Living at French Gulch
Copyright Joanne Harris 2008
By the time I was about eight I begin to remember doing things by myself. We lived on French Gulch, at the bottom of French Meadow but on the other side of the fence. Through the meadow and across an old bridge out another gate of the meadow, you came to John Watkins’ claim. John and Anna Watkins had a cabin there. It was two-story and had three rooms downstairs.
They had an outhouse, a three-holer, and we girls used to have fun in there. We girls would go into there and lock the boys out. There was another boy around, besides my brother. We went in there to talk and you might as well do two things at once. That three-holer was really uptown.
The Watkins mine was called the Squaw Pocket, so they were miners, sort of. Most of the people up there were miners, sort of. I guess the Morlands took it pretty seriously. Art Griswold, who owned the Bowman, actually had another mine also.
Mining had pretty well slowed down. During the Second World War there was no money for mining. It was suspended in many places because of the necessity of taking the people and the money for the war.
Sometimes Dixie Lee Cassidy, Anna Watkins’ granddaughter was there. We’d go over there, my sister and I, and sometimes Beverly, to visit and play.
Anna had a quilting frame. When you weren’t using it you pulled on a pulley and it pulled it up into the ceiling. When you wanted to work on it, you dropped it down and the ladies sat around and quilted. I can remember seeing that. It was an actual quilting party the way they used to be. This would have been in the Forties.
Somehow they had a fawn. We’ve all seen Bambi, and isn’t he sweet. Let me tell you, fawns are vicious. This particular fawn attacked my brother regularly, right up to the time he was a yearling. It didn’t attack the rest of us, just him. It stood up and struck with those really razor sharp hooves. My brother carried a monkey wrench with a missing movable jaw whenever he went over there. When the deer came after him, Fritz hit it between the ears with it with all his might. Then the fawn would leave him alone for a while. People would say, “Well, stop it, deer, don’t do that,” but Fritz always carried his wrench.
The Watkins were neighbors. One of the problems with going to the cabin was you had to drive right by their house to go through the gate, into the meadow, across a bridge and out the other gate to where our cabin was. If you didn’t want them to know you were in – well-- there was no way of getting around it. So Mama set out to build a road that came in another way.
It came out of – what was it? – no, it wasn’t Claraville – Bella Union, that was it --anyhow, the road cut off from there and it followed a fairly natural path. The work was done with shovels. You cleared the brush and moved a few rocks, drove the car back and forth over it, and pretty soon it began to be a track. Then we came around a hill – I can picture the whole thing in my mind – and then went down through a low spot which was on a claim called Grey Squirrel which my father had filed on, besides our claim which was High, Wide and Handsome. Then it came along an old ditch left over from the Gold Rush days. This was a water ditch. The ditch systems were very extensive very quickly after the Gold Rush started. I really don’t remember where this ditch started, but it went along the hill above the cabin and across the mine dump that was there at that cabin. (We didn’t start that mine. We did some work in it because we had to do assessment work.) And then it went along the hill. The road came to the ditch and went along the hill, which was rather a steep hill. You couldn’t have built a road there without this ditch. It was sort of flat and filled, and then when the road got to the dump came down a very steep hill and you could park right at the cabin.
Showing posts with label Bowman Mine. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Bowman Mine. Show all posts
Thursday, February 12, 2009
Tuesday, February 3, 2009
The Morlands, The Bowman Mine
The Morlands, the Bowman Mine and Other Postcard Memories
© Joanne H. Harris, 2009
We lived in various places. We lived at Art Griswold’s Bowman Mine for a while. Daddy was a partner in the mine. The Bowman was a mine up above French Meadow, and it had been a good mine. But it was a very loose, unstable hill to go through. You had to cap and stall the tunnel: those are the things that support the ceiling, and you had to put boards all the way along.
There was a shaft in there, and a pocket of gold. But the shaft had semi caved in before anybody could get the gold out. So Art told Daddy that if he would go down the shaft and then along the tunnel for a ways, and find the pocket of gold, they would give him a third interest in the mine. So Daddy did it: he went down there and got the gold. Daddy was amazingly agile. When he worked for the fire department, he was a lineman. He could shinny up poles, climb trees. Even so, recovering the gold was an absolutely amazing thing to do. But he was young. He couldn’t have been more than 28 or 29. So this would have been around 1935 0r 1936.
There is a picture of me at the Bowman. I couldn’t be more than two years old. The chronology of when we were where, I just can’t tell you.
Mother told me this story. We were living at the Bowman Mine. A bunch of guys came up to work the mine, which had a stamp mill with three stamps, donkey engine and one of these big belts. That stuff was still there when I was thirteen years old. It was a working mine and in those days they used a lot of cyanide in processing and separating the gold. I guess they still do. Down below the stamp mill about 500 feet was a cyanide pond. It was about twenty feet across when full. It dried up after a while. We kids were always warned, “Stay away from it.” Every now and then you’d find a dead cow down there.
Anyway, Mama was at the mine and these guys wanted her to cook for them. She threw them out and they had to go cook for themselves. She had Audrey, Beverly, me and Fritz, and I guess she had Beverly's brother, Dana, too. Way up on top of the mountain Mattie Morland and her husband, Earl, had a mine. I was in there once. It was amazing. It started with a shaft that went down a couple of hundred feet.
Mattie was six feet tall, a big woman, not fat even slightly. She had heard that about a lone woman with a bunch of kids staying down at the Bowman Mine and decided she’d better come down there and meet her. Now Mother was a tough person, but she came from South Pasadena, a very civilized place. Here comes great, tall Mattie wearing overhauls and carrying a large pistol. She was very primitive looking. She walked about ten miles to introduce herself, visit, and help Mother understand how things were on the mountain.
I don’t remember this at all. This is the story I’ve heard. Mattie decided she would stay overnight. That night Mother put us all to bed and then Mattie climbed in bed with Mother. Mother was shocked. But Mattie wasn’t queer, but there was the children’s bed and the adults’ bed. This was the primitive way: you shared the bed. Mattie was a wonderful woman and my folks were friends with the Morlands until they died thirty years later. They were good people.
Nick Williams built a new board shack on the mountain. We called it a shack because it wasn’t log. He had a log cabin in the old meadow. There was a wonderful spring by it. The water just poured out of the ground, a hundred gallons a minute. He built the new cabin out of sawed boards across the road from the old cabin because the old one was rotting into the ground. He was very proud of his new cabin. It had three rooms and two doors. In back it had a nice outhouse and a barn.
Once when Nick wasn’t there my father and Mother’s brother, Norwin, played a joke. They were always doing juvenile things. They put a sign up front of the shack that said “Public Restrooms.” Daddy put a sign over the front door which said “Women” and a sign sticking out over the side door that said “Men.” This was because the building looked so out of place on the mountain. There wasn’t another one like it on the mountain at that time.
Nick and family came back and found these signs and thought, “Who could have done this?” They decided that the Morlands had done it. So when Mattie had all her clothes hung on the line and she and Earl had gone somewhere, the Williamses snuck up there and tied all Mattie’s clothes in knots. Mattie and Earl reckoned as how – I don’t know who they reckoned as how, but they didn’t think about my folks. It was a good thing because by that time jokes had begun to go around the mountain. My folks kept a low profile. I guess we were living on French Gulch by this time.
© Joanne H. Harris, 2009
We lived in various places. We lived at Art Griswold’s Bowman Mine for a while. Daddy was a partner in the mine. The Bowman was a mine up above French Meadow, and it had been a good mine. But it was a very loose, unstable hill to go through. You had to cap and stall the tunnel: those are the things that support the ceiling, and you had to put boards all the way along.
There was a shaft in there, and a pocket of gold. But the shaft had semi caved in before anybody could get the gold out. So Art told Daddy that if he would go down the shaft and then along the tunnel for a ways, and find the pocket of gold, they would give him a third interest in the mine. So Daddy did it: he went down there and got the gold. Daddy was amazingly agile. When he worked for the fire department, he was a lineman. He could shinny up poles, climb trees. Even so, recovering the gold was an absolutely amazing thing to do. But he was young. He couldn’t have been more than 28 or 29. So this would have been around 1935 0r 1936.
There is a picture of me at the Bowman. I couldn’t be more than two years old. The chronology of when we were where, I just can’t tell you.
Mother told me this story. We were living at the Bowman Mine. A bunch of guys came up to work the mine, which had a stamp mill with three stamps, donkey engine and one of these big belts. That stuff was still there when I was thirteen years old. It was a working mine and in those days they used a lot of cyanide in processing and separating the gold. I guess they still do. Down below the stamp mill about 500 feet was a cyanide pond. It was about twenty feet across when full. It dried up after a while. We kids were always warned, “Stay away from it.” Every now and then you’d find a dead cow down there.
Anyway, Mama was at the mine and these guys wanted her to cook for them. She threw them out and they had to go cook for themselves. She had Audrey, Beverly, me and Fritz, and I guess she had Beverly's brother, Dana, too. Way up on top of the mountain Mattie Morland and her husband, Earl, had a mine. I was in there once. It was amazing. It started with a shaft that went down a couple of hundred feet.
Mattie was six feet tall, a big woman, not fat even slightly. She had heard that about a lone woman with a bunch of kids staying down at the Bowman Mine and decided she’d better come down there and meet her. Now Mother was a tough person, but she came from South Pasadena, a very civilized place. Here comes great, tall Mattie wearing overhauls and carrying a large pistol. She was very primitive looking. She walked about ten miles to introduce herself, visit, and help Mother understand how things were on the mountain.
I don’t remember this at all. This is the story I’ve heard. Mattie decided she would stay overnight. That night Mother put us all to bed and then Mattie climbed in bed with Mother. Mother was shocked. But Mattie wasn’t queer, but there was the children’s bed and the adults’ bed. This was the primitive way: you shared the bed. Mattie was a wonderful woman and my folks were friends with the Morlands until they died thirty years later. They were good people.
Nick Williams built a new board shack on the mountain. We called it a shack because it wasn’t log. He had a log cabin in the old meadow. There was a wonderful spring by it. The water just poured out of the ground, a hundred gallons a minute. He built the new cabin out of sawed boards across the road from the old cabin because the old one was rotting into the ground. He was very proud of his new cabin. It had three rooms and two doors. In back it had a nice outhouse and a barn.
Once when Nick wasn’t there my father and Mother’s brother, Norwin, played a joke. They were always doing juvenile things. They put a sign up front of the shack that said “Public Restrooms.” Daddy put a sign over the front door which said “Women” and a sign sticking out over the side door that said “Men.” This was because the building looked so out of place on the mountain. There wasn’t another one like it on the mountain at that time.
Nick and family came back and found these signs and thought, “Who could have done this?” They decided that the Morlands had done it. So when Mattie had all her clothes hung on the line and she and Earl had gone somewhere, the Williamses snuck up there and tied all Mattie’s clothes in knots. Mattie and Earl reckoned as how – I don’t know who they reckoned as how, but they didn’t think about my folks. It was a good thing because by that time jokes had begun to go around the mountain. My folks kept a low profile. I guess we were living on French Gulch by this time.
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