The Coolidge examiner., 1937-01-28
Prepared by National Geographic Society.
Wnahin OF NII SnrI.ina

dollar" That is what Daniel
i Webster thought of Califor-
MIA, and other southwestern
lands, when it was proposed that we
take them as indemnity after the
war with Mexico. What sympa-
thy" he added, 'can there be be-
tween the people of California
and the Eastern states 2"
Webster gave that opinion of Cali
fornia in the senate only 88 years
ago.
Today it is the wealthiest state
west of the Mississippi. and has
some 6,158,000 people. One of them
said to visitor: 1T took my folks
200 years to get to California. They
landed in Virginia about 1850, and
moved west with the frontier. My
father got here in the 1850s"
Up in Humboldt county at For
ty-niner' ball" for which men grow
full boards, sweet, bright-eyed
lady said: My dress must be all of
130 years old. 1t was old when my
mother brought it around the Horn,
from Nova Scotia" Her men fought
grizzly bears and Klamath Indians,
panned gold, and cut timber to build
schooners. Only once in Is or 20
years did they get down to San
Francisco, and then by sea; no rail-
road reached northwest California
0ff cHo
MY father was general Mariana
Vallejo, the last Mexican officer to
command this post" proudly as
serted Sonora Luisa V. Emparan of
Sonoma. He was born at Monte
rey. Here are his silver mounted
saddle, his sword, spurs, and pistols.
After America acquired California
he became a patriotic, influential
citizen of the United States"
In such ways came the whites
who people this land - divergent
races, from sources far apart.
Many Came From Foreign Lands.
In Napa county you see how
French, Italian, and German grape
growers form yet another racial
strain. In 1880 one-third of all peo-
pie then here had come from for
eign lands, a fact which was pro-
foundly to influence the human and
economic geography of this oldest
and largest of all Pacific Coast
states.
Seek quiet country lanes that lead
to long established homes of both
native American and foreign stock,
and you sense the social maturity
of this complex yet mellow land.
Monterey was a seat of Spanish
culture before Washington, D. c.,
was even surveyed. Russians had
built Fort Ross, and were growing
wheat and trading counterfeit wam-
pun for otter skins before peace
ended the War of 1872.
Ever since Hubert Howe Ban
croft painstaking researches, writ
ers have told and retold the story Of
early California and they still
make use of Bancroft's incompara-
BILE source material, preserved now
at the state university in Berkeley.
To see what the white man has
done with work, tools, and science
in developing this region as it is
now, consider the place where his
labors began. Ride through the
Mother Lode country" where the
first pick marks on this now lush,
opulent land were made by the gold
seekers. Every hillside, gully. and
stream bed shows the scars of
shafts, tunnels, and frantic digging.
Ruined huts and half deserted
ghost towns" dot these gold fields
from which bearded men in red
flannel shirts gouged nuggets and
panned the yellow dust. Melancholy
Columbia is adumbrative of all
these early camps. In its old Wells
Fargo stagecoach office you see the
clumsy scales on which, records
prove, more than $50, 900, 900 in gold
was weighed. In boom days $4,000
people lived and worked here; now
the village is Shrunk to a bare $50.
Ghost Towns Are Numerous.
All through Sierra foothills you
find these fading towns, with such
names as Rough and Ready. Slug
Gulch, You Bet, and Grizzly Flats.
At Hangtown (now Placerville) long
stood the big tree on whose stout
limbs two men could be strung up
at once. In Tuolumne county is the
cabin of Bret Harte, whose charac-
ters in "Tennessee's Pardner" and
THE Outcasts of Poker Flat" were
drawn from hereabouts.
Another shack is labeled Mark
Twain'S Cabin" Violent, murder
Gus, and thieving though life in these
diggings was, Twain was able later
to say: Always do right; it will
crafty some and astonish the rest!"
In those halcyon mining days he
wrote The Jumping Frog of Calav-
eras County" Each spring now the
, once hedonic town of Angels Camp
stages a jumping frog" contest;
| entries come even from distant Ar
| kansas. Guests with what Pope
called mice foppish gusto" look
with gluttonouS avidity on the fat
e 4A.,a