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Volume 052-1 - January 1998 (8 pages)
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Page: of 8
The Great Republic of Rough and Ready;
One Nation Under Gold
By Jared L. Morris
[On the 20th of November, 1997, the annual NCHS speech
contest took place. The contestants were the finalists of contests at the high schools where they are students. Their names
and the results of the contest will be published in the newsletter. The contestants were asked to submit a copy of their
speeches to be used in the Bulletin. Of the six contestants,
only one speech was received. His contribution follows. Ed.]
\1849, THERE WAS A MAD RUSH for every speck of
gold in the United States of America, especially in California.
One of the many places in California that was found to have
quite a large amount of gold was Rough and Ready. Rough
and Ready was settled in 1849 by Captain Townsend and the
Rough and Ready Mining Company of Wisconsin. Rough
and Ready derived its name from the President and Mexican
War General Zachary Taylor whose nickname was (you
guessed it) “Old Rough and Ready.”
Captain Townsend and his men mined the rivers and flats
of Rough and Ready, such as Butte Flat, Rich Flat, Squirrel
Creek, and Deer Creek for some time, then Townsend went
back to Wisconsin to recruit more men. While the captain
was away, the small town grew considerably and was ready
to greet him in a very surprising way.
Upon his return to Rough and Ready, Captain Townsend
found that the town had grown from fifty to approximately
five hundred miners the cost of flour was now fifty cents a
pound, and there was almost no place to pitch his own tent.
Townsend had to hire off his recruits and actually buy himself a claim to work.
scammed a miner out of one hundred eighty dollars. The
miner was so furious he arranged a town meeting. He soon
had the citizens all feeling that the “slicker” should be run out
of town. The question then arose that the man was a United
States citizen and had committed no “true” crime. But what if
Rough and Ready wasn’t part of the United States of America? This ‘slicker’ and the new tax imposed on all mining
claims led the little town to do something very unique. Some
votes were taken and Rough and Ready wasn’t part of the
United States any more, it was the Great Republic of Rough
and Ready.
The Great Republic of Rough and Ready was under the
presidency of E. F. Brundage until that July, when the town’s
(or should I say “country’s”) leaders got together to plan a
Fourth of July celebration. They realized the stupidity of the
situation and joined the United States of America once again.
The little town almost lost its whole population in the
winter of 1850 and ’51. The 1850-51 winter brought one of
the biggest dry spells in the town’s very short history. The dry
spell forced many of the miners to leave, due to the fact that
you couldn’t sluice mine (the prominent mining method ir™
the Rough and Ready area) without water. Many of the
businesses that depended on the profits of the miners also had
to pack up and leave; some buildings were sold for as low as
one percent of their original price. But despite the drought,
some people stayed and some moved in.
The Rough and Ready Grange Hall Number 795 was built
in 1851 as the Mountain Rose Lodge of the Independent
In 1850, the first family came to
Rough and Ready. The Riddle family
was just a man and his wife, but it was a
family. In April of 1800 The first reverend also came to town, although in rare
form. Reverend James S. Dunleavy and
his wife built the first real framed house
costing five hundred dollars. Reverend
Dunleavy once lived in San Francisco
and was chosen for the city council. He
got drunk the night of the election,
moved to Rough and Ready, and started
the first pub, obviously dropping his old
profession except for occasional funerals
and dedications.
The town continued to grow in this
way until an April morning in 1850,
when a young man from Massachusetts
oe
Kevin and Gaylene Collins resurrected the Rough and Ready school house after
the Trauner Fire of 1994 and made it their home. (Gaylene Collins photo.)
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