Collection: Books and Periodicals > Nevada County Historical Society Bulletins

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Title: Volume 063-3 - July 2009 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: 2014-03-26 07:31:52 OCR Software Version #: tesseract 5.4.1 Item Sourced From: PDF First Created: 2025-03-17 04:06:03 Last Updated: 2025-03-17 04:06:03

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

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(a Mysterious Guest at the Washington Hotel Part II by Maria E. Brower HAT WOULD BECOME THE TOWN OF WASHINGTON was first settled by men who formed a mining camp along the South Yuba River, 19 miles north of Nevada City by the existing road. This road shortened the distance by about two miles on what in the early days had been very rough and narrow, little more than a trail. The first two parties of men arrived in the area independently of each other in the fall of 1849. “Indiana Camp” was formed by a company from that state, while a group from Oregon, guided by Caleb Greenwood, established “Greenwood’s Camp,” which later became known as “Jefferson.” The two camps were about a mile and half apart, along the river. As miners from below moved higher up into the hills and mountains, searching for waterways that would yield more gold, a larger settlement grew in the area and in 1850 the name of Washington was adopted for the wide flat on the South Yuba. By August of that year there were about one thousand men working the river as word spread of the gold being found there. In one account from the diary of John Steele, an early miner in the area, he relates that by the end of 1850 the settlement was deserted, but in 1851 Steele writes that the number of miners had swelled to over three thousand working up and down the river, including a number of Chinese. A month or a day could make a difference in the telling, and both accounts were probably true. The next few years saw the number of miners working on the river rise and fall, mainly due to water issues. Some problems were man-made, as miners constructed dams and canals to divert the river water to enable them to work the beds of the streams. This stopped the flow of the river and cut off water to miners downstream, causing men to leave in great numbers for better areas to mine. Prosperity came again in 1853 when the settlement at Washington was thriving and included by this time hotels, restaurants and other businesses. In December of 1853 the new township of Washington was carved out of the eastern portion of Nevada township. In February 1866 Washington township itself was divided, and the eastern half became the Meadow Lake township Buisman Connection One of the earliest men in the area to operate a hotel, probably the second, was Hassel B. Buisman, a native of Holland. Born in 1827 he left his country of birth in 1841 to become a sailor and continued sailing around the world ( Nevais County Historical Society . Bullolin JULY 2009 \ VOLUME 63 NUMBER 3 SS) until he arrived in San Francisco harbor in 1850. During the early Gold Rush years there were hundreds of ships abandoned in the harbor, left to rot after their crews contracted gold fever and left their ships without a backwards glance to try their luck with a pick and pan. Buisman arrived in Nevada City in 1851 and mined in that district for a year before heading for higher ground where rich strikes were being made up on the Washington Ridge. Buisman either was successful in the early years or he decided it was more profitable to go into a business benefiting from the increased population. Buisman first opened a hotel at the settlement of Jefferson, operating it there from 1852 to 1857, and then moved to the town of Washington where he continued mining and later opened the Buisman Hotel. In 1857 he married Christina Miller, a native of Germany, and she bore him three daughters while they lived at Washington and operated the hotel together. This might not have been an auspicious move, for the Buisman family would see their faith tried over and over again as the family suffered several personal losses. These began in 1859 when Buisman was severely injured in an accident when a bank caved in on him while working on his mining claim near Jefferson. In 1862 his wife Christina died, and a second daughter, Marie, died in 1865. In 1867 the Buisman hotel was burned down in the fire that destroyed about twenty-five buildings and homes in Washington in the span of one hour and a half. The Big Fire of August 16, 1867 “At 11 p.m. fire was discovered in a cabin at the rear of Pendleton’s butcher shop. This was used as a dwelling place by Leo Garthe. It spread rapidly into the surrounding buildings, jumped across the street to [Conrad] Grissel’s hotel (Exchange) and sweeping up and down Main Street destroyed every store, hotel, and saloon and business place from the Washington brewery to Brimskill’s dwelling place. Twenty-four or twenty-five buildings were gone in an hour and a half. Loss is estimated at between forty and fifty thousand dollars. This includes stock in stores. It is understood that there was not a cent of insurance. It was thought the fire started by sparks from the stove pipe of the Lyons Hotel, or was the work of an incendiary.”