Church ( not the present Community Church) and used until 1952. It was then that the building burned to the ground during a terrific windstorm at night. Construction was begun in 1952 on the new Lucerne Valley School at its present site.
Lucerne Valley’s library began in 1912 with 140 books in the front room of the Box S ranch house. Most of them were for school use, but some could be borrowed by local residents. In 1915 the library was at Midway school. In 1916 storm damage some of the books in the library was moved to the Boom Ranch on Wilshire, northeast of Midway. After being closed during World War I, both Midway school and the library reopened in September 1918. The library continued as a combination school-public library until March 1928, when it became a community branch of the county library system.
The Lucerne school building was condemned for school use, so the library moved in. When the church bought the building, the library was moved into a smaller room there. Later it was moved into a small, narrow trailer behind the present China House. Ethel Windschanz Clapton, the librarian, said that looking out the little, porthole shaped windows during a strong wind made her feel like she was on a sinking ship.
The library moved begin to the building which was occupied by the Sheriff’s office. Mrs. Vera Russell was one of the librarians at that location. The library then moved into the building generously provided by John Russell (Vera’s son) at very low rent. From there moved into its beautiful new permanent home for which ground was broken March 17, 1988.
Lucerne Valley post office was established in 1912 at the ranch of John and Rosa Koehly, who came here in 1909. It was on the southeast corner of Rabbit Springs Road and Post Office road. (Have you wondered about the road name?) Rosa Koehly was postmistress. Some days only eight cents worth of stamps were canceled, so that was the postmistress’s salary.
In 1935, the post office moved to a one-room building on the highway, west of the Box S Ranch, with Ed Smith as postmaster. (Ed Smith was also a licensed electrician and Scoutmaster of Troop 71, Lucerne Valley’s first Boy Scout troop, from 1928 to 1933. Some of those scouts are still living here, among them Harold Reed and Dick Owen.)
Downtown Lucerne Valley, CA.
Later the post office moved again, to shared the Clark building with John Hutson’s and Irving Seeberg’s hardware store. ( The Clark building is now occupied by the China House.) Flora and Clark was postmistress. The post office moved again to “the triangle” on Verdugo Road at Oracle Road ( now renamed Oracel by the county street sign makers.) Early postmasters there were Vern Ely and Ray Bonin. The post office is now in its permanent location on Highland Avenue south of Highway 18.
A volunteer fire department was first organized during World War II, along with fire watchers, skywatchers, plane watchers, civil defense, etc. In the early 50s a fire house was built with donated material (cinderblock) and volunteer labor. it was located about where Shell gas station/ Halleck’s Market is now. They had a unique system. People would phone Dick’s Center Store to report fires. Dick Grobaty would then press a button on his wall, which was wired to the siren on top of the firehouse. That was how the volunteer firemen were summoned. The building was torn down after a short period and the present County fire district was formed in 1962-63. At that time it still operated with volunteer firemen and one paid chief.
Lucerne dry lake
Some of the descendants of the early settlers still live here. John Russell’s father, William Russell in 1911 had filed on land called Lucerne Springs which brought son John here to live in 1949. He has been building houses and commercial buildings ever since. Also in 1911, Theodore P. Owen filed on 640 acres to miles north of Midway school his son, Dick, has come and gone but has lived here steadily since 1950.
View from shack at Gobar Ranch
Athene Siewerda was another very early settler. She was the first to have pistachio trees here. Her son, Joe Sherman, lives here now Orlando (Jake) and Mildred Jacobs came here in 1928. There were about 250 people in Lucerne Valley then. At the Jacobs home in North Valley, Jake bake 60 or 70 loaves of bread, sweet rolls, cakes and pies on Saturdays and sold them through Max Lewis’s grocery store. Later he rented from Goulding the building now housing the Rosebud Gift Shop and established Homestead Bakery and Grocery. At that same time Mildred ran the Jackrabbit Café, located on land now occupied by Halleck’s Market. In 1936 Jake in Mildred moved their house onto land they bought from the Southern Pacific Railroad, the southeast corner of Barstow Road and old woman Springs Road. The Jacobs donated 10 acres of their land which is now Pioneer Park. As Jake’s health failed, Mildred gave up the café and ran the Homestead Bakery. She, along with other citizens, still found time to clear implant for the park, along with other citizens. The Jacobs had two daughters, Shirley Ann and Millie Lou. Millie Lou lives in Maryland and Shirley Ann (Mrs. Bob Fuller) lives in Apple Valley.
Ethel Owen came in 1946 as Ethel Johnston and built Lucerne Valley’s first beauty shop. Ethel and Dick Owen were married in 1950 in the old community church and their daughter, Lilli Ann, born in 1952, was dedicated there shortly before it burned down.
The foregoing was prepared by Ethel Owen on March 25, 1988 from material obtained from Lucerne Valley library and from her own memory. She apologizes for any inaccuracy of dates of facts and/or omissions. There is much to be added that could not be contained in these pages.
From: History of Lucerne Valley by Ethel V. Owen
Mohahve V – Scrapbooks of History – 1991, 2016
Mojave Historical Society
Long years ago, Cajon Pass became the gateway into the desert interior of California. The word “cajon” means box in Spanish and was fittingly applied to the area that has served as a pass through the rugged country between the desert and the valley lands west.
San Gabriel Mountains
Cajon is not a pass through a mountain. It is a pass between two mountain ranges — San Bernardino and San Gabriel Mountains which overlap. It was through or around this pass that the early settlers had to travel. Either way, it was a difficult trek of uncharted roads and highways. for that time and era, it would seem that settlers might want to stay on the eastern side of the ranges and settle down rather than try to get horses and wagons over the steep and hazardous mountains.
Horse-drawn wagon
Many years in the past the Pass became the “gateway into the wilds of the interior.” What an interior it is! coming or going from the coastal area of Southern California that great mass of mountain peaks and sheer drops from the high precipices are startling and they culminate into the one of the most rugged as well as one of the most beautiful in the West.
The fact that this pass was at the western end of the Old Spanish Trail made it an important spot in the emigrant days.
Old road over the divide near the summit of the Cajon.
Camp Cajon, 3 miles above the Blue Cut was once an Indian village. Here the pass becomes wider, a fan-shaped site bounded by the divide on the upper edge. the divide is the desert rim. Eroding water cause the formation of the two major divisions which are known as East and West Cajon.
The divide at the top of the pass
Long before the Cajon Pass was an accepted one and used freely, the wilderness of the Cajon region was a hideout for renegade Indians and white men. Cattle and horse stealing became so common that the people of the lower valleys had to take to battle. Once in the interior of the vast mountain area beyond Cajon it was almost impossible to recover the animals.
Brown’s toll road through the Pass.
One of the historic roads that benefited the desert for many years was built by John Brown Sr. , an early desert settler. This was the toll road that he built to connect the desert territory with the outside areas. The toll road served the public for 20 years. It was built from the Cajon Pass to the old Verde Ranch adjacent to Victorville.
from: The Cajon Pass — Yesterday by Myra McGinnis 1968 Mohahve IV – Scrapbooks of History Mohahve Historical Society
Point of Van Dusen Road crossing Mojave River, Hesperia, CA. Looking toward Apple Valley and Marianas Mountains
The Van Dusen Road branched off from John Brown’s toll road heading east along the ridge after reaching the Cajon Summit. The road found its way down the Antelope Valley Wash to the Mojave River. At this point the trail crossed through the soft sand and ascended through a small canyon at the base of the mountains, finding its way east then southeast to Rock Springs. From the springs the road then branched to the left heading east to Holcomb Valley becoming what is now known as the Coxey Truck Trail.
Looking west up Antelope Valley Wash from the Mojave River toward Cajon Summit
I enjoy hearing the stories about places from people that have absolutely no idea about what the story of that place is. For example; West of Dead Man’s Point a mile or so, on Bear Valley Road, there is a quiet little place with the sign out front that says “Lone Wolf Health Colony.” years and years I would ask folks about the place and for years and years I was told it was a “nudist camp.” It is not. I am a little bit disappointed. …
Not a nudist camp!
Following his a brief history of the Lone Wolf Colony originally written in 1966 by Paul and Sylvia Hopping.
Many years ago, in June 1922, a Mr. Sam Caldwell and a few other employees of the old Home Telephone Company, including Eddy Schock and a Mr. Crowfoot, realizing the beneficial health factors of the desert, started a movement to help World War I male employee veterans who were suffering from poison gas and the veterans who were unable to obtain the hospitalization and other care they required. Mr. Caldwell at that time owned 160 acres of land at Dry Lake flats, in back of Mt. Baldy. He donated this land for a health resort on condition that he should be one of the patients. It was Mr. Caldwell who gave the health resort its name of Lone Wolf Colony. He passed away in 1934.
Original first cabin built in 1923
The first small building was begun in March, 1923. Carpenters donated their time to assemble the materials which are brought to the desert in April. The health resort operated only 30 days on Mr. Caldwell’s property when it was found that the water supply was inadequate. The colony then move to a spot 5 miles west of Victorville. The colony at that time had two cottages and five tent houses. A water shortage again developed and at the end of the third year the colony moved to a site on Bear Valley Road near the railroad. It was there only a short time when it moved to its present 20 acre site on February 22, 1926.
A well drilled on this property and abundant water was found. The telephone company provided trucks and equipment and 250 employees donated their time. And one day the buildings, cabins, fences, pump for reservoir, pole line for electricity and telephone were installed, which was considered a very fine undertaking.
Duplex buildings built in 1950
Funds to build the health ranch, which was incorporated February 7, 1924, were raised through various channels and company support. At the end of the 18th year the colony had in use and administration building and 10 small cabins. In 1950 there were five modern duplex concrete cabins. In 1958 a very large, fine, modern administration building, including a large lounge, dining room, stainless steel equipped kitchen and caretakers living quarters was completed in the colony had its first Thanksgiving dinner in the new building of that year.
Administration building built in 1958
Chickens and cattle are raised on the grounds that the Colony which provide meat for the guests. With abundant water, alfalfa is also raised which feeds the cattle and helps to hold down the dust and provide a green ground cover. The Ranch contains all types of farm equipment and tools. Water is piped to all corners of the property and there are restrooms and bathhouses at the camping area. Work parties are organized to help with the work around the Colony.
Boy Scout troops are welcome to use the south end of the property for camp outs but the colony superintendent must be contacted to set the date and time for such event. At least one scoutmaster of each troop must be a telephone man.
Telephone museum
The present colony is located on a 20 acre site about halfway between Central Road and Dead Man’s point on Bear Valley Road, in section 2 in Apple Valley. It is owned by the male employees of the Pacific Telephone and Telegraph Company.
The facility is open to male employees both presently employed and retired. There is no charge to employees of Pacific Telephone Company and Western Electric Company, Southern Area (West Coast Division), as the Colony is operated on contributions. All applicants, both active or retired, must make application and have a doctor’s recommendation before they can be admitted to the Colony. They are allowed to stay as long as the doctors think the desert climate is aiding their health. At this time there are average of six employees per day recuperating under the care of the genial host and hostess, Virgil and Goldie Long.
In 1963, air-conditioning and wall-to-wall carpeting were put in all the cabinets. At present plans are being worked on for a recreation hall, heated pool for therapy and an enclosed solarium.
Enjoying an evening of sitting in a chair.
Many of the old-timers are no longer here today the sum of the early founders were Eddy Schock, who helped Mr. Caldwell with the building of the original colony, Charles Rogers, who helped move the buildings and cottages from the first place and Mr. Crowfoot, now in his 90s, who is now living in Lancaster with his daughter. Mr. Schock is an active member of the Board of Directors of Lone Wolf Colony. Truly the desert is helpful and beneficial as is quoted from the Lone Wolf Colony bylaws as follows: “Where the curative power of the sun’s rays and the climatic condition are unsurpassed for the improvement of general health.”
The end.
The Mojave Historical Society expresses appreciation to Mr. Eddy Schock, the Board of Directors of Lone Wolf Colony and to Mr. and Mrs. Virgil Long further help in obtaining this history of Lone Wolf Colony.
from: The History of Lone Wolf Colony – by Paul and Sylvia Hopping Mohahve III – Scrapbooks of History (c)1966, 2016 Mohahve Historical Society
As you whiz down the freeway in a well protected automobile, have you ever wondered what life was like in the good old days as the hardy pioneer planned the trip 50 miles into the desert with wagon and a team of horses?
Excerpts from ‘Water Supply Paper Number 224’ published in 1909 by the US Department of Interior states, “A party leaving a supply station to go 100 miles or more into an uninhabited part of the desert must take along everything needed, even to the most minute detail.”
Cowpokes eating a hearty breakfast on the trail.
” This means if the trip is to last for two weeks enough hay and grain for each animal and enough provisions to last each man that length of time must be taken.
” For four horses, drawing a wagon that carries for persons and their bedding, provisions, and tools, another team of four horses must also be taken to all sufficient hay and grain to feed the eight horses for two weeks.
” There are but few places in the desert, away from the railroads, where grain or hay of any kind can be procured. As the teams are rarely able to travel faster than a walk, heavy horses that are good walkers should be selected. The tires should be as wide as can be procured. Desirable widths of tires for freight wagons are 6 to 9 inches; for light wagons 3 inches.”
The average Victor Valley pioneer took a week every six months to travel by horse and wagon to San Bernardino, to do his shopping and come back home. Leaving the desert and spending the first night in Cajon Pass at one of the campsites close to the junction of State Highway 138 or Interstate Highway 15 further on down at Cozy Dell Campgrounds. it was another day’s journey to San Bernardino, and after doing shopping and visiting for a couple of days, it was a two-day journey back to the desert Homestead. Now with our sleek automobiles, we whisk down to San Bernardino and 45 minutes, sometimes grumbling because it takes so long.
Cozy Dell, Cajon Pass – 1938
Drinking java from an old tin can was a way of life and not a song in the past century. Living in the open and eating cowboy beans were part of traveling through the desert before the advent of the auto. The trails of yesterday became our freeways of today. Our present freeway route from Victorville to Barstow parallels the one the freighters to quit their mule trains to sell supplies to the minors and Calico in the 1880s. Instead of having a well-built bridge to span the Mojave as we do today, they forded the river even when it was high.
from: Mohahve IV – Scrapbooks of History (c)1984, 2016
The day was hot. There were only five of us who showed up for the trip. We met at Carl Cambridge’s Museum on Bear Valley Road in Apple Valley in about 9:30 AM and left via Deep Creek Road to Rock Springs Road and across the river to Lake Arrowhead Road and then via Summit Valley Road to Miller Canyon and Lake Gregory Road to Cedar Springs.
Because of the heat, this was to be more of the picnic been a field trip. We had chosen Cedar Springs because of its location in the big binds and the stream which ran nearby the campground. The site is located on the East Fork of the West Fork of the Mojave River in T2N, R3W, Sec. 6, San Bernardino County.
Cedar Springs Campground
When we arrived, we found the stream bed entirely dry, and the picnic table which we chose was sitting in the middle of the dry wash. while we enjoyed our picnic lunch, the Martins talk to the early days when they brought their children and grandchildren and camp by this dream which was at that time a swift moving and cool, sparkling little creek. We then tried to imagine what it would be like in a few years when the entire area will be underwater. Already, many of the homes had been removed in preparation for the time when the dam will be billed at the forks of the river, to hold back the waters of the Feather River when they are delivered to the Southland to water the thirsty reservoirs at the Mojave River Valley and the great metropolitan area.
The tree that grew into a rock. 1964.
As we sat and talked, we began to look around, and we realize that the well-known landmarks would soon disappear. Nearby, was a huge old pine tree with roots in twined around a very large boulder which had once been at the stream’s edge. Close by was a beautiful old sycamore with a satellite branch, just right for small and not so small boys to climb. downstream was a grand old tree that guarded the dry stream bed and looked as if it had been watching over the course of the stream for many years. We took some pictures and left.
Our road led us through Summit Valley to a road which took us up to Cleghorn Canyon in search of a way to reach a monument which was said to be located at a point where Fr. Francisco Garces (1776) and Jedediah Smith (1826) had crossed over from the desert to the San Bernardino Valley.
We failed to locate a way to reach the monument, but we did find a vast area that had been almost denuded by a destructive forest fire which had swept the area only a few weeks earlier. in the midst of this, we also observed a “guzzler” which still contained water, and the ground around was covered with thousands of little tracks which was evidence of the birds and small animals that had somehow survived the ravages of the flames. Joel Martin mentioned that he had, at one time, worked on a project to help install these guzzlers which were designed to help preserve the wildlife of the county and state.
As we return down the canyon to the Summit Valley Rd., Carl Cambridge suddenly called a stop, and there beside the road, where the road had crossed a dry wash, lay a large metate. There was also the ruins of an old cabin and signs of placer mining, which told a silent story of a culture and a generation earlier than ours.
Bridge at fork to Cedar Springs
We retraced our road to where the Summit Valley Road and the road to Cedar Springs meet, to make a survey of his site of an old Indian camp which Carl had told us had been discovered there several years ago, but all that we found were a few fire stones and the dark and soil, evidence that the Indians had once been there.
Although no great historical facts were uncovered, the day proved to be very interesting, and in time it may be looked back upon as being of historic interest because of what was but is no longer.
As we thought about the things that were taking place in the area, we realize that, just as the last remnants of other eras were disappearing, the day would soon come when the landmarks that are so familiar in the area today will soon be gone. So we took more pictures for remembrance.
from: A Field Trip Report by Gladys Steorts Mohahve III – Scrapbooks of History (c)1966 Mohahve Historical Society
In 1905, in an attempt to break the speed record from Los Angeles to Chicago, Walter “Death Valley Scotty” Scott paid the Santa Fe Railroad a purported $5500 to rent a three car train pulled by 19 different steam locomotives. The trip began in Los Angeles on 9 July and arrived in Chicago 44 hours 54 minutes later, a record that stood until 1936 when it was broken by the Super Chief. The Barstow to Needles segment of the run took just three hours and 15 minutes. Also known as the Coyote Special.
One day, Coyote went out to hunt rabbits. While he was hunting, he saw a large naked woman in the distance. This excited him. He said to himself, “Whew, I have never seen a woman like that. I will follow her.” He followed her for a long time, but could not quite overtake her. He followed her over many mountains. When he came to White Mountain [Fish Lake Valley], he was very thirsty. He saw that the woman was carrying a tiny basketry water jug, and he asked her for a drink. She gave him the little jug, and he drank and drank, but still there was water left in it. Then she walked on, and he followed her.
Finally, they came to a large lake of water. The woman said, “My home is over there.” She crossed the lake on top of the water. Coyote said, “I cannot do that. I will walk around.” The woman turned and gave Coyote the legs of a water bug [skate?] that runs on the top of the water. Coyote followed her over to her house.
The woman lived in a house with her mother, who was called tsutsipü, “ocean,” maa’puts, “old woman.” She was like Eva, the first Woman. Eva had never seen a man before. In the morning, Eva got up very early and began to weave a fine, big water jug. Coyote stayed with the women for several days.
One day Coyote went hunting for deer. He wondered what was the matter [with the women] . . . He asked his stomach, his ears, his nose, and his foot what was the matter. None of them could tell him. Then a white hair on the end of his tail said, “You are just like a little boy. Take a neck bone . . . and use that.”
Coyote did this . . .
Coyote went out to hunt. The old woman had nearly finished her big water jug. The two women told each other that they were pregnant. When the jug was finished, they gave birth to many tiny babies, all like little dolls, and put them in the jug.
When Coyote returned, they said to him, “Maybe your brother, Wolf, is lonesome for you. We want you to go back home.” Coyote said, “All right, I will go.” Eva then said to the children, “You have no home here. You must go with Coyote.” She put the basket of children on Coyote’s back, and told him to carry it with him. It was very heavy, but Coyote said that he had carried deer down from the mountains on his back, so that he was strong and did not object.
The women instructed Coyote about the jug. They said, “When you come to Saline Valley, open the stopper just a little way, then replace it quickly. When you come to Death Valley, open it a little more. At Tin Mountain (Charleston Peak) open it half way. When you are in Moapa, take the stopper out all the way.” Coyote said he would do this.
Coyote carried the jug along, but soon became very tired and could scarcely hold it. When he arrived in Saline Valley, he opened the stopper a little way. Tall, dark, handsome men and girls jumped out and ran away. These were the best looking people in the jug. This frightened Coyote, but he put the stopper back, and picked up the jug. In Death Valley, he opened it again. Here, more handsome people jumped out and ran away. The girls all had long, beautiful hair. When he came to Ash Meadows, he opened it. The Paiute and Shoshoni came out. These people were fine looking, too. At Tin Mountain, Coyote let some fairly good people out of the jug. When he opened it in Moapa, very poor, short, ugly people came out. The girls here had short hair with lice in it. All the people had sore eyes. That is the way they are now.
This is the way Eva had her first children. Coyote was the father.
State Highway Commissioner Darlington has under advisement the matter of which route to choose for the 15-mile state highway to be built from Summit to Victorville at a cost of $150,000. A delegation headed by Louis Evans of Hesperia asked Darlington to choose the route that would include Hesperia on the highway.
William Farley Kills Matt Price on the Desert Near Dale City, San Bernardino.
San Francisco Call – February 24, 1898
SANTA FE DEPOT, San Bernardino, Feb. 23. — The second murder on the desert within two weeks was committed yesterday morning about ten miles north of Dale City, this county, by William Farley. His victim was Matt Price, who is said to have been a partner of Farley in some mining property.
Only meager reports have been received and as the scene of the murder is in such a remote and almost inaccessible spot, being seventy miles from the railroad, it will be some time before the full particulars of the affair will be known. Parties who knew the men are inclined to believe that the murder was the result of a quarrel over a mining claim.
Farley has been placed under arrest and Coroner Keating, Deputy Sheriff McElvan. Assistant District Attorney Rolfe and I Benjamin, a stenographer, left for Dale City tin’s morning to hold an inquest. A. E. Reitz, who came in from Dale City yesterday, leaving there early in the morning, says that when he left the camp all was peaceable and that the principals in the affair seemed to be on good terms.
Then Perris, one certainly was not being followed, headed westward through 
Soon we found poor Edwin– hid in a clump of young oak, and covered in rubbish, except one foot, a portion of which uncovered, by its white appearance, drew our attention. He too had died fearlessly as was shown by this stone in his right hand, which as he had no pistol or other weapon with him, he had used for want of a better.
