The Golden Road: A.P. Chapman and the California Dream - Part I

After several years of research into my family story, I wrote this lengthy nonfiction account of my third great grandparents, their journey to California and their life in Sierra Valley. Of course, I also explored all sorts of related rabbit holes. Frankly, it felt like scores of Gold Rush stories I had read. More important, there were elements I simply could answer, mostly about my grandmother, Carrie. So, I spend the next five years developing the fictionalized account that is Virga. Here is Part I of my nonfiction essay.

Most California school children, and certainly any outdoor enthusiasts taking an overnight rafting trip on the American River, learn that on January 24, 1848, James W. Marshall, while building a lumber mill near Coloma for John Sutter, found shiny metal in the rocky bottom of the frigid river that flows circuitously from the Sierra mountains to the San Francisco Bay.

Marshall and his boss determined that the find was indeed gold, and quite pure at that. Reportedly, Sutter was somewhat dismayed by the discovery, fearing that a mass search for gold would forestall his plans for an agricultural empire in central California.

News of Marshall’s discovery spread quickly, at least quickly by the communications standards of this pre-Internet, pre-social media, not to mention pre-telephone and pre-telegraph era. By March of 1848, San Francisco newspaper publisher and merchant Samuel Brannan paraded through the muddy streets loudly proclaiming, “Gold! Gold! Gold from the American River!” In what might be the earliest and most brilliant example of cross marketing, prior to his proclamation of “Gold,” Brannan had opened a store in San Francisco selling prospecting supplies.

It took nearly seven months for the rest of the United States to learn about Marshall’s discovery at Sutter’s Mill. It is important to remember what the rest of the United States meant in 1848. There were fewer than 30 states and Missouri was the westernmost. California was still two years away from statehood. In fact, when gold was found, the United States and Mexico were technically at war and California was part of Mexico. The Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, which transferred the western territories to the United States from Mexico, was signed on February 2, 1848.

Beyond wrapping up the Mexican-American War, the United States and its fledgling media was most concerned about the presidential election of 1848. This race pitted Whig and eventual winner, Zachary Taylor, against Free Soil candidate Martin Van Buren and Democrat Lewis Cass. The incumbent president, James K. Polk, had already chosen to retire after a single term in office.

Pushing the presidential race off the front pages of the eastern media was a bit of news from the left coast. However, while there is agreement that the news of the California Gold Rush was first published in the New York Herald, there is some controversy as to when that news was actually published. One account, in the form of a “correspondent’s letter” puts the date at August 19:

[California] has a mine of gold...and without allowing any golden hopes to puzzle my prophetic vision of the future, I would predict for California a Peruvian harvest of the precious metals, so soon as a sufficiency of miners, mineralogist, and metalogists (sic) find their way hither, and commence disbouging (sic) her hidden treasures.

Some assert that this correspondent was the very same publisher and gold mining supply entrepreneur, James Brannan.

Another account notes that it took a bit longer for the news to reach New York and the Herald. On Friday September 15 Herald readers saw this item:

INTERESTING FROM CALIFORNIA—We have received some late and interesting intelligence from California. It is to the 1st of July. Owing to the crowded state of our columns, we are obliged to omit our correspondence. It relates to the important discovery of a very valuable gold mine. We have received a specimen of the gold.

Two days later, September 17, the Herald expanded its initial coverage and published a larger excerpt from its California corresponded, “Paisano.” The letter from the West is dated July 1, 1848, and instructs the Herald’s publisher, James Gordon Bennett that he “had better fill his paper with, at least, probable tales and stories and not such outrageous fictions as rivers, flowing with gold.”

Paisano went on to explain, “The entire population had gone to the mines, many to return a few days later with hundreds of dollars in dust and nuggets. Spades and shovels sold for $10 apiece. Blacksmiths were making $240 a week. Why, even a child could pick up three dollars worth of gold in a day from the treasure streams.”

The Herald story ended with this bit of understatement: “the famous El Dorado was but a sand bank, the Arabian Nights were tales of simplicity!”

The old adage that “numbers don’t lie” seems appropriate here. In 1848, the New York Herald boasted a circulation of 84,000, giving publisher Bennett the credibility to claim that his paper was “the most widely circulated journal in the world.” Bennett also said modestly that the job of a newspaper was “not to instruct but to startle.”

To be certain, those promises of riches in California would have indeed been startling. Let’s say you were a blacksmith, or any sort of wage earner living on the East Coast in 1848. That $240 weekly salary of the Gold Rush blacksmith calculates conservatively to $7,430 in 2015 dollars. Some currency conversion methodologies put the figure closer to $50,000. Remember, the Herald story boasted that this was a weekly salary.

Everything loose rolls west

While we cannot know for certain, it is certainly plausible that one reader of the Herald stories was Albert Picket Chapman, a 32-year-old man, likely involved in the shipping trade, living on the south coast of Connecticut. Known to his family and friends as A.P., Chapman was the descendent of a founding Connecticut family who had been living at the mouth of the Connecticut River on Long Island Sound since the early 17th century.

When the news of gold reached the East Coast, A.P. Chapman had been married for nearly five years to Caroline S. Chapman, a distant relative from the same pioneering family. A.P. and Caroline had a four-year-old son, Albert Franklin and a six-month old son, Charles.

Unfortunately, there is not much else to report about A.P. Chapman of East Haddam, Connecticut. We don’t know specifically of his personal economic circumstances in 1848, other than during the two centuries of Chapman settlement in America the family owned several thousand acres of real estate and was variously involved in agriculture, lumber, shipping, shipbuilding and various mercantile pursuits.

We can infer A.P.’s likely circumstances by looking at his great grandfather and grandfather. Great grandfather Timothy Chapman, born in 1736, was a significant landowner in East Haddam, just up the river from the original landing point of Old Saybrook. Timothy, Sr. farmed, cut lumber in his own mill, built and sold ships, captained ships and likely sold goods from the far reaches of the world in his stores. It does not appear that his wealth transferred to the next generation. Much of property was obtained by his closest neighbor. As a result, his son Timothy, Jr., who did own a ship or two with his father, was left to build his own life and business on the west side of the Connecticut River, in Haddam.

Timothy, Jr. engaged in similar shipping and mercantile pursuits as his father. However, for some undocumented reasons of poor decisions or over extension, Timothy, Jr.’s businesses failed and he lost his home, stores and riverfront shipping concerns. This did not leave much for his nine children, including son Horace, and then Horace’s son, A.P. Horace was believed to be a ship’s captain. However, late in life—like in his sixties and seventies—Horace and his wife Esther return downriver to Old Saybrook, where Horace reports to census takers that he makes his living as a farmer. No property or death records exist for Horace or Esther at the time of their passing.

Prior to his marriage with Caroline, A.P. was living in a boarding house along the banks of the Connecticut—where those who sailed, built ships and clerked in warehouses and stores lived. Hence, it is likely that A.P. was a wage earner somehow involved with the river economy.

We don’t know about A.P.’s education and believe he was loosely affiliated with the Episcopal Church. Caroline had a similar relationship with the Congregational Church, derived from the Puritans.

What we can infer with some certainty, as James Brown would say, is that A.P. Chapman’s world was indeed a man’s world. What little narrative history exists about A.P. is certainly told from a male perspective. The risks and any resulting accomplishments are invariably attributed to A.P. and his male friends. Yet, it in incredulous to think that Caroline was not party to a critical discussion that was likely made in the fall of 1848.

According to the Boston Daily Evening Transcript, A.P. Chapman and 30 or so treasure seekers set sail from Boston to San Francisco on the brig Randolph on February 9, 1849. Chartered by the Shawmut and California Trading and Mining and captained by Hartwell Walker, the Randolph would sail south from Boston, around Cape Horn, and then north to San Francisco. It would take three to six months for such a voyage and cost A.P. Chapman between $100 and $300.

Before embarking with A.P. on the Randolph, there are myriad unanswerable questions. It appears likely that whatever wealth this line of Chapman’s enjoyed ended with Timothy, Jr. So, the siren’s call of mountains of gold in California was likely very appealing to A.P. It is safe to speculate that for many reasons the stories of how challenging and largely unsuccessful life in the goldfields was did not make it with any urgency or frequency to the East Coast and on to Europe. Were the truth to be widely broadcast it is altogether likely that only a fraction of the 300,000 or so people who are generally called 49ers would have risked everything and ventured west.

Perhaps the decision to head west is not so sinister and A.P. was, in fact, selected by the family to seek fortune in California. Not only was such a trip dangerous, but it was expensive as well. As later anecdotes will show, A.P. appears to have some means when reaching California. While we are likely to never know, it is plausible that A.P. was bankrolled by family or investor money in hopes of striking it rich for the greater Chapman cause. It would not have been the first time a Chapman took to the seas.

As interesting as it is to speculate on why A.P. headed west, it is equally interesting to think about several conversations he had before leaving.

Caroline Chapman was 27 years old and had two boys under five when A.P. boarded the Randolph. Generally speaking, such trips called on only two ports as they navigated around the Horn—Rio De Janeiro, Brazil and Callao, Peru or Valparaiso, Chile. Probably important to mention at this juncture that A.P. and his shipmates spent 219 days at sea. It goes without saying that expectations about travel and communications were far different in 1849 than they are today—things just took much longer.

It doesn’t seem so far fetched to imagine this monologue from Caroline: “Albert, I know this trip is important to you, but I just want you to think about the fact that your boys and I will not likely hear from you for seven months. When, God willing, you make it to California you are disembarking in a lawless, frontier town on the edge of the country and then heading inland into an even more lawless region. We really hope to see you again, dear.”

However, A.P. had an ace up his sleeve that Caroline should have known about. She was, after all, a Chapman. I know it was okay, but it is still a bit creepy to note that your great, great, great grandparents were related. How Roosevelt.

Heading west, Puritan style

Monumental ocean voyages to an unknown frontier were in A.P.’s blood. After all, he (and Caroline) were descendants of Robert Chapman who left England in 1635 bound for the New World. While there is some disagreement over the specific circumstances of his departure regarding how many family members traveled from England, it is widely believed that Robert was from a devout Puritan family fleeing England to practice religion as they pleased. Robert Chapman arrived in Boston in 1635.

A little Puritan history is in order. In 1517 Martin Luther nailed his 95 Theses to the church door, which said among many things that the people were tired of the Roman Catholic Church, especially the practice of “indulgences” where wealthy people could basically buy their way into heaven. Thus starts the Protestant reformation in Europe.

King Henry VIII is not easily satisfied in marriage and wants to dump Catherine of Aragon for the younger Anne Boleyn. Pope Francis I and the Roman Catholic Church will not grant Henry the annulment he desires. Because he can, Henry created his own religion, the Anglican Church, via the Acts of Supremacy in 1534.

While many English were pleased with their own church, a growing minority found little difference between the Pope in Rome and Henry in England. These faithful wanted a more “pure” form of religion where the word of God is spelled out clearly and forcefully in the Bible, not through mortal intermediaries on earth, like the Pope or the King.

Practicing this more pure form of religion proved difficult for some, many of whom felt that their only path was to leave England for the New World. The different flavors of Puritan exodus were dictated in part by whether or not they believed they would stay in the New World forever to practice their Puritan religion (Massachusetts) or if they would succeed financially because of new-found riches and return to English to advance their beliefs (Virginia).

Robert Chapman was a member of the Massachusetts Bay Colony exodus, which not only espoused a steely Puritan ethic, but also a strong commercial goal and a God-directed mandate to civilize the native population. It is almost incomprehensible for many, but the original Massachusetts Bay Colony seal shows a Native American saying, “Come over and help us.”

The head of the Massachusetts Bay Colony in 1635, and soon-to-be governor of colonial Massachusetts, is one John Winthrop. Devotees of Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter will recognize Winthrop as the governor in this classic novel.

Winthrop is widely known for a sermon he delivered just prior to or on board the 1630 sailing of his ship, the Arabella, bound for the New World. Known as the “Model of Christian Charity” speech, the sermon speaks of the importance of charity towards those who have less, the need for community and how the world is watching this Puritan group as they create a “famous city on a hill”—a line reprised by none other than president Ronald Reagan as he accepted the Republican nomination in 1984.

In “Model of Christian Charity” Winthrop explains how God chose the few people on the boats to go to America in order to carry out their mission, in part establishing the concept of “American exceptionalism.” This sermon also makes it clear that the Christian God is the god, which in part justified the “civilization” of Native Americans into the Christian faith.

Upon his arrival to Boston in 1635, the 19-year-old Robert Chapman befriends Winthrop’s son, John Winthrop, Jr., and a gentleman named Lion Gardiner. The young Winthrop, Gardiner and Robert Chapman contracted with Massachusetts governor Winthrop to fortify the site of Saybrook (Connecticut), lay out a town, build a fort and serve as its commanders. The elder Winthrop is certainly a man to whom you do not say “no.” The ship Bachelor arrived at Saybrook in the spring of 1636 carrying 12 men and two women and supplies for the construction of the fort.

There were several reasons for establishing the fort at Saybrook, which is central to the eventual colony of Connecticut. The elder Winthrop sensed Dutch incursions into the area from their base in what was to become New York. At the same time, the Pequot Indians were a problem for the Puritan settlers in the region, burning newly planted fields and occasionally killing a settler or two. The fort kept what was to become Connecticut in Puritan hands and served as a base for the “Pequot War” which was finally settled in 1637.

After the fort was built and peace largely established, the young now “Captain” Robert Chapman married Ann Bliss in 1642 and had three sons and four daughters with her. He served in myriad official capacities in the Saybook region including county clerk and amassed a considerable amount of real property. Records indicate that Robert willed each of his sons 1,500 acres upon his death in 1687.

While Chapman and his colleagues made life very difficult for the Pequot Indians, anecdotes indicate that he treated the other tribes in the region—the Mohicans and the Narragansett—fairly and with civility. These stories, of course, are written by European settlers. In any event, Chapman and the other settlers in and around Saybrook appear to have co-existed with their indigenous neighbors. Chapman is even said to have acted as trustee for the heirs of a Mohican elder. Of course, part of this guardianship ensured the young Mohicans received an English education and presumably lived a Christian life.

Just prior to his death, Robert Chapman wrote a lengthy letter to his children, which detailed the myriad experience of his eventful life. Above all and in considerable detail, the letter exhorts his children to stick by their faith. The letter ends:

Strengthen, establish and confirm you all unto the end that you may hold fast what you have gained and keep on being abundant in the work of the lord for as much as ye know your labour shall not be in vaine in the Lord that when he shall appear we may appear with him in glory not as parents and Children but as the Children of the living God to whom be all praise honour might majesty and Dominion world without End.

The story of Robert Chapman is a very long way of saying that A.P. Chapman certainly had an argument in 1849 that long, dangerous, but potentially lucrative sea journeys were indeed in his, and wife Caroline’s blood. Earlier Chapmans had taken such risks and it worked out pretty well.

Still, why was A.P. the only one with the stones to take such a step? After all, there were generations of Chapmans in Connecticut all of whom could lay claim to such a seafaring legacy. Did A.P. see no future on the East Coast? Or, like his New England contemporary Nathaniel Hawthorne, was A.P. sick and tired of his Puritan upbringing? Hawthorne responded by criticizing his faith in a novel few read at the time of publication and that has tormented high school students ever since. Perhaps A.P. Chapman’s response was to board the Randolph and proclaim “peace out Chapmans.”

All we know is that A.P. Chapman did indeed board the Randolph on February 9, 1849. Also on board was a George F. Kent who will remain part of A.P. Chapman’s life after they reach California. It is unclear if these men knew each other before the voyage. Likely, they became very close friends during the trip.

Anxiety on the Great Horn route

It is difficult to consider all the thoughts that A.P. Chapman must have been mulling over as his shipmates on the Randolph sailed from the relative comfort of Boston Harbor. Today, when you leave a coast in the morning, you can have dinner with a friend or loved one on the opposite coast that same day. In 1849, Chapman and his shipmates must have thought those men already on the West Coast were finding their fortunes, and they would be doing so for seven or eight months before the Randolph’s passengers would even set foot anywhere near the gold fields. Anticipation, to say the least, must have been excruciating on board the Randolph.

What is even more interesting is the absolute leap of faith that these 49ers were taking. They left the somewhat certain worlds they were from and headed west based on a few news stories, which at best were highly sensationalized. At the same time, they were leaving for a pursuit about which they had absolutely no experience. The practice of gold mining, certainly as it was being practiced in California, was at very best being made up as they went along.

Today, pundits and journalists often equate California’s Silicon Valley or the fracking fields of North Dakota as modern day gold rushes. Yet, today’s 49ers hedge their bets, to say the least. Silicon Valley draws highly skilled engineering talent from around the world. Sure, these engineers and scientists are taking risks, but they have a very good idea about, and a rich education in the industries they are entering.

A.P. Chapman and the 300,000 or so treasure seekers had likely never mined for gold. Even those who had, made up much of the science of modern gold mining as they went along. Let’s be honest, only a relative handful of the people streaming to California could hardly spell “gold” let alone understand how you actually got it out of the ground.

Speaking of geography and geology

Marshall’s initial find in the Sierra Nevada mountain range is from a snow melt river, the American, that flows mostly west towards larger rivers and estuaries that drain to the Pacific Ocean. Many of these rivers flow to the mighty Sacramento River, which not only drains the Sierra, but is also key to the massive estuary that is collectively known as the San Francisco Bay.

To the north of the American, but still draining the western slope of the Sierra is the Yuba River, thought to be named for a Maidu village—the local native Americans in the area. Actually a tributary of the more northern Feather River, the Yuba, which also makes its way to the Sacramento, consists of three branches.

Many are familiar with the South Fork of the Yuba that originates at Donner Pass and follows Highway 80 to the Spaulding Lake and dam, which is close to the Emigrant Gap exit on Highway 80. The Middle Fork is somewhat less known until it joins with the North Fork near the present-day town of North San Juan, close to the popular destination of Nevada City.

The North Fork of the Yuba River, some 61 miles long, starts near the eastern border of the Tahoe National Forest, on what is currently California State Route 49. It flows southwest then west through a 3,000-foot-deep canyon past the small village of Downieville, where it receives the Downie River, and then on to Goodyear’s Bar.

Geographically, the North Fork of the Yuba at Downieville is quite similar to the Coloma site along the American River, where Marshall first discovered gold. Thick pine forests blanket the steep canyon slopes through which the American and Yuba rivers cut their way west to the Sacramento River. While Coloma is somewhat lower in elevation at 764 feet above sea level than Downieville at just shy of 3,000 feet, both locations are fully forested, being well below the tree line.

Both rivers sit on the huge granite batholith, an intrusion of igneous (cooled volcanic rock or magma) rock that was pushed up by the Pacific plate subducting under the North American Plate several hundred million years ago. In addition to the jagged mountains we know now as the granite peaks of the Sierras, gold came to the surface (or nearer the surface) as this hot granite pushed upward, cooled and eroded over millennia.

So, what John Marshall found at Sutter’s Mill had been pushed up from deep within the earth and was hiding in and around the gravel -- geologically known as an alluvial—stream bed. (A brilliant discussion of the geologic history of the Sierra Nevada and the devastating impact of gold mining is found in John McPhee’s 1993 natural history Assembling California.)

Several months after Marshall’s discovery on the American River, gold seekers began working similar geologic features—alluvial streambeds, gravel bars and washes—on other west-flowing Sierra rivers. This exploration included the Yuba and its various tributaries.

According to James Sinnott’s comprehensive, six-volume History of Sierra County, Jasper O’Farrell, Jacob P. Leese and Patrick McChristian, all of Sonoma, made their way to the Yuba by the summer of 1848. In three month’s time these prospectors reportedly took out some $75,000 in gold dust, working the Yuba gravel about 15-20 miles downstream of present-day Downieville.

As more and more miners reached the area, progress continued upstream towards Downieville, with finds all along the Yuba at colorful place names like Park’s Bar, Long Bar, Foster’s Bar, Cut Eye Foster’s Bar, Big Rich Bar, Coyoteville and Indian Valley. According to Sinnott’s history, Francis Anderson is given credit for being among the first to discover gold at Downieville proper. His find was on the Downie River just above the site of the current Jersey Bridge on September 14, 1849. Anderson’s find more or less coincides with A.P. Chapman’s arrival in San Francisco after 219 days at sea.

To the gold fields

While we have no specific written record, it is not altogether difficult to imagine the San Francisco that A.P. Chapman and George F. Kent found in the fall of 1849. In a few short years the bayside town had ballooned to nearly 100,000 residents, with thousands of structures. City planning was non-existent, which wasn’t that big a problem since the place would burn down with some frequency. Like today, San Francisco was becoming a city of contrasts, with opulent wealth and religious faith being demonstrated in the construction of new mansions, hotels and churches and synagogues. At the same time, diseases like cholera and the flu were rampant, decimating families and necessitating the construction of poor houses and orphanages and cemeteries.

We have little information of the faith or the temperance of A.P. and George, but if you were going to lose your Puritan upbringing, San Francisco in 1849 was the place to do it.

Likely, A.P. and George bought a few provisions for their new jobs as miners and boarded a shallow-bottomed schooner on the San Francisco waterfront and hoped to get as far east as the great Sacramento Delta would permit. From wherever they landed, the pair likely headed north via oxcart or horse towards Grass Valley, Nevada City, North San Juan and on to the Yuba gorge.

Several subsequent adventures hint that A.P. and George Kent had some financial means when they arrive in California. Obviously, gold rush outfitters were certainly commanding a premium to get miners to the gold fields and with the equipment they needed. At the same time, A.P. and George embark on some adventures when they arrive in Downieville that strongly suggest that they had horses. So, it seems safe to suggest that the pair were not destitute as they head towards their fortune.

Anyone who has watched the Pittsburg Steelers play football on TV knows that much of the city is a triangle between the Allegheny and Monongahela Rivers, which combine at the lower point of the triangle to form the Ohio River. With these rivers as a central geographic feature, the city and its suburbs have spread out on all sides of these waterways.

Albeit on a much smaller scale, Downieville has a similar geography. The central part of town is a triangular hillock between the Downie and North Yuba Rivers. Just below the point of the triangle, the rivers converge and head towards the aforementioned Coyoteville, Indian Valley, Big Rich Bar and so forth. You can walk the width of present-day Downieville in five minutes and from tip to toe in 20 minutes or so. The seat of Sierra County, Downvieville today boasts a population of 282, with surge of fly fishers and mountain bikers in the spring and summer.

In 1849 Downieville was not actually called Downieville. Some portions of the area were referred to as Washingtonville, others to Durgin Flat and still others suggested that Marysville would be a good name. While the legislative mechanics are a bit sketchy, it appears that Scotsman William “Major” Downie arrived at the forks of the Downie and Yuba Rivers in November 1849, and convinced the citizenry, such as it was, that this hamlet should be called Downieville, and the name stuck in 1850.

While we can’t be sure, it is altogether likely that A.P. Chapman and George F. Kent arrived in Downieville about the same time it was being named for this opportunist, Major Downie.

A quaint as this gold county town is today it is hard to imagine why anyone would want to lend his or her name to the place in 1850. Nearly every building in town is outfitted with a plaque explaining the history of the structure. Most of these plaques are placed by the historical drinking society or drinking historical society, E Clampus Vitus, whose name has absolutely no translation, even in Dog Latin.

A theme quickly emerges from a read of these plaques: A. Most of the buildings in Downieville burned to the ground with some frequency. B. When they were standing, the buildings were invariably used for the consumption of alcohol, prostitution or both. C. Gun play was encouraged, with the remains of the efforts to be sorted out at a later date. D. Hanging was the preferred form of justice, with a replica gallows still standing in the parking of the current county offices.

Though it happened slightly after A.P. Chapman arrived, Downieville is famous as the first California town to hang a woman. Apparently, a married Latina woman named Juanita or Josepha was angry with a drunk miner named Cannon who burst into her quarters. In all likelihood, Cannon sexually accosted the young woman from Mazatlan. In her defense, Juanita thrust a large knife into Cannon’s chest. A hastily assembled court found Juanita guilty and sentenced her to death by hanging. A gallows was assembled on what is today the site of the Jersey Bridge at the north end of town. Juanita proudly waked to her death, proclaiming before expiring that she would gladly kill the son of a bitch again.

By 1850, the population of Downvielle surged to some 5,000 residents. Given the topography of the region it is impossible to tell where you would fit 5,000 souls. While it is hard to compare current forestation to that of 1850, early art prints certainly indicate that these 49ers denuded the place, cutting lumber from the city center for their mining operations, shelters and any commercial structures.

It is into this scene that A.P. Chapman entered in the late fall of 1849. We have no idea if this is what he expected, what he enjoyed, or what he wanted to share with his wife and children, 3,000 miles away at home in Connecticut.

By the time A.P. arrived in Downieville, gold extraction technology was changing, partly by necessity and partly due to the geology of the Yuba River canyon and surroundings.

When gold was found at Sutter’s Mill, the era of placer mining started. Simply put, placer mining is the mining of stream beds, also known as alluvial beds, for their precious metal riches. At the onset, miners panned these alluvial beds for gold. Over time, the miners felt the need for more and more alluvial materials to wash through their various sluices and waterways used for separating alluvial rock from the heavier gold.

As time went on, and more miners were making claims on a finite number of stream beds, placer or hydraulic mining expanded to essentially any bit of earth that could yield these rocky alluvial soils. Miners, and a quickly growing number of bigger mining companies, starting damming streams at higher elevations and with canvas fires hoses and increasingly large nozzles blasted away sedimentary layers into the closest streambeds. Once these new sediments were in the rivers, or in man-made waterways, the miners could pan or sluice them as they had always done.

To understand how much sediment miners blasted out of the Sierra Nevada, geologists estimate that in 2010 the last bit of mining tailings eroded from placer mining in the gold rush era finally moved past the Golden Gate.

Mining erosion was by no means the only environmental hazard introduced by these early miners. Separating gold from granitic gravel is not easy. While panning is somewhat romantic, you could never pan the amount of gravel that miners were washing down the rivers.

For centuries, those searching for precious treasures knew that substances like gold, formed amalgams when introduced to the relatively cheap and abundant element mercury. Heating the resulting compound made the mercury evaporate and left quite pure gold. As placer miners introduced the tons and tons of alluvial material into their sluicing operations, they would also drop a bit of mercury into the process. The mercury would bind with the gold, and gold only, creating a grey blob, which would then be purified by evaporating the mercury.

We now know that mercury is incredibly poisonous—and that some mercury still in the San Francisco Bay waters is from these gold rush efforts. At the same time, some mercury in the bay is from the direct mining of mercury in the hills above San Jose. In his famous novel Angle of Repose, the main character and mining engineer Lyman Ward starts his career at the New Almaden Quicksilver Mining Company in the mountains above San Jose.

Given travel time from San Francisco, it is likely to be mid fall before A.P. Chapman and George Kent arrived in Downieville. What did they find? Individuals and mining companies had probably staked claims to all the riverbeds and adjacent alluvial fields for miles up and downstream from Downieville. As quickly as a new home, hotel or business was built, there was a pretty good chance it would be lost to fire, likely related to the gunplay or drunkenness of its citizens. And the place was crowded. As noted earlier, standing in downtown Downieville today is it difficult to think where you would stick 5,000 people.

While there is no direct evidence to support this claim, there is plenty of circumstantial information to suggest that A.P Chapman, George Kent and a new affiliate, William E. Jones, decided: A. They would have to find a new way and new place to mine for gold; B. Maybe there were ways other than mining to make a good living in this new frontier.

Finding Sierra Valley

Chapman, Kent and Jones were by no means the first gold seekers to reach Downieville. In fact, it is a pretty certain that most of the placer claims had already been made by the fall of 1849. It is likely that every bit of gravel that could be washed and panned was indeed being done by the time this trio arrived in town.

Of course, their relatively late arrival was tempered by the stories of great wealth that continued to reach Downieville. Among of the most famous of these stories was the legend of Gold Lake, which was likely to be circulating throughout Downieville when Chapman and his mates arrived. Perhaps these Easterners even heard this tale from the protagonist.

According to various sources, in the fall of 1849, 49er Thomas Stoddard arrived near Downieville looking like hell, but with his pockets full of gold. He was injured, exhausted and week from malnutrition. Apparently, Stoddard and his party had used the Lassen Trail, an excessively long detour, beginning in west-central Nevada and ranging northwest toward Good Lake, Oregon until reaching the Pit River. They followed the Pit River’s southwestern course toward Mt. Lassen and the Feather River region to Lassen’s Rancho near present-day Red Bluff. While in Big Meadows (Chester/Lake Almanor area), Stoddard and a partner left their party to hunt for deer.

While they were hunting, their party moved on and Stoddard and his partner were unable to locate them. For several days, Stoddard and his companion wandered lost somewhere between Sierra Valley and Downieville. At some point, the pair stumbled upon a lake with large gold nuggets gleaming in the moss at the water’s edge. After gathering as much gold as their pockets could hold, the two exhausted men fell asleep.

The next morning, Native Americans attacked the two men. Stoddard was injured, and his companion was never heard from again. Stoddard worked his way through the mountains until he at last reached the North Fork of the Yuba River and the gold camps in the Downieville-Nevada City region. Stoddard told his tale to the miners and the search was on for Gold Lake. A multitude of anxious miners swarmed into the mountains seeking Gold Lake, in what would become Plumas and Sierra Counties.

The Plumas County gold rush of 1850 was a direct result of Tom Stoddard’s Gold Lake story. However, Stoddard would never again locate the lake and neither would the thousands of other hopeful prospectors who went in search of it. For the majority of miners who searched for Gold Lake, disappointment dominated.

While we will never know if A.P. Chapman and his pals heard Stoddard’s tale, we do know that as soon as weather permitted, a large group of gold seekers—including Chapman, Kent and Jones -- headed out from Downieville in early 1850 looking for this infamous Gold Lake. Today, a Gold Lake does indeed exist in the region, located in the shadow of the Sierra Buttes on the road between Graeagle in Plumas County and Blairsden in Sierra County, which is not far from Sierra City on today’s Highway 49.

The route today from Downieville to Gold Lake is by no means inconsequential. Highway 49 climbs out of Downiewille at about 3000 feet above sea level and snakes its way up the Yuba River Canyon to the Blairsden-Graeagle Road. Gold Lake is at 6,300 feet, just about the same elevation as its famous neighbor, Lake Tahoe.

A. P. Chapman and his gold-seeking friends could not take advantage of the all-weather Highway 49 that we can use today. In fact, it is pretty likely that this group cut its own path through the pine forest as they headed mostly east, and a bit north towards Gold Lake.

It is unclear whether this party ever found the Gold Lake they were looking for and if this gold lake is today’s Gold Lake. One would assume that if they found the lake, and if the lake produced the gold that Stoddard promised, these prospectors would have done all the could to exploit this location and their subsequent claims.

Apparently, Chapman, Jones and Kent were dissatisfied with what their compatriots found, so they kept heading east. By June of 1850, the group saw from the mountains on the western ridge what is now known as Sierra Valley. Today, a first glimpse of the 120,000-acre, sub-alpine (about 4,850 feet above sea level) valley is breathtaking. Quite frankly, you just don’t expect to see a grass-carpeted valley of this size sitting so comfortably in the pine-forested Sierras.

What Sierra Valley of 1850 must have looked like to Chapman and his pals is incomprehensible. The huge valley is a down-faulted basin, formerly a lakebed of similar geologic origin to Lake Tahoe to the south. Sierra Valley is filled with sediment up to two thousand feet thick. Average annual rainfall is less than twenty inches, most falling as snow. The valley floor has a grassland and sagebrush ecosystem and is the site of extensive freshwater marshes filled with cattails, bulrushes and alkaline flats that drain north into the Middle Fork of the Feather River.

Many species of wildlife make their permanent home in the valley, and a great number of migratory bird species stop over in the fall and nest in the valley in the spring. The valley also has thermal activity, with Marble Hot Springs located in the north central valley floor.

While Chapman, Jones and Kent looked down on Sierra Valley with their jaws agape, it is likely that grizzly bear, mountain lion and elk roamed the grasslands, while hawk and eagle circled overhead, keeping watch over the streams filled with native trout.

This trio is not by any means the first to see or set foot into Sierra Valley. Native Americans had stayed in the valley during the summer and fall for centuries. From a European perspective, James Beckwourth (a Northern Sierra Valley town bears his name) is thought to be the first white man to explore the valley. It is clear, however, that what Chapman, Kent and Jones saw left an indelible impression on the men.

Part II to follow soon...