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Volume 070-4 - October 2016 (6 pages)
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Page: of 6
NCHS Bulletin October 2016
of dried fruit and raisins, but no fresh fruit, so I picked
some of the berries and cooked them. They were delicious, but not one of my families would taste them.
Mother said she knew they were poisonous, but I thought
not, for I knew from my studies in botany that a bitter
or sweet berry may be poisonous, but never a sour one. I
took some out to two old men who eating their pancakes
and bacon, and they were delighted with them. We were
not poisoned after all, and we ate them as long as we
could get them. Of late years I have seen notices of them
in Eastern catalogues of fruit.
We crossed the Sierra Nevada mountains, stopping at
many pretty little valleys. We came at last to Emigrant
Gap, where the trees are worn by ropes and chains in
letting down the wagons from the mountains. Then we
were in Bear valley. It was here that I saw my first rattlesnake. I recognized it from pictures I had seen, but
I was so tired that I did not move, although it crawled
close by me. It was the 28th day of August, 1853, when
we reached Bear Valley having finished a long, hard, but
not unpleasant journey.” 4
According to James Butterfield’s autobiography, their
family was the first wagon to cross the plains that year,
and at Truckee Meadows they had stopped for three days
to let the horses rest. In 1898 or later he wrote:
6
. . and there was plenty of feed and good water at
Truckee. The next place of note was the Donner cabins.
The walls of the cabins, being built of logs, were still
standing. The roofs has been broken by the snow which
falls to the depth of 12 to 15 feet packed. A lake close by
is called the Donner Lake and is about five miles from
the summit of the mountains. This is where the Southern
Pacific Railway [now] crosses through a tunnel. ...
We found the road in bad condition with washouts
and fallen timber. When we were on the summit we had
our first view of California, mostly mountains as far as
we could see. At night we camped at Summit Valley at
the headwaters of the South Fork of the Yuba River... .
We had a very rough road through the mountains to
Bear Valley on the headwaters of Bear River. We had to
lower the wagons down with ropes for some distance.
The trees were worn down in some inches from the wear
by those of other years. At some places we would reef
the back wheels of the wagons and stand on them while
one drove the team. In that way we got into Bear Valley.
We found a beautiful valley from one half to one mile
wide and three miles long, surrounded by high mountains with a narrow outlet, and occupied by two ranches.
... After a few days we started for Red Dog, a town
between Bear River and Nevada City. There had never been a wagon through but we got there all right. At
Red Dog father traded some of the horses for a small
ranch, which proved to be of little value. He soon rented
Sheriff Elijah Obadiah Tompkins, who came to California
from New York state in 1852. (Searls Library photo)
a large hotel. There were too many idle men waiting for
rain to get water to mine with, which did not come until
Christmas night. A great many that had been boarding
went away without paying but agreed to send back the
money. They never did. A mile and a half from the town
was a small sawmill and father took the contract to cut
and haul the logs... ..
In the spring we gave up the hotel, sold the team and
moved to Little York, a camp on the divide between
Bear River and Steep Hollow. Then Ruth married a man
by the name of E. O. Tompkins. He and William went
into partnership and started a store and boarding house
at Buffalo Slides of Bear River above Dutch Flat.
Elijah Obadiah Tompkins was born in Pennsylvania
on June 21, 1824, the son of Laura Baker Tompkins and
John Tompkins, and was among 250 passengers that
sailed aboard the steamer /ndependence and arrived in
San Francisco on April 10, 1852. There were other pioneer Nevada City surnames aboard that ship: Calkins,
Tallman and Kent.
Although Tompkins had previously lived in the state
of Pennsylvania, he had been in Liberty, Missouri. before his departure to California.* According to the 1878