Wessington Springs herald. (Wessington Springs, Aurora County, Dakota [S.D.]) 1883-1891, 1883-10-06
The Ex.County Seats in California.

We entered French Bar. Oh. what .
,,Iins Oft is there! In '52 up to IS
, .nare was not a livelier camp in tho
..a',thern mines. Lots of miners and
1'oans of gold; every Sunday ten or
,wn We monte or faro games runninn.
arery claim paying at least four bits to
W., nan: now it is La Grange. With a
NJ, nnooullation Of perhaps $50. There ar,
Iii the remains of the French and Ital.
i'm miners; they (the survivors) have
r;nevards, make wine and peddle yeo-
,.,bles. French Bar used to be a Mace
II some note. 1t was once the county
.',t, The old Jail and courthouse are
s,ll there. If they could speak thew
co,Id tell queer tales. Old Major Lanes
how went after a gang of horse-thicves
in SO, and tracked them to Little Pin
nrhc in the Coast Range. The thieves
ran from a campfire up a canon, and
fred on the posse; Lane fell dead. and
the rest left. One old hand traced the
Gang to Horseshoe Bend on the MERGED.
and summoned the posse. When the
sheriff got to their camp there were
,hrps; one was shot dead, another oot
clear off in the chapparal, and another
was wounded and taken to French Bar.
Next night the Jail was broken into and
the murderer swung; then John Ber-
Ian. Sheriff of Tuolumne, caught a gang
o. c%attlc-thieves over in Mariposa. and
AS he was returning to Sonora a lot of
men jumped out Of the oaks close to
The Bar, and the prisoners dangled in
ten minutes.
Continuing on down river, Empire is
reached. This was once also the county
seat, but never attained to the dignity Of
even a village. 1t made a faint struggle
in '6S and '69, and then boosted Of a
ferry, a store, a saloon, hotel, and black
smith shop. The land round here is
the very finest in Stanislaus, and will
now sell for from thirty to forty dollars
an acre. Until about 1866 all this u
ty was a sheep or cattle range, but after
that people began to settle here and
there on the plains. The mines had
pctered out, SO many families began to
homestead and raise wheat, to the sur
prise of the old settlers. AS the county
settled up the sheep men began to buy
up tracts of land for pastoral purposes.
Thousands of acres were thus bought up
at the very lowest figures. One grant
of 10000 acres was purchased in 81 for
six bits an acre. 1t is worth fifty dol
lars an acre now. This is the reason
that there are SC many solid men in
Slanislaus. Their land increased enor-
mously in value, and keeps every day
becoming more precious. About two.
miles below Empire are the ruins of
Westport. This also tlourished for a
couple Of years. 1t was shipping port
fo~ wheat, as steamers came regularly
up from Stockton during high water,
and had quite a number Of inhabitants.
stores, warehouses, hotels, etc. Two
miles below is Paradise City, another
aspirant for the county seat in so. This
was a busy, thriving place of business,
large brick warehouses, a fine Touring
mill, school-house, hotels and places OF
business. Its great rival was Toulumne
City, five miles lower down. Now an
empty warehouse marks the site of that
town, but many of its houses are still in
Modesto, for in 1870 Tuolumne City,
Parad Sc and Westport moved into Mo-
dcsto, and SO they all attained the
hc' ght of their ambition and became the
county seat.-Cor. San Francisco Bull