[Harry L. Wells, Gold Lake, The Overland Monthly, November 1884]

 

1884.]              Gold Lake: The First Stampede in the California Mines.  519

 

PIONEER SKETCHES.—V. GOLD LAKE : THE FIRST STAMPEDE IN THE CALIFORNIA MINES.

 

            MANY and wild have been the mining excitements of the Pacific Coast, and the infection still taints the air. There is to be met with from Arizona to British Columbia many a quiet, gray bearded man, who needs but the proper prompting to draw out a tale of adventure more exciting than Sinbad's. Now, it may be, he is performing the dull routine of farm work; or, perhaps, with his sleeves to his elbows, works the huge bellows at the forge, or rings the steel sledge upon the anvil ; perhaps he stands modestly behind the counter to measure calico for some airy maid who has never been beyond the limits of the county in which she was born ; or, resuming the profession he discarded when he joined the Argonautic throng, he wields the birch in the school-room, visits the bed of the sick, or raises his voice to plead in the halls of justice. Whenever and wherever you find him, you have but to speak of old times, and his eye will kindle, his reserve relax, and you will soon be lost in astonishment at the tale of adventure poured into your ear. He will tell you how he abandoned a claim paying ten ounces a day to find one that would yield twenty, and never found it; how he sought Gold Lake in the Sierra summits, was led into the rugged canons of the Trinity Mountains, or wrecked with his fellow "Gold Bluffers" at Trinidad; how the ignis fatuus of the " Lost Cabin," or " Emigrant Ledge " allured him into the depths of the trailless forest, or upon the fatal alkali wastes of Death Valley ; how, after a journey of a thousand miles across sage-brush plains and mountain wilds, sleeping by day and traveling by night to avoid the hostile Indians, he descended the rugged cañon of Frazer River, only to find ten thousand men there, and not claims enough for a thousand ; how he rushed to Washoe the next year, and soon afterwards joined the eager throng which poured into the mines of Idaho; how he was blown about by every breath of excitement, until, at last, he abandoned the mines with their oft-recurring mirage of shimmering gold, and settled down into a life so quiet and uneventful, that the thousands with whom he comes in daily contact have no other thought than that to hold the plow, or feel the pulse of the sick, has been his life-long occupation. Whenever you meet such a man, speak to him of the past, and by all means of Gold Lake, for that was the initial excitement of the mines.

            The story of Gold Lake has appeared in print from time to time—or, rather, fragments of it ; but nothing that could be called a complete narrative has yet been written. A few years ago I became intensely interested in the subject, and began a thorough investigation, with results which intensified my interest, as I penetrated deeper and deeper into the maze of contradictory and apparently irreconcilable statements. I have read every published narrative, and at least fifty participants have told me "all about it," each one differing in his version from all the others. Nor is this at all wonderful ; the excitement was widespread, and was shared in by hundreds who could never give, even to themselves, a satisfactory reason for it; and their differences arose like the dispute of the two valiant knights, from looking upon opposite sides of the shield. Having classified and reconciled as much as possible these diverse stories, speculations, and opinions, I present a narrative of Gold Lake as complete and comprehensive as it will ever be possible to give.

            The great majority of those who came to California in '49 were utterly ignorant of the nature of gold deposits, and the proper method of washing out the metal. All this they had to learn. Many peculiar geological theories were evolved ; one of the most universally accepted being that somewhere, high up in the mountains, was the "source of gold," and there was a general eagerness to

520      Gold Lake: The First Stampede in the California Mines.  [NOV.

find it. Arriving, most of them, after the summer months had passed, and finding the miners chiefly at work on the lower portion of the streams, but few penetrated far into the mountains toward the head waters. One reason for this was the well known fate of the Donner party three years before, which deterred them from attempting to spend the winter in the mountains, with the source of supplies so distant and uncertain. Yet they were all eager to reach the " source of gold"; for they had quickly noticed that the further up they ascended, the coarser became the gold, and the man who could conduct them to the place where it could be picked up in chunks was the man they were all looking for—and they found him.

            One region that had never yet been visited was that about the headwaters of the Feather and Yuba Rivers, now embraced in the counties of Plumas and Sierra; and of course miners on the rich bars in the foothills along those streams were ready to believe almost any fabulous tale of the richness of their fountain heads, even to a lake whose dancing ripples reflected the shining nuggets on its banks. With this tinder already in men's minds, it is easy to understand how an excitement could be created which would sweep through the mines like wildfire.

            Gold Lake, of which Plumas and Sierra Counties each has one, is none the less a creation of fiction. If it ever had an existence other than in the brain of the man who claimed to have found it, some other name has been applied to it, and its identity has never been established. We are confronted in the outset by two stories of the way in which the author of the excitement claimed that the lake had been discovered. The most probable of these is as follows :

            Among the emigrants by the "Lassen Horn Route," in 1849, was a man named Stoddard, the cause of all the subsequent excitement. When the train with which he was traveling arrived in the Sierras, probably in the neighborhood of Big Meadows, in the northern end of Plumas County, Stoddard, with one companion, went out upon a hunting expedition, for the purpose of replenishing the depleted larder of his company. Unversed in mountain life and unskilled in woodcraft, the two Nimrods lost their way, and wandered about for several days in search of the camp they had left, but in vain. They then undertook to get out of the mountains by following the course of the streams, and in doing this came upon a small lake, with an area of from ten to fifteen acres, inclosed by high and rocky mountains. In a ravine on the lake shore, where the water from the melted snows of the previous spring had washed the bed-rock bare, they found some large chunks of gold. Frightened by their precarious condition, in an unknown mountain wilderness, exposed to dangers which their very ignorance magnified, and feeling that no time must be lost if they would extricate themselves, they did not stop to minutely examine the locality, nor even to make such observations as would enable them to return to the spot ; they simply thrust a few of the golden pieces in their pockets, and hastened on.

            The next day they were suddenly treated to a shower of arrows from a party of Indians secreted in a clump of brush, and Stoddard, by taking promptly to his heels, succeeded in making his escape alone, unaware of the fate of his companion. For several days he toiled over high mountains and through dark and rocky canons, scarcely stopping to rest, and having nothing to eat but a few wild berries, until he at last reached the north fork of Yuba River. Following down the stream, he soon came upon the advance guard of miners, who had pushed far beyond the main body working on the bars below. He obtained food and shelter, and related his adventure, which was by no means too wonderful for belief at that time, since it had occurred in a region of which all were ignorant. The story spread through the mines of Yuba and Feather Rivers, and hundreds decided to venture into the mountains in the spring ; the prevailing fear of a Sierra winter was too great for an immediate start. Some had hopes of finding the golden lake ; others doubted the existence of such a body of water, but expected to find wonderfully rich

1884.]  Gold Lake: The First Stampede in the California Mines.  521

diggings ; while others, at the more remote diggings, to whom the story of Stoddard had come so filtered by travel that it had been resolved into a simple rumor—and rumors passed current at that time — that rich diggings existed on the headwaters of the Yuba, decided to abandon their claims and seek the new mines on general principles.

            Meanwhile Stoddard went to San Francisco, where he knew were friends of his unfortunate companion, to learn if by lucky chance he, also, had escaped ; but nothing had been heard of the missing man, and, after waiting for tidings of him for several weeks, he came to the conclusion that his body lay far up amid the mountain summits.

            It is best, perhaps, to turn here to the other story—differing slightly, according to the narrator—of the discovery of the wonderful lake.

            This version says that in the Spring of 1850, as early as February, Stoddard and four others went upon a prospecting tour into the mountains some fifty miles northeast of Downieville, where they got lost and wandered about for several days. One morning they came upon a lake, while climbing a mountain to take observations, and knelt down upon the bank to slake their thirst. While stooping over they observed something shining amid the moss at the bottom; it proved, upon investigation, to be lumps of pure gold. They began eagerly to dredge the bottom for the yellow treasure, when they were suddenly attacked by Indians, who had been watching their proceedings from a hiding place among the chaparral. Two of them fell, pierced with arrows, while Stoddard and the other two fled, but in opposite directions ; and when Stoddard finally made his way out of the mountains, he was unable to learn any tidings of his companions, and concluded that they had perished.

            The improbable part of this story, and one which refutes it, is that it was impossible for anyone to have gone so far into the mountains so early in the Spring. The Winter of 1849 was a stormy one, and snow lay upon the mountains thirty feet deep. Snow-shoes had not been introduced. Miners were unused to winter travel in the mountain wilds ; and that a party of prospectors had been able to penetrate into that region at that early period was highly improbable. Besides that, the writer has met several who had heard of the Gold Lake adventure, somewhat as at first outlined, early in the winter.

            Doubtful as all this may be, one thing is certain : Stoddard appeared on the Yuba in April from San Francisco, as he asserted, and told a wonderful tale of heaps of gold to be found in or near some mysterious lake high up amid the summit peaks of the Sierras, and exhibited some large specimens of pure gold, varying in weight from eight to twenty-five dollars, to prove his tale to be true. So strange was his story that many believed him to be crazy, and would have nothing to do with him. Even those who had been affected by the rumors of the previous winter did not recognize in him the originator of them. But his specimens were a convincing argument, and hundreds who had no faith in a gold-bottomed lake, and placed no reliance upon his account of how they came into his possession, were none the less anxious to be led to the place where such chunks of gold could be found, be it lake, river, ravine, or gulch. In many places they had seen little pockets of gold stuck in crevices, where several hundred dollars had been taken out in a few minutes, and it was not a violent assumption to think that " further up," nearer the " source of gold," they could find such chunks as Stoddard exhibited, and could gather in twenty-four hours as much of the precious metal as they could carry away. They, therefore, while not willing to come to Stoddard's terms, kept an eye upon him and his movements.  It was about the last of May when Stoddard appeared with his story at Nevada city and exhibited his specimens. He seemed here to meet with a better reception and found more believers. This may be due to the exhibition of a scar upon his leg, which he said was the result of an arrow wound received at the lake; though the fact that the wound was completely healed, and the scar evidently several years old, could hardly be

522      Gold Lake: The First Stampede in the California Mines.  [NOV. 

considered confirmatory evidence. Yet such trifles as that were beneath the notice of men whose eyes were blinded by the sight of golden nuggets. He organized a party of twenty- five to go in search of the lake, selecting them from among five hundred who were eager to go, and to pay liberally for the chance. The only member of this original party the writer has ever met is Mr. George E. Brittan, who now lives in Sutter County. About the first of June this company started for the upper country, followed by from five hundred to one thousand men, who had kept a close watch upon their preparations, and were ready to follow them to the end of the world if necessary. They struck right north from Nevada City to the divide between the North Yuba and the Middle Feather, and followed the ridge to the headwaters of those streams. Having now reached the region where he supposed the lake to be, Stoddard appeared to know as little about its actual location as any of his companions He wandered about from place to place with his party, the crowd of followers clinging to them like a shadow, supposing the apparently aimless movements to be made for the purpose of tiring them out and throwing them off the scent. They entered Sierra Valley, crossed north to Red Clover Valley, and then to Last Chance Valley (so named from what happened there at that time), where the party became satisfied their leader was incapable of conducting them to the wonderful lake, to reach which they had endured so many hardships. There were three opinions held by the deluded men, who then gathered in consultation in Last Chance Valley. Some considered Stoddard crazy, and the lake simply a figment of his diseased brain ; others that he had never visited the supposed lake, but, having heard the story he related from some one else, had told the adventure as his own for the purpose of forming a party to search for it, hoping to discover it from the faint idea he possessed of its general location; others still believed his story true, but that his sense of location was imperfect, and he had again become lost, as he was when he first saw the lake.

            The party was badly demoralized, and so disappointed and angry as to be unreasonable. Many of their animals had perished—some of them in the deep snow, and others by being dashed to pieces upon the rocks at the bottom of some precipitous cañon. Their anger and disappointment overflowed, and a meeting was called to discuss the situation, at which it was decided to hang the author of their woes at once. The sentence was suspended for one day, at the earnest solicitation of the few who still believed in him; but he was told that if at sundown the lake had not been discovered, the following day his neck would be summarily stretched. This was his "last chance."

            If Stoddard was lost as regards the locality of the lake, he was not so as far as other places were concerned, for that night he gave them the slip and made his way out of the mountains alone. This incident, of which there is no doubt, is said by some to have occurred in Humbug Valley, Plumas County, and not in Last Chance; but it is immaterial.

            So far, we have seen but a small portion of the excitement; for these men were but the advance guard of the " Gold Lakers," who rushed into the mountains of Plumas and Sierra counties that spring. The news that Stoddard and his party, followed by a crowd of miners, had left Deer Creek to search for the lake of gold, spread like wildfire through the mines of Yuba and Feather Rivers. Many who had before heard of the mysterious lake, and many more who now learned of it for the first time, rushed off in the direction the searchers had gone. All the floating population of the mines took the fever, and many, also, who owned good claims abandoned them to go where one day's work was worth a thousand. It became a perfect stampede. Away they rushed, carrying but few provisions, and but little money or dust with which to buy. Some organized into small parties, but as a general thing they went along in twos and threes, each striving to be the first to reach the shore of the mysterious tarn. Hundreds had but an indistinct idea of what they were in search of; all they knew was

1884.]  Gold Lake: The First Stampede in the California Mines.  523

that somewhere in the mountains was a place where gold could be picked up in chunks, and they proposed to get there in time to pick up a few for themselves. The infection extended to the American River, and even to the southern mines, and many started from there to follow in the wake of others. A party of these went as far as Donner Lake, and into the country immediately north of it ; and some member, imagining that his little expedition was all there was of the Gold Lake excitement, wrote a full account of it for the press a few years ago. It is by investing such side shows as that with the dignity of the main circus, that so much confusion about the story of Gold Lake has been created.

            Since Peter the Hermit led his army of fanatics towards Palestine, no such incoherent crowd has been seen as that which rushed through the forest and trailless mountains in quest of this golden delusion. The prices of horses, mules, and oxen went up at a rapid rate. Some started with wagons; but owing to the character of the country and the absence of even a trail, this method of conveyance was soon abandoned ; and the pilgrims hurried on, packing their effects upon the backs of animals, or, abandoning everything, pushed along on foot, unincumbered. Many of the animals, as well as some of their owners, slipped on the precipitous sides of deep cañons, and were plunged headlong to their death, hundreds of feet below. Yet in all this there were those who were cool enough to profit by the excitement of the others. Perceiving an opportunity for traffic, a number of merchants accompanied the eager throng with loads of provisions, which they sold at exorbitant prices, even killing the cattle which drew the loads, and cutting them up, sold the meat at a dollar a pound.

            The files of the Marysville "Herald," Sacramento "Placer Times," and the San Francisco "Alta California," for the month of June, speak of Stoddard's party having just started, and contain long accounts of the exodus. A correspondent of the "Placer Times" was enterprising enough to follow the throng in the interest of journalism—or shrewd enough to represent that as having been his object when he learned of the utter disappearance of the lake. He reached the vicinity of the present town of La Porte, when from returning pilgrims he learned that Stoddard's party had abandoned the search. The excitement lasted for about a month, and then resolved itself into the ordinary movement from old to new mines.

            When Stoddard's party awoke that June morning in Last Chance Valley, and realized that their erratic guide and condemned prisoner had fled in the darkness of the night, many of them were glad they had been spared the execution of their sentence. They started back, prospecting as they went, and the crowd at their heels followed their example. News spread along the line that Stoddard was a fraud and Gold Lake a myth, carried by the disgusted ones who were hurrying back to the good claims they had abandoned, which they invariably found some other fellow was working with the greatest of satisfaction. News of the utter failure of the expedition reached Deer Creek within a month after the time it had started from that place. Even before the search had been abandoned by the original party, and the large crowd immediately in their rear, considerable prospecting was indulged in by those who had started a few days later ; so that when the disgusted men turned back, they found that their followers had already struck good diggings on Nelson, Poorman, and Hopkins Creeks, and on Rich Bar. Into these mines the disappointed pilgrims poured in a perfect flood, and seized upon every inch of ground. In many cases where the first workers had staked off generous claims, the newcomers, being in a majority, called a meeting, made laws reducing the size of claims, and staked off locations for themselves. Even this failed to give claims to all, and the hundreds of unsuccessful ones sought elsewhere, discovering rich diggings on every fork of Feather River.

            There is another point of view from which to contemplate this whole affair. Before the excitement broke out, there was a secret ex-

524      Gold Lake: The First Stampede in the California Mines.  [NOV.

pedition to this same locality. This was related to the writer by that well-known pioneer of 1841, John Rose, after whom Rose's Bar, on the Yuba, was named. He was living near that place a few years ago, and probably is at the present time. Early in the spring of 1850, two men, one of them named Marks, were living with the Indians in a rancheria north of Yuba River, when one day an Indian came into camp with some splendid specimens, which he asserted had been found lying loose in the gravel in the bed of a river further north. Marks understood the language but imperfectly, and asked his companion, who was lying ill at the time, to tell him what the Indian said. The sick man would not do so, intending, when he recovered, to go in search of the stream alone. But Marks had understood enough to know the general direction of the river, and about the distance to be traveled to reach it; and he hastened to Marysville—then just springing up at Nye's Ranch, near the forks of Yuba and Feather Rivers—to organize a prospecting party. Having but little confidence in his ability to induce rational beings to invade an unknown mountain wilderness at that season of the year, with only the imperfectly understood tale of an Indian as an incentive, he improved upon the narrative to meet the exigencies of the case. He told an exciting tale of adventure, the gist of which was, that having gone far into the mountains, he had discovered a place where lay heaps of gold, but had been attacked by Indians, and was fortunate to escape with his life. A select company of thirty men was secretly organized, Mr. Rose being one of them; and under the leadership of the romancing Marks, set out in quest of the bonanza. They followed the divide between the Yuba and Feather, the same route pursued by Stoddard's dupes a few weeks later, until they reached the mouth of Nelson Creek, when Marks informed them that he was completely bewildered; and they returned home in disgust.

            Mr. Rose still believes the Indian told a true story, and that Rich Bar on the Middle Feather was the place where he obtained his specimens; also, that Marks, who had led them very near to that place, was unable to find it, simply because he had never been there and did not know its exact location. Mr. Rose further believes that this was the foundation of Stoddard's Gold Lake; that, having heard of the Indian's tale and Marks's improvements upon it, he had been inspired to adopt the same tactics as the veracious Marks, and had invented Gold Lake and the Indians for the purpose of securing followers, trusting to luck to strike something rich when he reached that region.

            In 1858 the Marysville "News" printed what purported to be the bottom facts about Stoddard and his Gold Lake adventure, the information being supplied by William C. Stokes, then one of the proprietors of the United States Hotel in that city. It was to the effect that early in the spring of 1850 Mr. Stokes was employed at the cabin of a man named Ferrel, on Deer Creek, when one day a stranger appeared with a large sack of gold dust and had a long consultation with Ferrel, which Stokes, who was lying in his bunk, overheard. The stranger said that he had gathered the dust on the banks of a lake somewhere northeast of the Forks of Yuba River, since known as Downieville, where it existed in great quantities; that he had been taken to it by Indians, who had helped gather the dust; that he came away to procure provisions, and having broken faith with his Indian partners by not returning at the time promised, he was now afraid to go back without a strong party to protect him from their wrath. He wanted Ferrel to form a party to go with him, but for some reason unknown by Mr. Stokes his employer would have nothing to do with it. Only a few weeks later, in April, Mr. Stokes was mining at French Corral, when a man came along who said his name was Stoddard, and that he was a miner from Frenchman's Bar, on the Yuba. He took dinner with Stokes, and afterwards they engaged in an extended conversation, during which Stoddard said that he had once belonged to the English navy, and had been wounded in the bombardment of Acre, to prove which he ex-

1884.]              A Day Out Doors.         525

hibited a scar on one of his legs—the same scar, Mr. Stokes thought, which he a few weeks later displayed to the doubting Thomases who refused to credit his Gold Lake adventure. It was then Mr. Stokes's turn to relate an exploit, so he rehearsed the tale he had overheard the stranger unfold to Ferrel, amplifying it sufficiently to make it spicy and interesting. This, he thought, was Stoddard's inspiration; for about the 1st of June, at which time he was keeping a public house at Deerville, twelve miles from Middle Yuba, Stoddard and his original party of Gold Hill adventurers passed by. The leader of them refused to recognize Mr. Stokes when he entered the cabin. He tried in vain to persuade some of Stoddard's dupes to abandon the enterprise, but it was like talking against the north wind. The article concluded by saying that Stoddard was then living in Sierra County, "well to do in the world."

            It is needless to recount the speculations and opinions of the surviving members of that first crusade; they are as various as the crusaders. Upon his return to the lower mines, Stoddard endeavored to form another company to search for the elusive lake, but he was considered crazy, laughed at by some, and listened to patronizingly by others, as one humors the vagaries of a lunatic. For several years he hung about the mines on North Yuba, boring everybody with incessant repetitions of his story, and spending his summers in zealous search for the lake, in the existence of which his confidence remained unshaken. What finally became of him I have never learned. There are still to be found men who believe implicitly in the truthfulness and sincerity of the man who led them on that wild invasion of the mountains, and who account for his inability to find the lake by the theory that one of the landslides, so frequent in the Spring in that region, had buried it, or at least that part of it in which the gold had been found. Verily, not until the generation of '49 shall have passed away and joined "that innumerable throng," will belief entirely disappear in the golden pebbles of that mysterious lake.

Harry L. Wells.