Collection: Directories and Documents > Historical Clippings

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Title: Historical Clippings Book (HC-04) Collection Type: Directories and Documents Collection Name: Historical Clippings Catalog #: HC-04 Author: Lyle White Related Items: Historical Clippings > Historical Clippings Index for Volume 1-4 Notes: pp701-887 # of Pages: 198 Download PDF: User Login Required Download OCR Text: User Login Required

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Original Held At: Searls Historical Library Location: 161 Nevada City Hwy, Nevada City, CA 95959

Page: of 198  

ee Tyas a RS eR Teer perme tra a ae or ee. Bear Country By E. E. NICHOLS Sacramento Union Managing Editor : “Grizzly Flats is located 27 miles southeast of Placerville in a wild and rugged region on the ridge between the North and Middle Forks of the Cosumnes River.." So says this excerpt from Stanford University's most excellent ‘Historic Spots in California.” * But we looked in on Grizzly Flats not as a result of browsing through Stanford's contribution to California tidbits: our curiosity about this home of the bears got all warmed up because of an article in the current issue of Old West, one of the “true Western” magazines that are doing so much to preserve for tomorrow the color and the lore (and the facts) of a centuThis is the old one-room Mountain School at Grizzly Flats, built in 1858. It is now a private home. You find it as you pass: through what is left of the Flats, turn right, and start back on a loop road to Somerset. Note the television antenna. Some of the windows were boarded up, but the front are curtained; and there was: a chair on the veranda. ry ago in the hills of the Sierra. There's a story in these pages (Page 8, tobe exact, in case you want to read for yourself) about ‘The Bullion Bend Robbery.” This Bullion Bend is in the Pollock Pines area, but the story climaxes at Somerset, which is about 15 miles east and south of Placerville. It was along here on June 30, 1864, that a bunch of boys with get-rich-quick ideas held up the Wells Far£0 stage and got away with some $16,000 in gold bullion, The boys got caught (as did not always happen in those wild and wooly and open space days), and one of them turns out to be Tom Poole, former deputy sheriff from Monterey County (no less), He got himself hanged for the killing of Deputy Joseph Staples, another one of the gang got 20 years, and six others Grizzly Flats Is Still Flat, El Dorado Once Was Mudhole wangled acquittal. Staples was killed at Somerset, the gang were run to earth by the law, led by the redoubtable James Hume, later to become a famous Wells Fargo detective. In the chase Constable George Ranney was fatally wounded. Staples is buried near Placerville and Ranney in Placerville’s Uppertown Cemetery. And the $16,000 is believed to be still buried . Near the scene of the holdup itself. Somerset today doesn’t have much left to show for its past. It sits at the intersection of Bucks Bar Road, Mt. Aukum Road, Snows Road, and Grizzly Flats Road. Traveling from the west, on Bucks Bar Road out of Diamond Springs, you cross the North Fork of the Cosumnes River, and there you are. It’s an oldtime country crossroads, but now Somerset Consists mostly of a small eatery. A cat licked its paws in the gate of an old cattle loading chute as we ambled by, and across the way a sleepy hound dozed in the front yard of one of yesterday’s houses. Traffic along the roads was just about nil. But the eatery was open, hopefully awaiting the chance passerby. No more bandits — please. Weekends are reported busy. The Somerset of June 30, 1864, today lies well hidden beneath the duff of time. And even at the time of the Bullion Bend Robbery it wasn’t much more than a stop on the way to Grizzly Flats. It’s ironic, but Grizzly Flats, which in 1852 boasted some 600 voters (and the girls didn’t vote in those he-man days), today nods away the hours even more sleepily at the far end of its road — there's nothing beyond — leaving, if anything, even less of a mark on the map than does its sister Somerset-at-thecrossroads. Oh, you can takea mud-top trail out of the Flats to the east-north, connecting in about two miles with Sciaroni Road and Caldor Camp Road. Via Sciaroni you can eventually find yourself in Pollock Pines, scene of our holdup, passing Jenkinson Lake; via Caldor Camp you come out, also eventually, at Cook's Station — or even, by doing something of a loopthe-loop, back at Grizzly Flats. But these roads maybe are better suited to Dobbin and a buggy than to the conventional Car you're probably driving. Just in case, along about here, you're losing interest in this particular Motorlog — not enough to see after you get there — let’s leave for the finish of our story of how Grizzly Flats got its name and drop back along the road you’ve come (via our map) — via El Dorado and Diamond Springs. Both of these “‘citles’”” are well worth your time, even if you've been there before. So many folks just pass through, have no time for gandering . . . and that one comes from goosing around (ever watch a goose — or gander walk?). As you come up and east from Sacramento on Highway 50 you pass Shingle Springs some 10 miles west of Placerville, and then, away to the right, through woodsy country, starts the mile-long shortcut to El Dorado. The shortcut is so short, you’re into the town almost before you're well off the main road. The population is 550 — nobody gets in anybody’s way. The name itself stops you if you just get to thinking a bit about all the times you've heard this phrase — its symbolizas tion of all the crazy Gold Rush stood for — the get-rich-quickness fever that pulled a hundred thousand people into California almost overnight. ‘This is the place,” as Brigham Young said when he first saw the great Valley of the Salt Lake and proceeded to turn a desert into Eden. “El Dorado” , . , It means, literally, ‘the gilded one," and was applied first by the Spaniards of Cortez toa mythical Indian monarch far to the north of Montezuma (or Moctezuma, as you may prefer) — to a monarch rumored to clothe himself entirely in apparel made of hammered gold leaf. The fabled Seven Citles of Cibola were part of that legend, Quivera was to emerge from the mists as a rather miserable collection of mud huts, and the Indian (called The Turk because the SpanContinued on spe Penedh tetas SACRAMENTO —_———___ OSEILER Face 2 ae coating, Lite Pkg, FACTORY suc, . 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