Tuolumne County, CA History

Transcribed by Kathy Sedler

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A History of Tuolumne County, California - San Francisco, B.F. Alley, 1882.
 
Railroad.
        The first mention of the probable advent of a railroad into the southern 
mines appears in the Columbia Gazette and the Sonora Herald in the year 1852, 
when the announcement was hailed with enthusiasm, and Sonora, the emporium, was 
looked upon as the prospective terminus of a railway connecting these mountains 
with San Francisco.
        Subsequently, other times of disquiet or discontentment with the 
existing means of transit have given rise to railway talk. These periods of 
agitation have occurred at rather regular intervals of time, averaging from four 
to six years, and have been characterized by a large amount of talk, much 
newspaper discussion, and deluded hopes.
        The schemes unfolded to accomplish the desirable result have been as 
various as the times in which they were broached. Sensible schemes and wildcat 
schemes; narrow-gauge railroads, broad-gauge railroads and one-track railroads; 
railroads starting from appropriate places and terminating in practicable 
localities; railroads starting anywhere fancy indicated and terminating wherever 
imagination's freaks suggested; railroads whose prospectuses showed the authors' 
sound sense and business views, and railroads whose wild ideas told of the 
visionary speculator. But all the proposed roads were to pass through Sonora. 
That was the one point upon which all were unanimous.
        The most of these schemes emanated from San Francisco. Once or twice the 
citizens of Stockton had the matter in hand; but not once have the inhabitants 
of Tuolumne County proposed to take upon their own shoulders the task of 
building and running their own railroad, yet that is probably the only way in 
which the people's wishes will be gratified. It is not to be understood that the 
people of Tuolumne have not always offered aid to the various companies who have 
projected railways into their midst. On the contrary, every scheme thus far 
broached has met with a cordial reception, often beyond its deserts. Without 
pausing to consider the practical side, the people have, with open hands, 
welcomed even the most absurd projects, confident that if once the whistle of 
the locomotive were to resound in the foothills, the road's termination, be 
where it might, could not diminish the benefits to accrue to Tuolumne. A trunk 
line to connect (on paper) the unknown and undiscovered system of narrow-gauge 
railways in Nevada with the Pacific shore, but to the reflecting mind only 
penetrating the deserts of the uninhabited tract of country in Southern Nevada, 
after a passage of the highest Sierra at an impracticable point, then passing 
through Tuolumne, and with its western terminus at some insignificant wayside 
station near the bay, has of late been the most promising scheme which the 
speculativeness of railroad builders has presented.
        Some indirect benefit has resulted from these various spasms. The people 
have become well acquainted with the resources of the section�a result of the 
earnest inquiries into that subject. Ascertaining the cost of a proposed road, 
and comparing it with the resources of the County, and the probable business 
which would result, has led to the unavoidable conclusion that the County could 
support a road of the least expensive construction, if economically managed, by 
her own local business. In a series of able letters to the Tuolumne Independent, 
in 1875
        "Progress " stated the obvious advantages which must accrue from a 
railway, in a form which may be assumed to be correct at the present time. He 
said, suggestively, that besides the obvious saving of time in the 
transportation of passengers and goods, equal to three or four days on the 
latter, that the reduction of freights was estimated at fifty per cent on down 
freight, and sixty-six per cent on up freight; that express charges would 
decrease in like proportion, and fares equally. Seventy-five stores each ship 
from ten to sixty tons of freight yearly, exclusive of grain, flour, and 
vegetables. Twenty hotels receive from four to twenty tons; sixteen blacksmith 
shops average ten tons each; one foundry, one hundred and fifty tons; saloons, 
three hundred tons; while the quartz mills, flour mills, and other mills and 
manufactories ship a vast though uncounted amount. Sulphurets and rich ores for 
reduction in other places formed then, as now, a prominent item.
        "It costs twenty cents per box to ship apples from Sonora to Oakdale; by 
rail it will be about five cents a box. One ranch of thirteen acres ships down 
two hundred tons yearly of cider, pickles, vinegar, etc."
        "A railroad," said the writer, "will insure a market for everything." 
Fruit now goes to supply the home demand, barring inconsequential driblets 
Bodiewards, and other small exceptions. It should, doubled in production, become 
a massive export. Alden dryers would fit it for the world's use. Raisins and 
figs, than which nothing is easier to produce, kind nature doing the work, even 
to drying them properly, being fifteen cents per pound in San Francisco. "By 
rail, fruit goes quick and sure; they order to�day, to-morrow they receive, the 
third day the consumer regales himself, and on the fourth day you pocket the 
cash."
        "Wheat, barley, potatoes, dairy products can hardly now get out of 
Tuolumne. We consume more than we produce.  By rail they will come in cheaper, 
and if we ever ship, will bring a better profit. We should supply ourselves and 
keep our money, and also sell outside to bring in money, unless we find some 
better product. Our grain is barter here; sent abroad, it is gold. Gold buys 
more goods than wheat, and we should pocket the gains of a cash trade."
        "Pork, made of nuts, fruit, grain, pays better than wheat itself."
        "Hay will always be in high demand here, so far removed :from the 
plains, and its cultivation will pay better than that of grain. We will raise 
hay, and import wheat and barley, as by so doing we will net most cash."
        "Sugar Pine is here $40 per M, but in Stockton it commands from $60 to 
$80. Yellow Pine brings $20 here, and $25 in Stockton."
        "A RAILROAD WILL INCREASE OUR PRESENT BUSINESS "
        "One lumberman saws two million feet per annum, employing thirty-five 
men. He will employ sixty, and make four millions of feet, within six months 
after the railroad is finished."
        Here, in this last quoted sentence, is where "Progress" made his telling 
point. There is as good timber east of Sonora, approachable by a railroad, as 
there is on the Central Pacific Railroad where it crosses the Sierra; some say, 
better timber. Any way, the supply is abundant and excellent. A railroad 
penetrating the belt of pine and cedar will have freight by the carload for 
years. In such forests, a hundred million feet�ten thousand loads for a 
broad-gauge car, sixteen thousand six hundred loads for a narrow-gauge car�would 
not be missed. A billion feet is but a fraction of the whole. Unhampered by 
competing lines, Tuolumne's railway would transport to Sonora, to the mines, to 
the plains, and to Stockton, lumber enough to fence a county or to build a city. 
The Assessor's books say that the present amount of lumber cut within the 
County's limits is five and a half million feet, and that this is nearly all 
used at home. Only a little of it gets to the plains. This is so because 
freighting by team is too costly; but let a railroad be the carrier, and the 
whole consumption of pine lumber in the San Joaquin Valley could and would be 
supplied from these forests; for the mills at Truckee could not compete, the 
distance being too great. Puget Sound and the Redwood Belt still would 
contribute to Stockton, but in a less degree, and only where the rough, hard 
Oregon pine or the fragile redwood were better adapted to certain uses than the 
durable and easily worked lumber from the splendid pines of the Sierra.
        Briefly stated, it is from the expansion of her lumber business that 
Tuolumne's railroad will derive most freight.
        " Progress" proceeds: " Marble�1200 tons, at $5 per ton, (purchaser 
quarried and shipped it at his own cost,) this year was a trifle, when the 
company says, we will put 300 hands on the quarry and 150 or 200 dressing marble 
as soon as the railroad opens.' "
        Rather extravagant that, unless the demand for grave�stones is on the 
increase. Nevertheless, it might happen that when architectural graces become of 
account, when San Francisco rises from being a collection of wooden, 
dry�goods-box-like dwellings, to the dignity of a city possessing architectural 
adornments, marble will take its place as the best building material, and then 
it follows that another extensive industry will exist here in the extraction of 
that mineral.
        New business, in the matter of putting up new buildings, barrel, box, 
chair, door and window-sash factories; shipping sulphurets, slate, soapstone, 
more marble quarries, lime, charcoal, plumbago, chrome iron, manganese ore, 
nurseries, fruit-dryers, wine and brandy making, beef and pork raising, and 
woolen manufacture, must result from the advent of a railroad. So concludes " 
Progress," and so must every one think, who ever observed the effects of a 
railroad.
        " 1,000,000 cords of firewood around American Camp."
        There is not much money in shipping firewood to any place. The 
inhabitants of the region through which the North Pacific Coast Railway runs 
(narrow gauge) attempted it, with a view of monopolizing the traffic; but, like 
all others, they failed lamentably. This fact will be ascertained: There is no 
money in shipping wood by rail. Converting it into charcoal may pay, but 
generally does not.  It is, however, probable, that in case that blast furnaces 
for the manufacture of iron from the excellent hematite ores found here, arise, 
that the consequent demand for charcoal will afford a profitable way of 
disposing of the superfluous vegetable growths.
        These are the main points raised by the interesting writer, save certain 
remarks that follow as corollaries to the above, and these, it is to be 
observed, embrace nearly all that may be said, without detail, in favor of a 
railway. As to the negative side, it has not, as yet, been heard from.
        Decidedly, then, Tuolumne needs, wants and deserves, a railway. 
Furthermore, she can support one. And, no doubt, the time is near when her 
citizens, without trusting to any ridiculous scheme for joining the Pacific 
Ocean to the deserts of Nevada, will put their shoulders to the wheel and, by 
dint of rustling, raise money and build a cheap, narrow-gauge road from Stockton 
to Sonora and Columbia (and thence a score of miles further east to the heart of 
the timber belt), for by so connecting with Stockton they will gain navigable 
water, thus keeping free of the influence and tyranny of the Central Pacific 
people, noted regulators of fares and freights.
Sonora � Its Society and Business.
        The corporate limits of the city of Sonora are section thirty-six of 
township two north, range fourteen east, Mount Diablo Meridian; containing six 
hundred and forty acres of surface, with a population of about nineteen hundred, 
and containing the following business houses and other establishments: Eight or 
nine grocery stores, five dry-goods stores, two furniture stores, four drug 
stores, one paint store, two millinery establishments, two hotels, four or five 
restaurants, a score of drinking-saloons, two wagon-makers' shops, five 
blacksmith shops, one harness shop, one paint shop, two tailor shops, a large 
number of dress-making establishments with uncounted dress-makers, three 
barber-shops with four barbers, three tin shops, five shoe-maker shops, one 
gunsmithy, four jeweler shops, two bakeries, one brewery, two undertakers, one 
photographic saloon, one Alden fruit dryer in a disabled condition, one foundry, 
one cider and pickle manufactory, two flouring mills, two planing mills, one 
lumber yard, one stone and marble working shop, two livery stables, two 
newspapers with printing offices, one post-office, one express office, two 
butcher shops, two slaughter houses, six lawyers and one law student, four 
physicians, one dentist, several music teachers, two brass bands, three and 
occasionally more clergymen, four churches, three Sunday schools, one public 
hall rather dilapidated, one skating rink now unused, one public school in 
excellent condition. taught by four teachers, two draymen, and two bootblacks.
        Of such is the town of Sonora, and to these, as well as to the several 
gold mines within her limits, does she owe her continued existence and 
prosperity.     Although the number of business houses has suffered a slight 
diminution, yet the value of trade has increased and the population risen 
perceptibly within the last few years. The very dull times succeeding the war 
having passed, and the natural resources, agricultural and mineral, having come 
to be properly appreciated, a new era of comparative prosperity would seem to 
dawn upon the town and upon the county at large. Unquestionably, immense 
resources for the support of a happy and prosperous population exist within 
these foothills; and doubtless the work of succeeding decades will be to 
ascertain the character of these sources of wealth and adapt them to their 
proper uses.
        To the tourist or the curiosity seeker of the present day Sonora, aside 
from its historical associations, rich beyond compare, presents no great 
attraction; but to the resident of many years, or to the transient guest who 
measures his stay by a few months, no town or city endows one with more pleasant 
recollections, nor leaves more fragrant memories. From a merely business point 
of view other places and other scenes furnish perhaps better inducements to the 
industrious single man, or to the family which seeks merely the material 
prosperity of years, and the happiness which comes with the contemplation of 
worldly increase; but to those who look for a clime beneficent and congenial, 
the seeker for a modest competence, and blessed with health and sanctified by 
the graces of rural life, away from the toils, the temptations and the 
disappointments of the busy marts of the outer world, no land within mortal ken, 
no village however blessed, can bestow higher good than Tuolumne's capital. A 
town of modest pretensions, without classical elegance, without the airs and 
graces, the sum of modern improvements, Sonora yet unboastfully bears a crown of 
quiet refinement, yet breathes the charming incense of delicious repose, winning 
the regard alike of the world-sated traveller and the rural denizen.
        Here have drifted the foreigner and the native born; the child of the 
tropics and the calmer sons and daughters of the temperate zone. Each State in 
the Union, and every clime known to civilized man throughout the world, have 
their representatives in this favored spot. Cosmopolitan in taste and in 
appearance, the town and with it the county offers as before an agreeable asylum 
where no one however remote be the place of his nativity, need deem himself 
alone.
        Made up of such heterogeneous elements, such a variety of the families 
and races of men, it were no wonder that their intercourse proved the reverse of 
peaceful and amicable; not so, however, rather does it result that the very 
difference of race, proves a cause of well-being. There are no preponderating 
elements, no race or family predominating.
        Since the wild, careless days of the Argonauts have passed into history 
and the great acts of the past linger only in the memories of the fast dwindling 
band of actors in those stirring times�times when religion was but as an idle 
word and religious observances found few to obey their rites�with the dawn and 
progress of the new time, new men, new pursuits, new habits, this land has taken 
on with its calmer and perhaps better ways, a holier aspect. Church edifices 
have risen, from whence the chimes of the bell invite all within the hearing of 
its tuneful voice to praise the Giver of all good, in his consecrated house. And 
the Sabbath school sends forth its pupils richer by the pious lessons of good 
will and righteousness, to lay deeper the foundations of loyalty to the Redeemer 
and truth and justice towards men.
        Schools flourish, and the law is administered equably. By the one the 
youth become freighted with that which shall make their lives useful, and by the 
other their lives are protected from the harmful in such degree as may be. 
Earnest and successful teachers whose existence is given up to the undivided 
pursuit of instructing the tender mind, labor zealously to implant the seeds of 
the knowledge which have their sure result. The bar deserves well its past and 
present honors. Its memories will not shortly fade.
        Not one only, nor two professions, or pursuits, are most highly favored. 
The earnest laborer, were his toils before the printing case, the bed of 
disease, at the knotty problems of legal uncertainties, in the pulpit, or in the 
domain of politics, literature or what not, in some way or in some guise, has 
earned for himself a name and so much of fame and this world's goods, as his 
deserts have entitled him to. Eminence has been the lot and the reward of many 
of Tuolumne's sons; and the common lot of humanity here seems to be not less, 
but rather more elevated than in other lands. Not many of wealth are here, nor 
do many languish in deep poverty. The fruits of the earth are the common 
property of whoever will put forth his hand; but to attain wealth would seem a 
toil of years. The golden mean, the midway lot between riches and poverty, holds 
the most. All of life's necessaries without life's elegancies, or in short the 
state that poets celebrate, and that man's best reason advocates, could seem to 
belong to this people.
        With enough of comforts to content and to elevate, and without the 
luxuries to enervate, the active mind has become cultured, while the physical 
self, retaining its wonted powers, does not give over the life work which alone 
qualifies man or woman for a happy existence. Gathering refinements about 
themselves, many families of the later times furnish examples of true culture 
and morality which, without seeking acknowledgment, find only equals, certainly 
no superiors, in the celebrated abodes of art and polished grace. Born and bred 
in such a community, the rising generation, as regards intelligence, aptness and 
good morals, bids fair to excel in the amenities of life their predecessors, 
who, doubtless, will be most pleased should it be so.
        In examining into the tangible evidences of refinement and mental 
excellence; the critic inquires later concerning literary powers and taste. He 
learns that two local newspapers are supported in the one county, and, to a 
great extent, by the one town of Sonora. Furthermore, that literary societies, 
two in number, exist, and that these are well attended by the intelligent and 
interested of both sexes, and of all ages, who do not hesitate at any labor 
which the course of exercises may cause to fall to their share. In times past, 
various alert writers have owned Tuolumne as their home, and the influence of 
these has no doubt done, and will continue to do, much good in molding the 
youthful mind to habits of reflection and expression. It may be confidently 
expected that the brains and imagination of yet to be celebrated writers may be 
nurtured here.
        Another evidence of refinement may be seen in the extraordinary devotion 
to music of a large share of the population. Instrumental and vocal, brass bands 
and choral societies�all have their devotees, and all absorb the attention of 
the populace.
        It were easy to predict the future of a land like this, inhabited by 
such people; but now, having told the story of what has been, and given 
utterance to these few words respecting the present, the author would fain take 
leave of the subject of Tuolumne's history, feeling that additional time would, 
perhaps, have enabled him to do the subject more justice, but still hoping that 
his work will meet the commendation of those for whom it is prepared, and 
believing that its accuracy will, in every point, remain unshaken, he would 
respectfully ask the thoughtful consideration of all to whom the topic may bear 
interest.
The task has been a pleasant one. Surrounded by active and intelligent minds, to 
many of whom the progress of the affairs herein narrated has been as an open 
book; aided by the suggestions and forwarded by the recollections of thoughtful 
men, it has been a pleasure to arrange and compile the matter presented.     
Circumstances have favored the progress of the work; files of newspapers have 
been brought from their almost forgotten repositories, and memories have 
unloaded their stores of anecdote. Situated for the time in the midst of the 
people whose history he would narrate, the author has, by association, come to 
an absorbing interest in their past and present, while he confesses to a high 
regard for the charming hospitality that has made the months pass swiftly and 
pleasantly.
        The old must forever give place to the new. New tasks succeed old 
labors, and the light of brighter days shines always on the future of men. So, 
with a feeling of relief from the old task, the writer lays down his pen, while 
breathing a wish for Tuolumne and her people that the brightness and prosperity 
of future times may be what merit deserves and what industry and energy win.
 
Chronology of Tuolumne County 1849-1881