Stagecoach Publishing

By Alton Pryor

William Bradshaw and the Bradshaw Trail started in San Bernardino and ended in La Paz, Arizona, which is now Ehrenberg.

This trail was used  heavily during the 15-year-period from 1862 to 1877. It consists of about 65 miles of graded road that crosses public land between the Chuckawalla Mountains and the Chocolate Mountains Aerial Gunnery Range.

Bradshaw had a good friend named Horace Bell. Well, Bell characterized Bradshaw as “the most polished gentleman” and at the same time, “a natural lunatic.”

Bradshaw  decided to capitalize on what he saw as an opportunity. He knew that Powell Weaver, who was a well-known scout and trapper, had found gold on the Arizona side of the Colorado River.

He figured that once word of the gold find got out, there would be a stampede of gold miners that would need a more direct trail east from Los Angeles to reach the gold strike at La Paz.

Bradshaw recruited eight men to scout out  the most direct route to La Paz. He led the newly-formed search party eastward across an almost totally unknown desert area toward the Colorado River.

According to Delmar Ross, who wrote about Bradshaw’s trail-blazing in his book, “Gold Road to La Paz”,  Bradshaw and his party received help from Old Cabezon, chief of the Cahuilla Indians, and from a Cocomaricopa Indian mail runner from Arizona who was visiting the Cahuilla villages.

Two Indians provided Bradshaw with a map of an ancient Halchidoma Indian trade route through the Colorado Desert. Of particular importance, the map showed the location of important springs and water holes.

Well, Bradshaw and his party did reach La Paz. He then established a ferry across the Colorado River. Teamsters delivered 30 to 50 passengers plus freight to the ferry each day and Bradshaw prospered.

But as miners exhausted the supply of gold at La Paz, travelers along Bradshaw’s Trail also petered out.

Bradshaw, however, never saw the decline in the use of his once-famous trail. In 1864, Bradshaw was tormented after a night of heavy drinking. He was found dead in La Paz.

According to an article titled “The Bradshaw Trail”, published on the Arizona Outdoorsman Internet Site, Bradshaw walked deliberately into a carpenter’s shop in La Paz, picked up a drawing knife, and with a single stroke nearly severed his own head from his shoulders.

— Alton Pryor

I sometimes curse my bad luck. “Why should I be the one to suffer from macular degeneration when I love to read so much?”
Then, I ask myself, “Why shouldn’t it be me?” Instead of asking why it is happening to me, I should be so very thankful that I’ve had so many wonderful years when I could have  my head stuck in a book.
Maybe it’s time to get my head out of the books and start looking around me at what other people have been putting up with for years.
I have a dear friend who is now in her 90s. I met her when I was learning to play bridge. She was the most calm, cool and collected person I’ve ever known. Never once have I heard her complain about anything, even when she suffered through the trials of being my partner.
Yet, she has macular degeneration so bad she is legally blind. She can barely read at all, but she plays bridge like a pro. When a hand is dealt, she makes sure of the cards she has, looking closely at each one, sometimes from a peripheral angle to view the numbers.
I just hope I can go through the rest of my life with her calm acceptance of what for her is a more debilitating ailment than it is for me.
When I view my eye problem in this way, it makes me feel sort of lucky. I’m not so bad off after all.

— Alton Pryor

By Alton Pryor

They drew straws to see who would kill the babies.

It was a fall day at an Indian encampment in the Tonto Basin of Arizona. Lined up on their cradleboards against a rock wall were seven little Apache babies. The weather was so nice, some babies slept while others gazed out upon the strange world around them.

The late Roscoe G. Willson, in his Arizona Tales run regularly by The Arizona Republic newspaper, told this story. The story illustrated how otherwise hard-bitten men could not overcome the power that emanates from a baby.

All about the camp, in 1871, there was a scene of great activity. The men in the Apache camp came dashing in at early morn, driving a large herd of horses, stolen that very morning from the Bowers Ranch east of Prescott, Arizona.

The Apache men and women of the camp were excited as they talked about their great success. The women busied themselves cooking the meat of a horse they had slaughtered. They laid strips of raw horseflesh on the oak bushes to dry while they cooked the larger portion of horsemeat over an open fire.

When the meat was cooked, the men gorged themselves on the sweet horseflesh, which they favored above all other. When the men finished, the women too, then ate with gusto.

After tending and nursing their babies, the cherubs were returned to their papoose baskets along the wall. The women joined the group of men sleeping off their heavy meal beneath the deep shade of oak trees.

Soon, a clattering of blue jays signaled to the Indians that something was amiss. Before the Indians could rise to their feet, rifle shots rang out from the hillsides and oak thickets. Several Apache men and women were killed before they could rise.

The attackers were settlers from Prescott, on the hunt for the horses stolen that morning from the Bowers Ranch. John B. Townsend, an Indian fighter, headed the group. The Indians knew him to be brave and fearless and held him in great respect.

It wasn’t until after the last Apache had either escaped, disappeared, or been killed that the seven little Indian babies were discovered resting against the wall.

This presented a problem for the rugged white men. In their attacks on settlers, the Apache Indians didn’t hesitate to kill white women and children.

Captain Townsend looked at the babies snuggled in their papoose baskets. He scratched his head, knowing that usually the babies should be killed. But Townsend shuddered at the thought. “Good God,” he asked himself, who could kill a baby in cold blood?”

Others in the party felt the babies should be killed, but the only question was, who would do the job.

Townsend decided the issue by saying they would draw straws to see who would commit the horrendous deed. Grass stems of different lengths were drawn. Townsend held the short straw.

When he pulled his pistol and stepped toward the nearest infant, the baby gurgled, wrinkled its face and smiled back at him. John’s only vision at that point was a picture of his own baby girl back at his Agua Fria Ranch.

His pistol hand dropped to his side. He turned to his companions and murmured, “I just can’t do it boys. Some one else will have go through with this.”

Ed Wright, John’s neighbor on the Agua Fria, stepped forward. “Boys, we can’t any of us kill those babies I don’t care if the Apaches have killed some of our children. We weren’t raised like these Indians, and we’d all feel like murderers if we cold-bloodedly killed the little varmints. Let’s leave ‘em where they are and go make camp.”

A sigh of relief sounded through the crowd. After making camp that evening, Ed Wright and some of the others used rawhide rope to lash the seven baby baskets high enough off the ground to be safe from coyotes or other varmints.

The next morning, the babies and their cradles were gone.



— Alton Pryor

By Alton Pryor

Gold miners were a superstitious lot, but none were more superstitious than the Cornish miners.

The Cornish belief that certain supernatural powers protected their efforts was heartfelt and real.

Belief can be a powerful force, even making you see things that don’t exist. When the hard-rock miners went underground, they believed wholeheartedly that underground elves existed.

These elves were called Tommyknockers.

In a 1989 issue of Sierra Heritage Magazine, Gary Noy writes about the Tommyknockers.

Even though the Cornish were superstitious, they were the most sought after hard-rock mining workers. Centuries of labor in the tin mines of Cornwall, England, gave these hardy workers a vast knowledge of tunneling and other mining techniques.

This knowledge, Noy writes, was perfectly suited to the mines of northern California. Along with these skills, the Cornish brought their colorful language, festive personalities, ironic view of life, and mining superstitions.

Cornish miners, considered the greatest miners in the world, were brought in to California to check the tunnel work of the Chinese by having them work in separate tunnels at the same time the Chinese were working. The Chinese, without fail, would cut more rock in a week than the Cornish miners did. The Cornish men left in disgust, saying they would no longer work with the Chinese.

The Cornish miner approached the dirty and dangerous task of hard-rock mining with irony, and with good cheer. One Cornish miner, when asked how to find a rich pocket of gold, replied, “Well, where gold is, it is, and where it hain’t, there be I.”

These Cornish miners imported their Tommyknockers to the Gold Country.

Tommyknockers were said to be direct descendants of ancient elves known as Vugs and Piskies. After emigrating to the Gold Country, the elves became Americanized and grew to be as important to the miner as his tin lunchbox, his hard hat, carbide lamp, and double jack.

Many Cornish miners refused to enter a mine until assured that tommyknockers were on duty, providing warnings, and helpful directions.

According to stories handed down from generation to generation, there were two kinds of tommyknockers that inhabited the mine—the friendly, helpful elf, and the mischievous nuisance elf.

Both are described as being little men about two feet high, dressed in miniature mining attire, complete with tiny picks, hard hats, and lunch buckets.

Germans call the elves Berggeister or Bergmanniein. This means ‘ghosts” or “little miners”. They watch over the earth’s precious ores and metals.

The elves that befriended the miners also watched over the miners’ children. More important, they worked alongside the miners deep in the mines. The elves led miners to rich ore veins, tested shaft conditions, pried down loose rocks, and issued life-saving warnings about cave-ins, water leaks, and runaway carts by tapping on air pipes or timber supports.

Miners could readily recall times when tommyknockers saved their lives.

Frank Crampton, writing about tommyknockers in his book, Deep Enough, insists that the little elves saved his life.

Crampton had just squeezed into a tiny underground crawl space to load sticks of dynamite for blasting. He carefully placed the dynamite, lit the fuse, and then, according to Crampton, “The Tommyknockers began to raise hell,” making all kinds of warning noises.

Instead of crawling out of the hole carefully, Crampton put on a head of steam to extract himself. As he exited the area, the whole thing blasted to pieces.

“I was lucky to get off with a few cuts and bruises from flying rock,” he wrote. “I owed my life to the tommyknockers, these unseen, wee, small folk.”

In another mining incident, this one at the Empire Mine in Grass Valley, California, a massive cave-in collapsed hundreds of feet of tunnel and caused extensive flooding—all during a shift change.

The miners firmly believed that tommyknockers held up the rock until the crew got out, and then released it. As was their common practice, the miners expressed their belief to the mine management.

In a 1957 interview in the Sacramento Bee, retired miner Fred Nettell, a member of a Grass Valley Cornish family, described the miners attitude toward tommyknockers.

“When a Cornish miner of the old school tells you how his life was saved by a tommyknocker’s warning, he is not being facetious. His respect and feeling toward these underground elves is almost religious.”

When the tommyknockers are bad, they are believed to hurt miners who doubt their power or do not believe in them. They can also bring misery, fear and death when they are mad. Earthquakes were once believed to be their handiwork.

(Alton Pryor has been a writer for magazines, newspapers, and wire services. He worked for United Press International in their Sacramento Bureau, handling both printed press as well as radio news. He traveled the state as a field editor for California Farmer Magazine for 27 years.  He is now the author of 21 books, primarily on California and western history.  His books can be seen at www.stagecoachpublishing.com.  Readers can email him at stagecoach@surewest.net.)

— Alton Pryor

The coastal town was proud of its prohibition against alcohol.  The town was originally founded as a religious retreat for Methodists wanting to become closer to God by living and worshiping in the beautiful forest that He had created.

At the Howard Street Methodist Episcopal Church in San Francisco on June 1, 1875, a group of people held the first meeting of the Pacific Grove Retreat Association.

Among the major concerns of the group was the sale of intoxicants.  The blue laws, often referred to as the “Rules by the Founding Fathers,” dealt with some rather diverse subjects.

They included things such as the behavior that would be allowed on the grounds, the delivery of baggage on Sundays, staying out past 10:30 p.m., smoking on platforms or near public buildings, cursing, and walking around clad only in a bathing suit.

The provisions concerning alcohol were particularly strict.

Even those buying property had to agree to a provision in the lease that prohibited the sale of liquor on the property.  This clause also prohibited gambling on such property.

The town became known as the “Chautauqua-by-the-Sea”, a community of culture and learning.  The first camp meeting of the Pacific Coast branch of the Chautauqua Literary and Scientific Circle was held in 1879.

The event was fashioned after the Methodist Sunday school teachers’ training camp established in 1874 at Lake Chautauqua, N.Y.

Pacific Grove built Chautauqua Hall in 1881, which became known as the Old Chapel or Assembly Hall.

Speakers were said to come from all over the world to lecture at what had become a well-known cultural center in the west.  At the end of each season, the town held its “Feast of Lanterns”, which signified the closing of each Chautauqua until the next summer.

In November 1879, after the summer campers returned home, Robert Louis Stevenson wandered into the deserted campgrounds:  “I have never been in any place so dreamlike.  Indeed, it was not so much like a deserted town as like a scene upon the stage by daylight, and with no one on the boards.”

It wasn’t until 1927 that Pacific Grove Retreat decided to become a legitimate town.

Residents of Pacific Grove soon learned that the city’s strict control over the sale of alcohol was hurting them economically.

Tourists were welcome visitors to the Monterey Bay area, and their dollars were important, even to Pacific Grove.

But many of the tourists, not able to relax with a glass of wine at dinner, simply drove to neighboring towns outside the dry area, such as Monterey, Watsonville or Santa Cruz for dinner.

Soon, the tourists began staying at hotels in towns that allowed the sale of alcohol, alleviating the necessity of driving back to Pacific Grove after dinner.

It didn’t take Pacific Grove’s city fathers long to realize they were losing money to surrounding communities because of the ban on alcohol.  Residents began holding meetings to discuss the need to legalize alcohol.

Strong campaigns emerged to abolish the “no alcohol” law.  Merchants felt they were at a great disadvantage with their neighboring communities, especially Monterey, which was their main competitor.

The Monterey Herald reported, “There are no bars, liquor stores, nor cocktail lounges in Pacific Grove and there may never be any.  The original deed restrictions provided for a town whose lips would never touch liquor.”

Leading the fray to keep Pacific Grove dry was Mrs. Elmarie Dyke, who moved to Pacific Grove with her family in 1909.

Mrs. Dyke had graduated from Pacific Grove high school, and later became a schoolteacher in the city’s schools.  She also reinstated and produced the Feast of Lanterns from 1963 until 1980.

Her strong determination was not enough to keep alcohol out of Pacific Grove.

Pacific Grove Mayor Bob Quinn noted at one meeting that Pacific Grove residents didn’t drink any less than their neighbors.  There were just as many liquor bottles in the trash in Pacific Grove, but the people just could not buy it there.

Finally, in 1968, the City of Pacific Grove decided to vote on the issue of whether the laws barring alcohol should be repealed.  The measure passed easily on a vote of 3383 to 2269.

Even today the consumption of alcohol in public places in Pacific Grove is restricted to sit-down restaurants where food is served.

Liquor can be purchased, however, at a limited number of closely monitored package stores.

(Alton Pryor has been a writer for magazines, newspapers, and wire services. He worked for United Press International in their Sacramento Bureau, handling both printed press as well as radio news. He traveled the state as a field editor for California Farmer Magazine for 27 years.  He is now the author of 21 books, primarily on California and western history.  His books can be seen at www.stagecoachpublishing.com.  Readers can email him at stagecoach@surewest.net.)

— Alton Pryor

I thought I would never be able to report this, but my left eye, which had bleeding going on behind the retina,  is now clearer. The doctor gave me a grid chart to look at each day to see if there was any improvement.  This morning, it was definitely better.

While I’m elated, I don’t want to jump the gun.  It may be better but it’s not ever going to  get cured.  In another three weeks, I’ll have another shot in the eyeball to see if the bleeding will be curtailed even more.

The little improvement is nevertheless heartening.

— Alton Pryor

By Alton Pryor

It is doubtful that William Welles Hollister could envision the mark he would make on California while he was
driving his 6,000 head of sheep from Licking County, Ohio, to California. Hollister’s 2,000-mile trek, on which he was accompanied by a brother, a sister, and 50 herdsmen,  ended in what is now San Juan Bautista. When he arrived, only 1,000 of his original 6,000 sheep were alive.  Still, he parlayed what was left of this Ohio wool “on the hoof” into one of California’s great private fortunes.

He is responsible for colonizing the town of Hollister in San Benito County and Lompoc in Santa Barbara County.
“Because so many California towns are named for saints,” said one of the town organizers of Hollister in San Benito county,  “let’s name this one for a sinner.”

Hollister was an industrious person.  His fortune swelled during the next 14 years.  He sold his San Justo Rancho in
San Benito County to move  to the Santa Barbara country he admired so much while driving his band of scraggly sheep up
the coast. Colonel Hollister, in partnership with the Dibblee Brothers, Thomas and Albert, seized every opportunity to purchase  Mexican land grants.  They bought the Refugio Rancho in Santa Barbara County, along with several other land grants, including the Lompoco, Las Cruces, Salsipuedes, San Julian, and Mission Viejo.

Hollister’s main desire was to acquire the Tecolotito Canyon area on the Dos Pueblos grant, which he had coveted 17 years before on his sheep drive. The property was on the market, but it had a cloudy title.  The minor heirs of the original grant holder were still alive and there was a question of whether the property could be sold.  This didn’t deter Hollister from plunging ahead with the deal. The legality of the purchase was still in litigation when he died.

Money was of little consequence to the now-wealthy Hollister.  He built more than six miles of fencing, virtually unheard of in Santa Barbara County.  He established a dairy herd and imported a landscape gardener to plant velvety lawns and exotic flora around the property.  He widened the county road, now Hollister Avenue, linking Santa Barbara and Goleta, and bordered it with an avenue of palms and pines.

Always adventurous, Hollister imported 25 bushels of Japanese tea plants, which he thought would grow in the soil and climate of his Dos Pueblos Rancho. He hired two Japanese tea planters to plant his 50,000 seedlings.  A frost killed the entire tea
project overnight.

The Refugio Rancho is probably the first working cattle ranch apart from the mission operation in Santa Barbara County.  Hollister and the Dibblee brothers purchased the property from the heirs of Capt. Jose Francisco de Ortega, who acquired the
grant in 1834.

James J. Hollister, Sr.,  a son of Col. Hollister, supervised Rancho Refugio, running it in a style not unlike the “Old West.” He was known for employing the “bloody hide” method of drawing stray critters from the chaparral-choked canyons on the ranch. It was a method supposedly invented by the Ortegas and involved the placement of a hide from a freshly butchered bull over a bush.  The odor of the fresh hide drew bellowing cattle like a magnet from the brushy hillsides without the need of vaqueros.

Gov. Juan B. Alvarado granted 13 major ranches in Santa Barbara County between 1836 and 1842.  The first grant bearing Alvarado’s signature was La Punta de la Conception, a 24,992-acre tract.  It was later divided into two better-known
ranches, La Espada and El Cojo.  These names, meaning “the sword” and “the lame man” were named by soldiers of the Portola Land Expedition that passed up the coast in 1769 in search of the ensenada of Monterey.

In the 1860s, Chinese workers were brought to Santa Barbara County from Canton by Colonel W. W. Hollister to work on his Goleta Valley estate and to serve as bus boys, chefs, and waiters in his hotel.

Between 1869 and 1877, W.W. Hollister planted 25,000 almond trees, 1,500 English walnuts, 1,500 orange trees, 1,000 lemons, 500 limes, and 750 olives.

Col. Hollister’s land grants included Lompoc. Here, vast herds of his sheep grazed before he sold part of his holdings to the Lompoc Valley Land Company in 1874. The lands consisted of the Lompoc Rancho and the Mission Vieja de la Purisima Rancho. The town was laid out nine miles from the coast, near the center of the Lompoc Valley. The lots
sold well and the town flourished.

The Chumash Indians called the area “Lum Poc”, meaning little lake or laguna, for a now vanished lake. The Spanish called it “lumpoco” accenting the second syllable. By the time settlers began to arrive in the valley, the name had been Anglicized.

The founding fathers of Lompoc modeled their city after Vineland, N.J., a thriving termperance community, and proposed that it be called New Vineland. However, the citizens of Lompoc opposed the idea. Another try in 1939 to change the name to La Purisima was also defeated.

(Alton Pryor has been a writer for magazines, newspapers, and wire services. He worked for United Press International in their Sacramento Bureau, handling both printed press as well as radio news. He traveled the state as a field editor for California Farmer Magazine for 27 years.  He is now the author of 21 books, primarily on California and western history.  His books can be seen at www.stagecoachpublishing.com.  Readers can email him at stagecoach@surewest.net.)

— Alton Pryor

Since we’re getting no feedback on reader acceptance of this blog, we’re beginning to consider it a waste of time.  I like writing it, but if I’m only writing it for myself, it loses its meaning. With this last post, I’m adding another historical article. Maybe that will jog some viewers into commenting.

When the fire broke out in Pat Logan’s saloon in the unkempt California gold mining camp first known as St. Louis, named by the Missouri miners who rushed from all directions to douse the blaze.

Men in St. Louis loved a fire, for kegs of beer were placed at strategic locations to squelch the thirst that accompanied the fighting of a fire. Fighting fire became a pleasure and the men became more enthusiastic with each drink.

It was at the height of such a fire in the St. Louis gold camp that someone remembered that Madame Touvounties and her bawdy house lay in the path of the fire.

The firemen simply could not bear to see Madame Touvounties and her lovely girls put out of business.

The men in the camp considered Madame Touvounties establishment as irreplaceable.  It was as much of an asset to the community as the bank and the hardware store.

When the firemen realized time was growing short, they knew they must take action, and do it quickly.

Filling and quickly emptying their beer mugs, the firemen settled on a solution.  The volunteers converged on Madame Touvounties’ establishment and formed muscular lines on each side of the building.

At a barked signal, the firemen picked up the building and carried it safely away from the advancing flames.

Madame Touvounties and her girls were properly impressed and promised special privileges once the fire was out.

Some say those special privileges never actually materialized, but the firemen reasoned that it was the thought that counted.

There were other incidents that caused the gold camp called St. Louis some notoriety.

The gold camp was first called Sears Diggings, after a sea captain by the name of Sears.  Captain Sears had brought a ship with passengers to San Francisco in 1850, when the California Gold Rush was still in its heyday.

Captain Sears immediately joined the throng of passengers headed for the gold fields, leaving his craft to rot in the mud flats of Yerba Buena (San Francisco).

Sears was as much of a greenhorn at gold mining as the majority of others who rushed headstrong to the gold fields.

While in Nevada City, Sears heard a man known as “Crazy Stoddard” tell a wild-eyed tale of having discovered a lake of gold, but was chased away by a band of warlike Indians.

An expedition was organized to follow Stoddard back to his fabulous discovery.  Sears decided to trail along.  The expedition was soon abandoned, as the miners accompanying Stoddard grew disgusted with the venture when no such lake of gold appeared.

Sears began walking back alone to the Yuba.  He wandered onto a ridge that now bears his name.  He decided to search for gold at Slate Creek.  He quickly found color in considerable quantity.

After harvesting several ounces, his mistake was letting his friends in on his find.  These friends couldn’t help but blare the information of Sears’ find up and down the river.

It wasn’t long before all the visible gold and all the easy pickings were gone.  The friends that Sears had invited were as incompetent at  prospecting, as was Sears.  None of them ever learned the basic rudiments of placer mining.

One member of the group was a surly man named Gibson, who had a reputation as a loud mouth, a man of questionable ethics, and a brawler.

One miner said Gibson couldn’t even be trusted with an anvil, as he would find some way to slip it in his pocket and walk away with it.

Gibson soon wandered over a ridge and set to prospecting on his own.  Unlike Sears, Gibson kept his new find secret, and struck it rich.  The camp that developed was called Gibsonville.

(Alton Pryor has been a writer for magazines, newspapers, and wire services. He worked for United Press International in their Sacramento Bureau, handling both printed press as well as radio news. He traveled the state as a field editor for California Farmer Magazine for 27 years.  He is now the author of 21 books, primarily on California and western history.  His books can be seen at www.stagecoachpublishing.com.  Readers can email him at stagecoach@surewest.net.)

— Alton Pryor

It seems like all I talk about are my woes.  Believe me, things aren’t always as bad as I make them.

However, I had a shocker while driving home from the El Dorado Home and Garden show where I had a booth. Things were perfect at the show and in the booth, and I actually peddled several books.  On the way home is when my troubles started.

Driving on the Auburn-Folsom Road between Folsom and Granite Bay, my car engine died as though it had been shot. I was able to coast from the inside fast lane to the outside lane and park in a construction area in what was intended to be a bicycle path. Since I didn’t know a tow-truck company, I called 411 on my cell phone.  I was informed a tow truck would arrive in about twenty-five minutes. An hour later, the tow truck did arrive with a big flat-bed truck.

He hauled both me and my car to my auto mechanic and then gave me the astounding news that he was giving me a break by only charging me $300 for the approximately 25 miles he towed me.  Should you care to know who not to call for a tow job, the company was “24-Hour Towing”. I knew I was ripped off, but I was at the towing driver’s mercy. I took the bill to my insurance company to see if my roadside service would cover it.

The insurance company decided it would have to investigate the charge, so at this time I don’t know if I’m getting reimbursed or not.

If you’re wondering why my engine died like a gun-shot porcupine, it was a broken timing belt.  The engine in the van was replaced this past year, so we’re hoping we’re still under warranty.  The way my luck is running, I will most likely have to bite the bullet and not only pay for the exorbitant towing but also for the timing belt replacement.

— Alton Pryor