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

The author and great grandfather, Albert Jules Chapman, born in Downieville, California, 1871.

Dear, look what I found

A.P. Chapman’s reaction to finding this magnificent alpine valley seems unusual. After returning to Downieville with his friends, and certainly some discussion of the beauty of what they found, Chapman returned east in the fall of 1850. It is unclear if he returned via the Horn route or via the shorter, but no less fraught, Panama route.

It is a mystery why Chapman returned east and what he and his family would have discussed. Histories, such as those about Sierra County by James Sinnott, show Chapman back in California by mid 1851, but make no mention of his family. Further, the 1860 U.S. Census shows Caroline and her two boys still in Connecticut.

One plausible reason to return home was for A.P. Chapman to explain to Caroline what he found and his future plans. He was obviously excited about what he saw in Sierra Valley. Yet, it was still just a far-off vision. Chapman and his friends made no claims on any land they saw, and he certainly did not have a home for his wife and two boys. Moreover, he did not yet appear to have any prospects for supporting his family in the West.

It is also likely that Chapman could have been seeking capital for his future plans. Perhaps there were opportunities he saw in Downieville or parts thereabouts. While placer mining in the Yuba and tributaries may have been a far too crowded proposition, there may have been other mining or non-mining opportunities that he saw—and was willing to travel more than 6,000 miles to explore.

It is impossible to document this, but it appears that A.P. Chapman will not be reunited with his family for nearly 10 years when he heads west for the second time. We can only imagine this parting conversation, but it was probably something like: “A.P. when you have made a good living for yourself, and have built a suitable home for your family, we will join you. Until then, we will be staying put surrounded by generations of Chapmans.”

A.P. returned to California in early 1851 by a different route—the Isthmus route through what is now Panama, but was then part of Columbia. He would have sailed from Boston to Chagris on the Atlantic Coast of Panama. There, opportunistic native travel guides met 49ers at their ships, and helped them through the arduous 60-70 mile overland crossing to Panama City, where A.P. would have caught another ship north. Anyone with a sense of the many years and many lives it took to build the Panama Canal nearly 50 years later, know this relatively narrow bit of land is exceptionally treacherous.

This journey starts by getting as far west as possible in the Chagris River. It was a hot, insect and disease-infested passage. When the river ran its course, 49ers faced several days of hiking in the same conditions. If you had money, you could improve the voyage somewhat by paying for personal guides, pack animals, food and water. If you were broke, you likely fended mostly for yourself and carried your belongings. When the first word of gold in California reached the East Coast until 1869, some 375,000 49ers took the Isthmus route headed west. Nearly 225,000 headed east during that period, many disappointed and defeated.

The reward for crossing the Isthmus and reaching Panama City was a 3,330-mile ocean trek northward to San Francisco.

Back to Sierra Valley

Back in Downieville by the fall of 1851, A.P. Chapman, Joseph Kirby, I.K. McClannin and John Gardner headed back to the valley they had found the year prior while searching for Gold Lake. On this trip, the explorers hoped to establish claim to some of the land they had seen in the spring of 1850.

In this era, federal land was claimed via “preemption”—a precursor to the Homestead Act established in 1862. Via preemption, an adult citizen—we are still more than 10 years away from the Emancipation Proclamation—could lay claim to 160 acres as long as they improved it. In 12 months, clean title to the land was granted for $1.25 an acre.

This group entered what is now called Mohawk Valley in October 1851, traveling down the mountains northeast of Gold Lake. Mohawk Valley is at the northern end of Sierra Valley, near where James Beckwourth was establishing his settlement.

Unfortunately, Chapman and his colleagues found most of the land in this northern section of the valley already claimed. Unfazed, they headed south and found a strip of land in the portion of Sierra Valley that today includes the tiny hamlets of Calpine and Sattley. The settlers posted claim notices on the land establishing four ranches. Several weeks later Chapman returned and posted claim notices on land for William C. and B.F. Lemmon, who became long-time residents of the area.

Chapman returned to Downieville where he enlisted Kirby and Gardner to return to the valley once again to fell timber for constructing cabins. They cut enough timber for their structures but were unable to complete them due to winter storms and snow. Once again, the trio returned to Downieville.

If sources are accurate, Chapman made three round trips from Downieville to Sierra Valley in the fall of 1851, a distance each trip of some 90 miles. While certainly on horseback, there were no established roads at this time—an issue that will continue to be important to Chapman.

In the summer of 1852 Chapman and I.K. McClannin returned once again to Sierra Valley and erected the first log cabin, presumably on Chapman’s property. Simply cutting timber for these structures would take Herculean effort, as would lifting the timbers into position. Once again, as winter approached Chapman returned to Downieville.

Sierra County quartz mining develops

During the time that Chapman was establishing his property claims and erecting a homestead in Sierra Valley, the methods for extracting gold were expanding. With the alluvial riverbeds and adjacent gravel deposits claimed and well worked in the Yuba River gorge, miners and engineers began looking at the quartz outcroppings that were so prevalent in the region, especially in the Sierra Buttes a few miles northeast of Downieville. Often, the quartz rock also contained gold—the trick was separating the valuable gold from the nuisance quartz.

In this sort of mining, also called lode mining, the goal was finding the gold-bearing quartz veins. Generally, these required digging and shoring mine shafts deep into the mountainside. In the case of Sierra County, these shafts were dug extensively in the Sierra Buttes and surrounding geologic structures.

Miners would extract the quartz rock from these tunnels; the rocks were carried from the shaft in small rail cars to adjacent arrastras or stamp mills where the quartz lodestone would be pulverized into ore. The arrastras are a more primitive set-up where human, animal or waterpower is used to move heavy pulverizing stones over the quartz rock.

In a stamp mill, huge metal stamps weighing hundreds of pounds operating under hydraulic power crushed the quartz rock. It was not uncommon for a big mining operation to have dozens of stamps in single mill. It is indeed an amazing engineering achievement to ponder how these mining companies would get these stamp mills built high on the mountainsides adjacent to their mine shafts. Much of the engine equipment was made in the east and shipped around the Horn like the 49ers. Once in California, an endless stream of oxen and horse teams would strain these tons of iron up from the Sacramento River to the mountains of Sierra County.

Whether created by stone arrastra or in a stamp mill, the resulting ore was mixed with mercury, to create a gold amalgam. In a distillation process, the mercury is separated leaving pure gold and mercury to be used again. Tens of millions of dollars in California gold was extracted from these lode mines until the early 20th century.

Making a buck

The trail of A.P. Chapman gets a bit cold from 1852 to 1862. It seems most plausible that it was a period where he established himself financially, built the family home and arranged for his family to join him in the west.

According to the 1881 Illustrated History of Plumas, Lassen and Sierra Counties (Farriss and Smith), in 1852 Chapman opened a livery stable in Downieville, which he operated until its sale in 1862. The sale was hastened in part by the completion of his Sierra Valley ranch home, where he and his family located.

Operating a livery stable seems consistent with Chapman’s experience in Sierra County. By 1852 he had made two round trips to the Yuba River basin from the East Coast not to mention numerous trips within the county. So, he was certainly interested in and we presume skilled at horse-powered transportation. In economic terms a livery operation appears to make good business sense as well. If anything, the amount and size of freight—such as mining equipment and lumber—was increasing. Feeding a growing population also required horse-powered transportation. Rail service was still decades off and it never directly served Downieville.

Unfortunately, I can find no other reference to the Chapman livery operation other than what is reported in the Farris and Smith history.

The same source also notes that Chapman served as president of the Sierra Buttes Quartz Mining Company sometime during the period from 1852 to 1862. This operation was to become the largest quartz mining operation in the region, with some 96 stamps working to process quartz rock by the 1870s. In its fist 30 years of operation, until about 1880, the Sierra Buttes Company is believed to have extracted some $7 million from it mines, and always paid dividends to its eastern and European shareholders.

Histories also show that the biggest investments in the operation in terms of processing appear to have been made after 1864 and throughout the 1870s, when presumably Chapman is in Sierra Valley full time. The mine changed owners several times during this period as well.

Perhaps A.P. Chapman was indeed president of the Sierra Buttes mine. However, it seems equally plausible that he was there before it really hit its stride. Maybe Chapman used his transportation acumen to build the mine’s infrastructure, which helped the mine be so successful later on. He could also have been caught in the management shakeups that so often accompany ownership changes.

By the time the 43-year Chapman finally settles in Sierra Valley he appears to be a farmer, foregoing his reported careers in horse transportation and mining.

While making it rich as a miner is certainly the glamorous dream, it is altogether true that this was generally the exception. Even being the president of a mining company—while reporting to absentee owners—probably wasn’t the highest paid job either. Supplying the mining industry with goods and services worked out well for many, including Levi Strauss and Wells Fargo, just to name a few.

Supplying the war effort

On April 12, 1861 Confederate forces shelled the Union garrison at Fort Sumter, South Carolina, starting the Civil War that will rage until 1865. While most of the hostilities happened in the East and South, the war was clearly felt in the goldfields of California. One could argue that California is as strategic as any location in the actual Civil War theater.

Between 1861 and early 1865 nearly $175 million in gold and silver passed through the Port of San Francisco from the California mines and the Comstock Lode of Nevada. This treasure was an immense benefit to the Union in its war with the increasing cash-strapped Confederacy. By contrast, the Confederate states started the war with only some $27 million in specie (hard currency in the form of gold or silver coins and bullion). In fact, there were several unsuccessful Confederate attempts to seize gold shipments in San Francisco Bay.

So, as the 1860s open, gold mining is not just a search for riches, it is also a means of preserving the Union.

Feeding those patriotic souls who are searching for gold must of have been an increasingly important endeavor. And, as any present-day trip into the American or Yuba River canyons shows, these deep hollows are certainly not the place to raise livestock or grow any sort of crops. So, the early settlers of Sierra Valley figured that if the place could support native grass that grows up to your chest, it could certainly support beef and dairy cattle and certain grains. These early Sierra Valley ranchers also figured their markets were expanding—from the placer and quartz mines to the west along the Yuba River, south to the Truckee area and to the Nevada silver mines near Virginia City, only 80 miles east.

In short order, the Sierra Valley was a key producer of beef, pork, milk, butter, cheese, wheat, oats, barley and hay to this thriving mining—and lumber—region. The 1860s saw even more markets for Sierra Valley agricultural products with the construction of the Central Pacific Railroad.

Since there was no agricultural history in Sierra Valley prior to Chapman and others setting it, there seems to be some experimentation in terms of what could be cultivated successfully. A report from the UC Berkeley Experimental Agriculture Station published in 1887, cites A.P. Chapman’s experience with Polish wheat. Chapman notes that wheat sown on April 27 had grown to five feet with heads nine-inches tall. A frost in August limited yield somewhat, but Chapman still “considered it the best chicken feed I ever used—worth more than other wheats for that purpose.”

It seems so odd to experience a frost in August. But, at 5,000 feet in elevation it is certainly plausible.

Moving the Sierra Valley agricultural products to market, not to mention men and material in and out of the mining areas, was no easy feat in 1852. While stage and horse/oxen teams served the Nevada City to Downieville route with some frequency, the same could not be said for traveling east from Downieville to Sierra Valley. In addition to no actual scheduled service, there was no agreed-to route. While snow was not a significant issue in Downieville, it certainly is at the higher passes that lead into the Sierra Valley.

Road promoter

From the time Chapman constructed his cabin in Sierra Valley until he leaves for the Bay Area several decades later, he appears to be a real champion of the valley and its agricultural riches. To Chapman, a prime means of exploiting these riches is by surveying, engineering and building a proper wagon road linking Downieville to Sierra Valley, and from Sierra Valley to Truckee.

Chapman certainly understood the Downieville to Sierra Valley route, having been a pioneer of it, and traveling the route regularly since 1850. In addition to moving Sierra Valley products to market, an “immigrant” road through Sierra County would have long-standing commercial benefit. Pioneers heading west were fearful of the route taken by the ill-fated Donner Party in 1847. This route crossed near snow-laden Donner Summit to reach California. Chapman and his Sierra County colleagues believed that a route using “Chapman Saddle” into Sierra Valley and Henness Pass into the Truckee Valley was a superior route largely because of the lower elevation of these mountain passes compared to other tried or proposed routes.

According to the U.S. Forest Service, an early trail linked Downieville with Sierra City, built along the north side of the river—the present location of Highway 49. “Pack mule trains extended this route into Sierra Valley in 1851, crossing the mountains by way of Bassett's to Chapman's Creek, through Chapman's Saddle and on into the Valley past Chapman's Ranch.” Obviously, Chapman’s pioneering work in the area not only contributed to these place names, but to the route as well.

In 1855, A.P. Chapman wrote to the California Surveyor General, strongly suggesting the Downieville to Chapman Saddle to Henness Pass route. Chapman’s letter was published in the 1856 report to the legislature. Chapman suggests that the passes on his route are 500 to 800 feet lower than the proposed “ridge route.” Something we don’t think about much today, as Chapman noted, was that Sierra Valley was an excellent place to feed and water stock. In fact, in the previous winter, stock had been able to graze all winter without feeding due to the mild snowfall. Chapman also provides an estimate to build the road -- $95,000 for some 70 miles.

The following year Chapman joined with other “public spirited citizens” of Downieville to suggest an “immigrant” road to the Surveyor General of California, John A. Brewster. In his 1857 report to the California Legislature, Brewster details a horse trip he, Chapman and about eight others take from Downieville, with the intent of selling the state on this road. Among the members of the party is one J.H. Craycroft, a leading citizen of Downieville and proprietor of a saloon that still operates today.

What a trip Brewster details. Starting in Downieville, the party heads up the north bank of the Yuba River through Sierra City. They then head up Chapman Creek, through Chapman Saddle and into Sierra Valley to Chapman’s ranch. Brewster’s report notes that passage into Sierra Valley though Chapman’s Saddle is about 1,000 feet lower in elevation than other routes into the valley.

After resting at Chapman’s, they head northeast through Sierra Valley where they encounter Native Americans having a “grand talk” about some hunting ground disputes.

Eventually the party reaches the Truckee River. At this point, any traveler on Highway 80 recognizes they are likely in Nevada. Here, the party encounters an “incipient Mormon village” where some of the travelers are invited to a ball. More important, they “obtain” some of the fine “salmon trout” of the Truckee. Obtain?

Brewster’s party follows the Truckee all the way to its terminus at Pyramid Lake. He describes Pyramid Lake as “alkaline” and having “rancid and offensive odor.”

The party fishes and hunts their way back to the south end of Sierra Valley and where they stop to enjoy a “a delightful and invigorating bath” in the 104-degree hot sulfur springs. The next day they return to Chapman’s ranch, which Brewster now calls a “rancho.”

For reasons that are not published, the state does not appear to take Chapman and his colleagues up on their road proposals. Undaunted, the citizens of Sierra Valley continue their efforts.

In the Marysville Daily Appeal of June 22, 1862, is a report on a road committee meeting between the citizens of Downieville and Sierra Valley. “On motion of Mr. Chapman, the following Committee was appointed to draft resolutions expressive of the sense of the meeting as to the practicability and advantages of a wagon road from Downieville to Sierra Valley, in Sierra County, over the Yuba Gap route.”

Among the understated resolutions of this group is the following gem:

The commercial interests and necessities of our State require that we should have an easy, safe and practicable wagon road for meeting the Eastern and the Western Slope of the Sierra Nevada, and thereby the great Mississippi Valley and the Atlantic States with Pacific Coast, which can be traveled safely by stages the whole year without serious interruption from the lung (sic) and heavy belts of snow usually found on most the routes across the Sierra Nevada, and this Committee have surveyed the Yuba Gap route and inspected the entire distance of the same from Downieville to this point, add finding it at this season of the year dear from snow or any other impediment -- in traveling, the summit being of less altitude than the present traveled routes by about 1,700 feet—therefore (unintelligible). That it is the sense of this meeting that we are convinced of the complete feasibility of the route from Downieville to Nevada Territory, through the Yuba Gap and Sierra Valley, and we can conscientiously recommend it to the traveling public as one which will afford a more expedition - and easy transit across the Sierras than any other route known.

As we know today, the state did not choose to put an immigrant road through Chapman Saddle. While the road between Sierra Valley and Downieville gradually improved, as well as that from Sierra Valley to Truckee, the region did not gain the commercial status—at least in terms of roads—that was afforded by the other trans-Sierra routes—Highway 50 over Echo Summit and Highway 80 over Donner Summit. Sierra County locals will tell you today that their all-weather road—Highway 49—never closes, which can certainly not be said for routes 50 and 80.

The comfort of family

Following the completion of the Chapman family home in Sierra Valley (the image fronting this piece) in about 1862, we assume that A.P. was mostly a farmer. That is, there is no further record of his roadway lobbying.

It also appears that his wife Caroline and sons Albert Franklin (Frank) and Charles made the journey west. The four Chapmans are listed as residents of Sierra Valley in the 1870 U.S. Census, and Caroline and A.P. are in the same Sierra Valley household in 1880. How Caroline and her children made the trip west and when is presently unknown. If they came as the house was completed in 1862, it is likely they would have taken one of the sea routes that A.P. used. Transcontinental rail service is still a few years off at this point in time.

Albert F. Chapman

What is known is that A.P.’s son Frank meets a young woman named Theresa Secretan and they are married in Downieville in 1868. Theresa Secretan came to San Francisco from Lima, Peru in about 1850 with members of her family. Quite frankly, Theresa’s story is better than any movie, but I simply don’t have the details to tell it properly. Suffice it to say, it involves shipwrecks outside the Golden Gate, gypsies, orphanages, and of course, hunting for gold in the Downieville area.

One of Theresa’s relations marries into the O’Rear family in Downieville, who appear to be residents since the start of festivities there. Likely as not, this union is what brought Theresa to Downieville, where she met Frank Chapman. Theresa and Frank have four children, all of whom appear to be born in Downieville: Martha Washington (1869), Albert Jules (1871), Carrie Aimee (1873, died shortly thereafter) and Clarence Edmond (1874). The photograph that ends this story is Albert Jules with his only grandson, James Albert. Jimmy is my mother Elizabeth’s and aunt Patricia’s older brother.

There is really no record of Chapman life in Sierra County during this time. There is scant evidence of Frank working for the local stage line in some capacity, which appears to be a connection through the O’Rear family. The O’Rear connection gets a bit deeper and weirder with Martha Washington Chapman—Frank and Theresa’s daughter—marrying Horace O’Rear. So, Horace marries his mother's stepsister's daughter.

Whatever pull Sierra Valley had on the Chapman family appears to be loosening its grip by 1880 or so.

By 1880, Theresa and her three surviving children are living in a boarding house in San Francisco. Frank is not a member of the household, perhaps still trying to make a go of it in Downieville. In the 1900 census, Theresa is living with her daughter and her O’Rear family in San Francisco.

The patriarch of the California Chapmans appears to give up on the Sierra Valley as well. In the 1884 register of California voters, the 68-year-old Chapman is living in the Temescal neighborhood of Oakland, but still lists himself as a farmer. Of course, women did not yet have the vote, so we don’t know if he was living with Caroline.

We don’t know why Chapman quit Sierra Valley. Perhaps life as a farmer in the mountains was just too difficult. Maybe he was disappointed that his road—and perhaps his fortune—was never realized. Could he have been forced to sell out? It is also plausible that after years of not being around his family, he just wanted to live out his days with them. Maybe farming in Oakland in 1884 was a good as farming in Sierra Valley if you are with your family.

A.P. Chapman died in 1893. He is buried in Oakland. The date and location of Caroline’s passing is unknown. Not at all sure about Frank, Theresa and their children, save for Albert Jules. He started a successful insurance business in San Francisco and lived in Ross with his first wife, Chizzie, until her death, and then with his second wife, Olive. He loved to fish, and presumably did so in the waters first seen by his grandfather. Albert Jules died in 1960.

It is lovely to think what it was like for A.P. Chapman, George Kent and William Jones to look east over Sierra Valley for the first time, knowing that this indeed was someplace special. You can stop your car today on Highway 49 and get the same feeling. For 30 years Chapman and his Sierra Valley colleagues worked tirelessly to shape Sierra Valley into an economic power that equaled its natural beauty. How odd it is to think about A.P., perhaps with Caroline at his side, riding out of the valley for the last time.

Afterword

Writing history is hard. On one hand, there is so much we just don’t know or don’t have the resources to find. At the same time, trying to organize the mountains of information we do have is not easy, either. Noted historians like Doris Kearns Goodwin and Stephen Ambrose were vilified for errors and omissions in their citations and sources. I have been trying to come to terms with one man over a 30-year span and a handful of sources. Managing my few sources is nearly impossible. How professionals cover huge sweeps of time or lives of phenomenally accomplished people is beyond me.

History is sexist. You have to look hard to find references to Gold Rush women who are known more for being “good-hearted prostitutes” or in the case of Downieville’s Juanita, killing off a drunken intruder without remorse. There are at least two extremely important women in this story—Caroline Chapman and Theresa Secretan Chapman. Telling their stories is all but impossible, because the men who wrote the history of the west focused on who they knew. Caroline Chapman’s 12 years raising her family alone is no less heroic than her husband’s efforts to develop Sierra Valley.

History omits most of the voices. While I marvel at what A.P. Chapman accomplished and am proud to be a Chapman, it seems very important to recognize the privilege he brought to his circumstances. I can draw a straight line from the Puritan’s belief that it was their God-granted duty to build a “city on a hill” and in so doing bulldoze anything and anyone in their way to the gold seekers’ headlong abuse of the native population and the environment in their quest for riches. There are countless Native American, Chinese, Hispanic and African American people whose stories are central to the development of California—and the Sierra Valley -- but they are too infrequently heard.

Mostly, I think about what I don’t know, but wish I did. I have just one tiny picture of A.P. Chapman, date unknown, but I have to infer or construct most everything else. There are plenty of other family stories about which I simply did not know to ask. I was too young to ask great grandfather Albert Jules Chapman about his grandfather, and didn’t know to ask my grandfather Rowland Albert Chapman about his grandfather. I could have asked my mom, or uncle Jim, but never made the time to do so. There are plenty of things I never asked my own parents about. Some stories should be lost, forever. But there are many, many more we should all know.

# # #

James Albert Chapman and Albert Jules Chapman, great great grandson and grandson of A.P. Chapman, respectively, ca. 1936. Somewhere in California, perhaps on the Yuba River in Sierra County.

Sources

“History of Tahoe National Forest,” 1840 -1940, U.S. Forest Service, http://www.foresthistory.org/ASPNET/Publications/region/5/tahoe/ 2010

Howard, Thomas F., Sierra Crossing: First Roads to California, University of California Press, 1998

Illustrated History of Plumas, Lassen and Sierra Counties from 1513 to 1850, Farriss and Smith, 1882

Journal of the Seventh Session of the Legislature of the State of California, 1956

Journal of the Eighth Session of the Legislature of the State of California, 1857

Marysville Daily Appeal, Volume V, Number 149, 22 June 1862, http://cdnc.ucr.edu/cgi-bin/cdnc?a=d&d=MDA18620622.2.5

Mines of Sierra County, California, California State Mining Bureau, 2014

Sinnott, James J., History of Sierra County: Volume I—Downieville, Gold Town on the Yuba, Mountain House Books, 1991.

Sinnott, James J., History of Sierra Count: Volume IV—Sierra Valley, Jewell of the Sierras, Mid-Cal Publishers, 1982

Sierra County Historical Society, http://www.sierracountyhistory.org/

“Who’s Got the Gold,” The California Military History Museum, http://californiamilitaryhistory.org/Gold.html, 1998

Purdom Family Tree, Ancestry.com