[September 20, 1961]
We paid another visit to the Old Timer at the Frontier Village. Jim Randells of The Times-Dispatch set up the microphone and I hooked it to my tape recorder.
None of us have ever been able to figure our how old the Old Timer Really is. We took our seats in the Big Barn and his feeble voice by the magic of modern science reached all of us. He was going to tell us something about California at the height of the gold rush.
He began:
The town of Placerville, or Hangtown, as it was commonly called, consisted of one long straggling street of clapboard houses and two cabins built in a hollow at the side of a creek and surrounded by high and steep hills. The diggings here had been exceedingly rich. Men used to pick the chunks of gold out of the crevices of the rocks in the ravines with no other tool than a bowieknife. But these days had passed and now the whole surface of the surrounding country showed the amount of real hard work which had been done.
There was a confused mass of heaps of dirt and piles of stones lying around the many holes. About six feet square and five or six feet deep, from which they had been thrown out. The original course of the creek was completely obliterated. Its waters being distributed into numberless little ditches. And from them conducted into the long toms of the miners through canvas hoses. Looking like immensely long slimy sea serpents.
Along the whole length of the creek as far as one could see, on the banks of the creek, in the ravines, in the middle of the principal and only street of the own and even inside some of the houses, were parties of miners numbering from three or four to a dozen, all hard at work. Some laying into it with picks. Some shoveling the dirt into long toms. Or with long handled shovels washing the dirt thrown in and throwing out the stones. While others were working pumps or bailing water out of the holes with buckets. There was a continual noise and clatter as mud, dirt, stone, and water were thrown about in all directions. And the men, dressed in ragged clothes and big boots, wielding picks and shovels and rolling big rocks about were all working as if for their lives.
A stroll through the village revealed the extent to which the ordinary comforts of life were attainable. There were three or four gambling houses and they were the largest and most conspicuous buildings. Their mirrors, chandeliers and other decorations suggested a style of life totally at variance with the outward indications of everything around them.
The street itself was in many places knee deep in mud. And it was plentifully strewed with old boots, hats, and shirts, old sardine boxes, empty tins of preserved oysters, empty bottles, worn out pots and kettles, old ham bones, broken picks and shovels and other rubbish too various to itemize. Here and there, in the middle of the street was a square hole about six feet deep in which one miner was digging, while another was bailing the water out with a bucket and a third sitting along the heap of dirt was washing it with a rocker.
Wagons drawn by six or eight mules or oxen, were going along the street or discharging their strangely assorted cargo at the various stores. And men in picturesque rags with large muddy boots, long beards and brown faces were the only inhabitants to be seen. There were boarding houses in each of which forty or fifty hungry miners sat down three times a day to an oilcloth covered table. And in the course of about three minutes they ate salt pork, greasy steaks, and pickles. There were also two or three hotels where much the same sort of fare was to be had with the extra luxuries of a table cloth and a superior quality of knives and forks.
The stores were curious places.There was no specialty about them. Everything was to be found in them which anyone could want to buy except beef. There was a butcher who monopolized the sale of that article. On entering a store one would find the store keeper in much the same style of costume as the miners. Very probably sitting on an empty keg at a ricketly little table playing seven-up with one of his customers. Goods and provisions were stowed away all round the store. In the middle of which there was invariably a small table with a bench. Or some empty boxes and barrels for the miners to sit on while they played cards and spent their money for brandy and oysters.
During the week and especially when the miners were at work, Hangtown was comparatively quiet. But on Sunday it was a very different place. On that day the miners living within eight or ten miles all flocked in to buy provisions for the week. And also to spend their money in the gambling rooms, to get letters from home, and to refresh themselves.
The gamblers on Sundays reaped a rich harvest. Their tables were thronged with crowds of miners betting eargerly and of course losing their money. Many men came in, Sunday after Sunday, gambled off the gold they had dug during the week. Having to get credit at a store for their next week's provisions. And returning to their diggins to work for six days in getting more gold. Which would all be transferred the next Sunday to the gamblers in the vain hope of recovering what had alreadly been lost.
The street was crowded all day with the miners loafing from one store to another store. Making their purchases and asking each other to drink. Almost every man wore a pistol or a knife, many wore both. But they were rarely used. The utmost latitude was allowed in the exercise of self defense. In the case of a row, it was not necessary to wait till a pistol was actually leveled at one's head. If a man made even a motion towards drawing a weapon it was considered perfectly justifiable to shoot him first if possible.
The storekeepers did more business on Sundays than in all the rest of the week. And in the afternoon crowds of miners could be seen going over the hills in every direction. Laden with the provisions they had been purchasing. Chiefly flour, pork and beans and perhaps a lump of fresh beef. There was only one place of public worship in Hangtown at that time and it seemed to be well attended. There was also a newspaper published two or three times week. Which kept the inhabitants posted up as to what was going on in the world outside. The richest depcgits of gold were found in the beds and banks of the rivers, creeks, and ravines, in the flats on the convex side of the bends of the streams and in many of the flats and hollows high up in the mountains. The precious metal was also taken from the very hearts of the mountains through tunnels drifted into them for several hundred yards. And in some places real mining was carried on in the depth of the earth by means of shafts sunk to the depth of a couple of hundred feet.
The principal diggings in the neighborhood of Hangtown were surface diggings. But, with the exception of river diggings, every kind of mining operation was to be seen in full force. The gold is found at various depths from the surface. But the dirt on the bed rock is the richest as the gold naturally in time sinks through earth and gravel till it is arrested in its downward progress by the old rock. The diggings here were from four to six or seven deep. The layer of pay dirt was about a couple of feet thick in the top of the bed rock.
I should mention that dirt is the world universally used in California to signify the substance dug: earth, clay, gravel, loose slate, or whatever other name might be more appropriate. The miners talk of rich dirt and poor dirt and of stripping off so many feet of top dirt before getting to pay dirt. By which they mean dirt with so much gold in it that it will pay to dig it up and wash it.
The apparatus generally used for washing was a long tom. Another way of washing dirt was by means of a rocker or cradle. To establish one's claim to a piece of ground all that was necessary was to leave upon it a pick or shovel or other mining tool.
The extent of ground allowed to each indivdual varied in different diggings from ten to thirty feet square. And was fixed by the miners themselves who also made their own laws. Defining the rights and duties of those holding claims. And any dispute on such subjects was settled by calling together a few of the neighborhood mingers. They would enforce the due observance of the laws of the diggings.
I could never understand how and why some of the miners could work so hard six days a week only to lose most of their earnings on the seventh day. Seems to me they came to California to make their fortunes by finding gold. And once having found it they should 'have hoarded it very carefully. I too looked for gold but alas, did not find it. Though I made money in business ventures. For prices were very high in the mining districts."
The Old Timer was getting tired and we decided to come back some other time. Perhaps he would tell us more about the miners and their laws.
THE END
