by John Babb
My story. On September 5, year of 1849
We must be high in the mountains as it was very cold last night. There was even ice on the river this morning, then hot as blue blazes during the day. We have seen a lot of trash along the road for much of our trip mostly around campsites, but along this river the whole trail looks like a garbage pit. There must be some real trouble ahead, because people threw out wagon parts, harness, trunks, tools, and furniture; and that doesn’t even count the mule and ox bones.
Last night it was already cold while Mary was finishing dinner, and she looked over at Jane and said, “This here is a hellish place—hot as the devil’s outhouse durin’ the day, and cold as an Eskimo’s bare behind at night. I’ll be glad to get shut of this place.”
I feel the same way. Sometimes I get the feeling that something real bad is just about to happen to us again. That something is just waiting for us to make a mistake around every crook in the trail.
They then were faced with traversing the Sierra Crest. In looking up the side of the bluff from the river, it seemed like a foolhardy, let alone impossible task to move everything they had to that distant height. The first requirement was for the wagons to be positioned close to the base of the bluff. Then every person who was able unloaded wagons and began carrying the gear to the top. Once this was completed, twenty men ascended to the top of the bluff with the fourteen pairs of oxen. It was almost too steep for the beasts to climb without pulling anything at all. They then tied together two lengths of rope that would total at least five hundred feet apiece and dropped them down to the bottom of the bluff. They tied both ropes to a wagon axle and the other ends to the teams of oxen at the top of the bluff. In this way, every wagon was hauled up to the top, one vertical foot at a time, where they were finally reloaded with gear and supplies.
The teams were rested through the remainder of the day, and on the morrow all passed through Carson’s Pass and then to the South Fork of the American River. Within two days, they began to see mining operations along the river. They shouted to the miners. “How far to Sutter’s Mill, friend?”
The reply came back. “Takes about two days, less’n yore thirsty!”
When three men got sick that evening with terrible diarrhea, B. F. remembered what Del had said about not drinking downstream. He warned the Fitzwaters, and they resolved to find good water. B. F. rode higher up the mountain to fill their canteens with what appeared to be clean spring water.
By morning, three more men were sick, and the original three were dead and gone. Almost all the men without wagons slipped away from the small train and proceeded on downstream toward their destination. By early afternoon, the wagons were released from their obligation when the last of the six men died, including Mary’s two potential suitors, Quinn and Hancock. They had crossed a continent, and the gold fields were down hill from where they fell. It just didn’t seem right.
They descended out of the Sierra Madre Mountains into what could only be described as foothills. From that point downstream, there was a solid line of prospecting operations on both sides of the River. Some of the digs were right at the riverbank, others had shoveled trenches at least ten feet long into the hillside, and a few men were working in deep shafts starting some fifty feet up the hill.
One of the claims involved men working in a group over a sluice box. One man shoveled dirt, clay, and gravel into a wooden box, while another washed it down by means of redirecting at least a portion of the flow of the stream through the box. Other sites were using a larger trough with a sieve on the lower end. Underneath the sieve was a smaller box with ripples on it. Gold and finer gravel filtered through the sieve and got caught in the ripples. In this process, two men shoveled and a third washed down their quarry.
Panning for gold was actually referred to as “prospecting” In other words, the miner was checking the prospects of that particular area with a pan. If he found adequate evidence of gold in his pan, then he would stake his claim and pursue his prospects further by digging, or mining, into the embankment.
Claims were marked with painted stakes and all manner of signs, then defended with powder and lead and lives. Every man they saw wore a gun. Holes were dug everywhere—beside the road, along the creek, and up and down the hillsides. The location of the diggings seemed to be so uncoordinated that they must have been the result of a combination of greed and wild hunches or a group of very inebriated strategists.
Everything seemed to be wet because of all the operations involving large volumes of water. The road was so muddy, the assumption would logically be that a big storm had just passed through. The sides of the hills in every direction were spotted with dirty canvas tents strung under scraggly digger pines. The tents may have been white once upon a time, but that was long past. Their wagons approached a group of wooden buildings, which were gathered along the south bank of a creek. The sign on the road proclaimed the place Hangtown. It was September 12—five months and two days out of West Port.
Twenty-Two
The Miner’s Rest
Hangtown, California 1849
B. F. considered the huge oak tree standing beside the town’s main street. He couldn’t help noticing there were remnants of at least three different hemp ropes strung around a large limb twelve feet above the ground. Perhaps this tree was the source of the town’s name?
The few remaining wagons began to separate away with all the resulting tears of parting. But the urge to dig, to get hands in the dirt, was almost overpowering. They had been traveling across a whole country for this. This was no time to stand around and reminisce—it was time to get rich.
The strategy in the Fitzwater wagon was not so simple. They looked at their resources—cook pots and skillets, comb and scissors, and a quarter of their food staples left over from the journey. They still had a bit of money, but it would last no time at all in an economy where flour was a dollar a pound rather than the six cents they had paid in West Port.
Faced with splitting up and looking for a location for their business, Mary spoke up. “B. F., why don’t you look for something close to where all those miners are walking up and down this main road? Me an Janie an Ethan’ll ride down this way. We need somethin’ out of the weather. And maybe you better find out where the competition is and if they can cook. We’ll meet back here around five o’clock.”
It was early afternoon when B. F. stopped at the El Dorado Hotel and Parlor House, where three tables were already playing cards. At least a couple of the men looked and sounded as though they were already under the sway of the bottle of whisky in front of them. He spoke to the old man at the desk. “Sir, do you have a room for rent?”
“We got a room with a bunk that you can share with another feller. One of you sleeps nights and one days. Comes with breakfast and supper. Be twelve dollars a day.”
“How’s the food?”
“Hardly anybody has died of it. But you need to get to the table early if you figure on getting anything to eat.”
“Is there a barber around here?”
“There’s one over at Bottle Hill, and I think over at Shingle Springs.” He called to one of the tables. “Hey Irish, where is that barber cuts yer hair?”
One of the gamblers answered back but kept his eyes on the table in front of him. “Me former barber, Wilmot Klady, unexpectedly met his maker last week over to Shingle Springs due to a sudden case of lead poisoning. He and an agitated fellow from Australia got into an unfortunate disagreement over the accuracy of Wilmot’s gold scale.”
B. F. looked on down the street for other opportunities. When he entered the Placer Saloon, he was surprised to see at least fifteen men drinking. Most appeared to be dressed in rough clothing, but they all apparently had gold to spend. A sign on the wall said “Our finest champagne $16 a quart. Aged whisky $16 a pint.”
“Boy, what’re you doin’ in here?” The voice came from a woman with absolutely red hair that was almost the same color as her rouged lips.
“Ma’
am, I’m looking for a good meal at a good price.”
“They serve one meal a day here in the evening. They only cook one thing—a big steak and the fixin’s. It’s sixteen dollars.”
“Why is everything sixteen dollars in here?”
“Not everything is sixteen dollars. Some things cost more.” She halfway smiled, but there didn’t seem to be any joy in it. “Sixteen dollars is the price of an ounce of gold dust.”
“Thank you, ma’am.”
“Name’s Eliza Bedwell, honey. Nice to meet you—and stay outa places like this. There’s nothing good ever happens in here.”
He turned at the east end of the main street when the line of buildings ran out, and headed back the other direction. Just west of the hanging tree was a supply store. Like the other places in town, it was a frame building that appeared to have been thrown together pretty quickly. None of the businesses had seen a coat of paint, and all were in various degrees of weathering. The supply store was a large building that had a lean-to storage room off to the side, and a rough sign that proclaimed it Yukon’s Grocery and Supplies. Maybe it looked bigger than it actually was, because the only customer was an older fellow on crutches whose sole interest seemed to be sitting by the wood stove and chewing the fat.
B. F. looked at several prices in the store. A dozen eggs were six dollars, ten pounds of potatoes was twelve dollars, and a plain old roasting hen in a wooden cage was ten dollars. No wonder the place was so empty. How could anyone afford to live here? Was there really enough gold for men to pay these prices?
The man behind the counter wore a pistol strapped to his waist. He appeared to be around forty years old—plenty of grey hair beginning to show through the dark brown—and he seemed to cough too much. “What do you need, son?”
“Sir, we just came in on a wagon train this afternoon, and I can’t help but notice these prices. Do the miners find enough gold to pay this much money for food?”
“Some of them are rich as Croesus. Most of them just find enough dust to make them keep digging. When they do find anything to speak of, they spend it in one of the saloons. Most live off corn mush and beans the rest of the time.”
“Why are prices so high?”
“Everything has to come in by wagon from Yerba Buena. It takes five days just to get here. Since everything costs so much, there are bandits on the road, so the wagons all have a couple of guards too. I’m beginning to think I oughta be in the grog shop bizness. I did some mining myself ’til I got this here consumption. The doc said I had to get out from under the ground. Sold my share off and bought this doggone store.”
“You don’t know a man by the name of Daniel Windes do you?”
“Never heard of him. Friend of yours?”
“He’s my pa. I hope to find him here. My name’s B. F. Windes.”
“Well, B. F., nice to meet you. I’m Jakob Benkov. Most folks around here just call me Yukon Jack. I come down here from Alaska last year. Got so I’m used to this weather, and I ain’t intending to go back.”
“Nice to meet you sir.”
B. F. met the Fitzwaters back at the hanging tree. “What did you find?”
Mary had to smile. “Well, I got me two proposals of marriage this afternoon, and plenty offers to share a cabin with all kinds of miners. The craziest one was six fellers that musta been some kinda furriners. They all had real black hair and had it tied in a long pigtail down their backs. They had some strange lookin’ eyes, like I never saw before. Only one could speak English, and he says they all wanted to marry me.” She laughed for the first time in two months. “One big happy family. Durndest thing I ever heard.”
Jane looked at her ma and shook her head before she spoke up. “We went down two streets, Cedar Ravine Road and Log Cabin Ravine, down to Oregon Ravine. Don’t know why everthing is a Ravine here. Anyway, all we found was miners and shacks and holes in the ground. Ain’t no business down that way. We’re starting to think we’ll have to work out of the wagon.”
Mary looked at the expression on B. F.’s face. “You got a grin on yer face like the wave on a slop bucket. You found somethin’ didn’t you.” It wasn’t a question.
“It’s possible. I didn’t talk to the man yet. Let me tell you what I’m thinking.”
The deal was a mixture of what they wanted and what they had to give up. It turned out that Yukon had no desire to go into the saloon business, nor did he want to sell out. What he wanted was to hang around his friends and be a witness to those rare days when some miner hit it big and the whole town celebrated. Plus he wanted more miners in his store. What B. F. and the Fitzwaters needed was a place out of the weather, space enough to work, and access to cheaper groceries. A compromise was reached and hands shook.
My story. On September 15 year of 1849
After five months on the trail, we are here in Hangtown, California. The town is nothing but saloons, hotels, gambling halls, and two stores and all of them are here to make sure the miners hand over their gold as fast as they can dig it up.
A man named Yukon Jack has let us put a diner and a barber chair in his store. For the last three days we’ve been moving his stock into a smaller area, turning his bedroom into a kitchen, and building me a barbershop in a lean-to on the side of the store. We took apart some of the shelves and turned them into tables and benches. Mary even ordered a cast iron stove from San Francisco. We open for business in the morning. I have seen no sign of my pa.
The five of them were proud of their work as they stood outside in the street and admired the new sign Miner’s Rest - Good Cooking – Supplies - Barber.
They speculated it would be a while before they turned much of a profit, as Yukon had to spot them some tin plates, cups, and utensils, as well as his entire stock of eggs and ham. But within a week, Mary and Jane were serving three meals a day, B. F. was cutting some of the scroungiest heads of hair he had ever seen, and Yukon’s store was never empty.
If they had been able to hire a driver and guards to make runs back and forth to the suppliers in San Francisco, they would have kept the wagon and oxen. But it didn’t seem to make sense to just keep them out back and continually struggle to find feed for the stock. They stripped everything out of it and the Fitzwaters simply slept in the kitchen, while B. F. put a pallet down in his barbershop.
Because most miners rode mules or horses, or just walked into town, it was rare for wagons to go on the market in Hangtown, and those that did were commonly used for sleeping quarters. So within two hours of putting a sign out front to sell her covered wagon and double yoke of oxen, Mary had the ridiculous sum of thirty ounces of gold in her hands. Of course, that little transaction meant that now she had to stay—unless she wanted to spend half her gold on stagecoach transportation for her family to San Fran.
The next day, B. F. did something he hated to do—he put a similar sign up to sell his pony. He had quickly discovered he had to cut three heads of hair every day just to keep the horse fed and in a stable, and he had not ridden her a single time since they arrived. When Jane saw the sign, first it hurt her feelings, then it made her good and mad. “That little horse brung you all the way from Missouri, and now that she’s earned a rest, you up and sell her. Did you ever figger that other people cared about the pony?”
“Jane, it doesn’t make any sense to keep the horse. It costs five dollars a day just to feed and stable her. And she hasn’t been ridden since we got here.”
“I’m gonna ask ma to buy her.”
“Jane, I’m asking a hundred and fifty dollars.”
She stomped off in disgust. Later that afternoon he was paid nine ounces of gold for his pony by a miner who was buying her for the chaste and innocent Miss Lila Fontaine over at the Pot o’ Gold Hotel.
B. F. had known that Mary was a talented cook, but his experience up to this point had been under the primitive kitchen resources of the Trail. When she had the luxury of a cookstove and a fireplace, the meals she produced made addicts out of her customers. It
was hard to tell if the miners who came by every day were there because of the feeling it gave them to be around an attractive, unmarried, pleasant, and wholesome woman or because her biscuits were so good you would wake up dreaming about them.
The barbershop was improving. B. F. was able to put a bench around one wall to accommodate the two or three men who always seemed to be sitting around—whether talking or waiting their turn. He and Yukon built the floor around his barber chair six inches higher than the rest of the shop, so he wouldn’t have to stand on his tiptoes all day.
He purchased a full-length mirror to go on the wall, and it served as a final primping point before miners went down to the Placer Saloon to talk to Miss Bedwell or Miss Monique Orleans. Haircuts, like everything else, were more expensive in Hangtown—two dollars for a haircut and a dollar for a trimmed beard.
Some of his customers tried hard to get themselves together before they came by, but others smelled like they had been sleeping with either a wet dog or a dead dog. He finally prevailed on Mary to help solve his problem, so she used a knife to mix gum of camphor and menthol crystals into a liquid. It was a mystifying thing to see her mix the two solids together and end up with a liquid. She finished off the concoction by mixing that into some lanolin. Thereafter, when a particularly noxious gentleman entered the barbershop, B. F. would take a bit of this ointment and dab it on his upper lip, right under his nose. It usually was effective, but unfortunately, a few customers had a stench that would even penetrate this layer of protection.
Yukon Jack generally spent as much time sitting at the long serving table as he did behind his store counter. It had become pretty obvious that he had packed on at least fifteen pounds in the short weeks since his business transformed. Part of the fiscal arrangement was that he was able to eat his meals for free. The problem was that his meals seemed to last about an hour and a half. If Mary pulled a hot cobbler off the fire, he was determined to have “just a taste” every time she did.