Collection: Books and Periodicals > Nevada County Historical Society Bulletins

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Title: Volume 058-1 - January 2004 Collection Type: Books and Periodicals Collection Name: Nevada County Historical Society Bulletins # of Pages: 6 Download PDF: User Login Required Download OCR Text: User Login Required

Date Scanned: 2014-03-12 07:45:10 OCR Software Version #: tesseract 5.4.1 Item Sourced From: PDF First Created: 2025-03-17 04:06:02 Last Updated: 2025-03-17 04:06:02

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

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An Angel Touches Down in Nevada County by Orval Bronson “I mine for a fortune, but I write for a living.” —Myron Angel HEN THE NAME MYRON ANGEL IS MENTIONED to most Californians, a blank facial expression is the usual response. Angel isn’t widely known, even though he is the author of the History of Nevada 1881, two county histories (Placer and San Luis Obispo), the History of Cal Poly, and The Painted Rock of California: a Legend. Additionally, Angel, a pioneer environmentalist, was the owner and/or editor of numerous California and Nevada newspapers and the driving force in the founding of what is now California State University Cal Poly. Born in Oneonta, Otsego County, New York, on December 1, 1827, Angel was descended from the first Puritan Pilgrims who landed on Plymouth Rock. His father William established a newspaper in Oneonta, and Myron, although quite young, assisted in the mechanical and editorial departments of the paper. Myron’s mother Eunice (nee Fairchild) died in 1835; his father died in 1842, leaving Myron an orphan at 15. Fortunately, Myron was left a fair inheritance, enabling him to receive a quality education, first at the district school, then e@™at Hartwick Seminary. ! Angel then matriculated to the Military Academy at West Point in 1846, where he remained until about January 1849. Myron’s older brother Eugene, a newly minted lawyer practicing in Peoria, Illinois, was stricken with gold fever and wanted Myron to accompany him west. Myron resigned from West Point and made his way to Peoria, where he and Eugene joined the Peoria Pioneers for the journey to California, leaving in early April 1849. Myron and Eugene were preceded to California by their Uncle David Fairchild, his son Mahlon and son-in-law William Creque. All had come west via Panama with the Ganargua Mining Company, arriving in San Francisco in late July 1849. Three of Fairchild’s other sons—Oscar, Theodore and Joseph—eventually made their way to the California gold fields. Myron and Eugene by happenstance were in that group of Peoria Pioneers who were, more or less, hoodwinked into taking a much more southerly and circuitous route to California than the South Pass route originally planned. The party entered the Rocky Mountains in the Pike’s Peak area where mineral wealth was later discovered; they tried mining, but came up empty as no one in the group had any ining experience. After travelling south along the Rio Grande, west to Sonora, then north to Tucson and the Pima villages on the Gila River, the impatient Angel brothers left (> Nevada County Historical Society Bulletin VOLUME 58 NUMBER . JANUARY 2004 the wagon train in October. They made their way west on foot, abandoning a trunk containing valuable books, clothing and personal effects, at the Colorado River crossing. Reaching San Diego, they found passage on a ship sailing to San Francisco, arriving on December 8, 1849, broke and in the middle of a severe winter. Fortunately for them, an army officer found their abandoned trunk, recognized the valuable contents and clothing of a fellow officer, and shipped the trunk to San Francisco via an intermediary, with instructions to locate the owners and return their property. Once reunited with their trunk, the Angels sold the books, giving them enough money to survive the winter. Years later Myron Angel recalled an incident during that severe winter in San Francisco. As he trudged through the city’s muddy streets, he was approached by a stranger who inquired if Myron wanted a job nailing shingles at $8 per hour. Angel was forced to concede that he had never hammered a nail; the job went to someone else but Myron never forgot the incident, which would later play an important part in his vision to establish a manual arts training facility. By the summer of 1850 Myron and Eugene had made their way (as did many of their fellow Peoria Pioneers) to Bidwell’s Bar on the Feather River. Their mining efforts there were not particularly fruitful, and sometime in 1851 the brothers settled on a ranch (since called Angel’s Slough) near the Sacramento river, thought to be at or near presentday Hamilton City. In October 1855 the Angel brothers left Butte County and ventured to El Dorado County, where they mined with cousins Mahlon, Theodore and Oscar Fairchild at Long Bar on the American River. Myron’s uncle and aunt, David and Deborah Fairchild, had settled in nearby Centerville (now Pilot Hill). Toward the end of 1855 Theodore, Eugene, Myron and others set out on a “prospecting tour’ that took them to North San Juan in Nevada County. Here they purchased four adjoining 25’ x 100’ mining claims on credit. By February 1856 the group had commenced operations—blasting, constructing a tailrace and building a cabin “with a good stove and plenty of grub.” They put in a coal pit, built a I .