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Volume 050-2 - April 1996 (16 pages)
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Page: of 16
When the county planning department was collecting data
about the site of a proposed recreational park near the Helling
Library, the historical society provided evidence suggesting
the pond on this parcel was a reservoir Charles Marsh had
built for the city in 1861. But when the environmental impact
statement was released, it wrongly identified him as “owner
and builder of the Marsh-Christie House on Boulder Street in
Nevada City.”
Not so. The Boulder Street house was built in 1873 by
Martin Luther Marsh, a lumberman who was not related to
Charles. That structure is registered as a National Historical
Landmark, while the home of Charles Marsh, although it is
one of the oldest and most visible buildings in the city, sits
sedately and quietly at the corner of Nevada and High streets,
next to a public parking lot.
The two Marshes came here in different years from different states. They were friends, and each was a fine man with
an excellent reputation, so it is odd that the life and exploits
of Luther Marsh are known so well, while the memory of
Charles, whose contributions were greater, has nearly been
erased. His ghost, like his house, waits patiently to be rediscovered by an indifferent world.
Charles Marsh died early, at the age of fifty. His wife and
daughter moved away and did not return, whereas the descendants of M. L. Marsh have continued to maintain a local
presence. This could account for much of our neglect of
Charles Marsh, but partly it is Marsh’s fault for failing to
build a stately mansion, or use his wealth in obvious ways.
As a result, you could say he left us little to admire in the
way of artifacts and monuments.
Little, that is, unless you are willing to include such minor
legacies as Pacific Gas and Electric Company’s huge hydroelectric division—or the Nevada Irrigation District’s incredible network of reservoirs, canals, tunnels, and
ditches—or Southem Pacific’s spectacular system of railroad
tracks that weave around, over and through the granite walls
and core of the Sierra Nevada—or an occasional glimpse of
what still remains of Nevada County’s unique and amazing
“Never Come, Never Go” narrow gauge railroad.
The story of Charles Marsh in California begins with his
arrival at the junction of Deer Creek and Gold Run on July
30, 1849—the first white man to make his residence among
the Nisenan Indians who had lived there for thousands of
years. In September he was joined by John Pennington,
Thomas Cross, William McCaig, David Bovyer, and Simmon
P. Storms. Not until October did A. B. “Doc” Caldwell
appear to establish a primitive outpost alongside Coyote Ravine, where miners could obtain a limited assortment of
liquor, food, and tools.
James Whartenby also arrived in October, and he and
Marsh began a warm and close friendship that endured until
Marsh’s death in 1876. They were in many ways an odd
couple: Whartenby was small and reserved, a man who spoke
seldom and had few close friends; Marsh, on the other hand,
10
was big, lusty, and gregarious. Always at ease in the company
of men or women, Marsh was a natural and popular leader.
The camp next to Deer Creek was known as “Caldwell’s
Upper Store” until March 1850, when either O. P. Blackman
or Edward H. Truex suggested they call the bustling city
“Nevada,” which in Spanish means “covered with snow.”
Later no one, including Marsh, could be sure who had been
first to propose the name at Womack and Kenzie’s hotel,
perhaps because each of those men had come to think of it as
his own special contribution to history.
Before emigrating to California from Wisconsin at the age
of twenty-three, Charles Marsh had studied civil engineering,
and so in 1850 he was well enough versed in the principles of
surveying and hydraulics to supervise construction of the first
mining ditch in this part of the country. The purpose of the
ditch was to convey water from the upper sources of Rock
Creek and sell it to miners who were excavating dirt on
Coyote Hill. Because water is essential to the process of
separating dirt from gold, and because it was a long and steep
hike from Deer Creek to the so-called “coyote” mines on the
outskirts of town, Marsh and his partners guessed that supplying water would be a profitable business.
They were right. In six weeks they had recouped their
$10,000 investment in the 9-mile ditch; the company needed
only 15 customers at $16 per day, 7 days a week to accomplish that feat and after that the profits grew and grew.
In the spring of 1851, Marsh was elected surveyor for the
newly created county of Nevada (named for the city), and he
and William Morris Stewart and a Mr. Pettibone began work
on a ditch even more ambitious than the Rock Creek project:
they intended to transport water 45 miles from Bloody Run
and Grizzly Canyon to miners up and down the long San
Juan Ridge. That ditch cost $50,000 and the partners found it
was worth every ounce of the gold dust it cost.
Marsh misjudged the future of a mining camp between
Red Dog and Little York in the summer of 1852. By then he
was finding it comparatively easy to attract capital from men
who wanted to share in his success. Unfortunately, the people
most eager to buy city lots in Marsh’s new paper town of
Walloupa were greenhorn speculators and not working miners, which left him with few customers for water.
This miscalculation delayed construction of Marsh’s water
ditch from Steep Hollow Creek to Walloupa, which in tum
stopped development of the town for several years, although
the ditch eventually was completed after rich diggings were
uncovered at nearby You Bet. Marsh recovered quickly—in-~
stead of building the Walloupa ditch, he constructed one at
Red Dog in the spring of 1853.
Meanwhile, he had surveyed a ditch for the Bear River
and Auburn Water and Mining Company, and served on its
board of directors with Dr. John R. Crandall, a former Nevada City alderman. Marsh’s ditch took water from the Bear
River near its junction with Greenhom Creek and carried it to
Auburn. In August 1852, Marsh and four friends attempted to
on
!