July 28, 1971 (12 pages)

eee net ah eas eS Bh ee ae ee ee ee ET OE ae Re aN 6 The Nevada County Nugget, Wednesday,’ July 28, 1971 HW ee ope oe te 1% a ed yee Se ie ee CLE SE RL oy) tae * “Sc CNS ee eee eee ee (EDITOR'S NOTE: The Nugget, for the next few months, as part of its historical section will print for its readers "The City of Six", written by Chauncey I, Canfield in 1909, The story relates around the people and gold mining days of Sierra and Western Nevada counties, The City of Six was located. south of Downieville, off Highway 49, toward Alleghany, Only traces of the citie's hayday remain, } CHAPTER I "THE CITY OF SIX" NOW, there was a name to conjure with, It seemed to imply a story, or at least that its sponsors in departing from the commonplace were distinctive in their ideas, To be sure, the region round about teemed with odd and unique nomenclature. Hepsidam was just across the ridge, bordering on Hell's Half Acre, with Whiskey Diggings in close proximity. Jericho Flat lay between Jerusalem and.Gormorrah, with Mount Zion looming up in the background, while Brandy City and Port Wine were flourishing camps in the immediate neighborhood, Fancy ran riot in the early fifties, with a tendency toward the vulgar and profane; but "The City of Six" was distinctive, Perhaps when one learned that Hog Ravine was on the other side of the slope and that the city was built on a high plateau at the head of Slug Canyon, there appeared in this name a certain incongruity, a refinement not altogether in harmony with the practical ideas of its nieghbors, Over at Hepsidam the dwellers referred to it as "the camp of half a dozen jackasses," which they quickly abbreviated to "Jackassville’; and it must be confessed that the place was better known by that name than by the one given it by its founders, The beauty of its site could not be vulgarized even by the irreverent, A bench of a dozen acres of level ground overhung the head of the canyon, on the edge of which one could stand .and cast a stone into Downieville on the river bank two thousand feet below. And straight across on the other side the curling smoke from the cabin chimneys of the town of Monte Cristo was visible, The formidable Sierra Buttes crowned with eternal snow — the culminating heights of the rarge — loomed up grandly to the view. The ridge in the background climbed to an added altitude of seven hundred feet, clothed with giant pines, impressive in the majesty of their growth and telling of the ages that had passed during which the solitude had been unvexed by the presence of man, But that was of the past, The lure of gold had brought an invasion, and in the deep gorges, in the préfound canyons, and on the hills and mountainsides, an army of toiling humanity, like busy ants and as insignificant, wis unceasingly active in scarring nature with work and waste, To this spot a. half-dozen pioneers had found their way. They had drifted together down on the North Fork and had mined and prospected up the stream, pausing to test a bar, a ravine, or a promising gulch, until in 1852 they had scaled the steep trail to the head of Slug Canyon, where "ounce diggings" had served to stay their wanderings and settle them permanently, In those nomadic days shallow placers were soon worked out, and gulches and ravines quickly exhausted, The deep diggings of the buried channels came later and served to build up permanent and flourishing mining-towns, which took the place of the former clusters of log cabins, the rude and temporary habitations of the early pioneers, These half-dozen gold seekers had found fair reward for their labor on the head of the euphonious Slug Canyon and had also discovered that where it lost itself in the plateau the rich streak kept on, and that the gravel followed the now level bedrock into the mountain, This was a new problem and one not easily solved, although it was not long until it was demonstrated that ancient rivers, blotted out for ages, had coursed through old channels hundreds of feet above the bed of the present flowing streams, and that the yellow gold was sifted through them in quantities that yielded fabulous returns to their exploiters, ‘The Cit It was. one of those old riverbeds that they had stumbled on, that had enriched the canyon with a portion of its wealth where it had been eroded out by the North Fork; and the canyon was now a treasure-house at whose door they were knocking, Virgin gold, coarse gold in profusion in the gravel, and theirs for the gathering! The chill winds of autumn betokened the approach of a Sierra winter, a season which at their altitude of four thousand feet meant a blanket of snow over mountain and hollow, an icy breath freezing the tumbling waters of the canyon, and hurtling storms that would drive every living thing to the shelter of earth burrow or a migration to the more temperate lower foothills, There was a grave consultation among the Six, Should they temporarily abandon their find and seek the comfort of winter quarters that Downieville offered? There were many tempting distractions in that town: hotels where square meals were -procurable, fandango houses in which Mexican girls for the price of a drink invited brief companship in the dance, gorgeous gambling-houses within whose hospitable doors one could flirt with fickle Fortune, and a church with a high-priced preacher and a sparse congregation, Rance Poole voted for Downieville and its allurements, Rance was the youngest member of the aggregation, a Mississippian, who for love of adventure had left his old plantation home at the inception of the gold fever, and bringing with him two likely young darkies from whose labor he reckoned on gathering a golden harvest, had reached the goal just before California entered the Union as a free State, Naturally the bondsmen repudiated the bond, and Rance was confronted with the dire necessity of providing his own living. It was either gamble or work, and his predilection was for the first named; but the Goddess of.Chance was shy and fickle, the association of rough professionals and rude desperadoes not exactly to his taste, After a brief career as a sport he turned to mining, in which pursuit he had had fair success, In brawn and sinew he was not the equal of his companions, He could not lift as heavy a boulder, not was the stroke of his pick or the steady rock of the cradle as effectual; yet he stuck to it with quiet energy, and, as Mike Donovan, the rollicking Irishman of the party put it, "did his best, and who the devil could do more?" After a time he assumed the functions of cook, and here he really excelled — that is, after a brief apprenticeship, during which he learned not to salt the beans before they were well boiled, or to make too liberal a use of saleratus in the dough. His skill with the rifle kept the camp supplied with fresh venison, varied with an occasional bear rib, while squirrel stews were quite common in the camp menu, There were times when the absurd inappropriateness of his occupation disturbed Rance's meditations, Busied with his pots and pans or carefully regulating the heat of the oak coals around the Dutch oven, his costume a woolen shirt and duck overalls, he could not help contrasting the crudities of the present with the refinements of his former existence, when clothed in immaculate linen he lolled on the broad veranda of the plantation home, servants at his beck and call, eager to save the young master from every: exertion, In these self-communings he often asked himself why he had given up the life of luxurious ease to become one of the "mudsills" whom he had been reared to despise. Surely the "governor" would have considered his part in the camp duties an impossible degradation, and a horrified mother and sisters would have been utterly incredulous that he could stoop to such menial labor; Not only provided with a liberal education, he had had instilled into evéry fiber of his being the belief in the superiority of the men of the chivalrous South and had been reared in the expectation of either taking his place at the bar, adopting a political career, or entering into a matrimonial alliance that would link him to some other prominent family and annex broad acres and human chattels as a compensation for the relinquishment of careless young bachelorhood. But it came about that legal studies failed to interest him; there were not enough offices to go around among eager aspirants of the same ilk; and eligible heiresses did not grow on every bush, Although the fertile paternal lands under the super-vision of driving overseer brought in a handsome revenue, it

eee net ah eas eS Bh ee ae ee ee ee ET OE ae Re aN 6 The Nevada County Nugget, Wednesday,’ July 28, 1971 HW ee ope oe te 1% a ed yee Se ie ee CLE SE RL oy) tae * “Sc CNS ee eee eee ee (EDITOR'S NOTE: The Nugget, for the next few months, as part of its historical section will print for its readers "The City of Six", written by Chauncey I, Canfield in 1909, The story relates around the people and gold mining days of Sierra and Western Nevada counties, The City of Six was located. south of Downieville, off Highway 49, toward Alleghany, Only traces of the citie's hayday remain, } CHAPTER I "THE CITY OF SIX" NOW, there was a name to conjure with, It seemed to imply a story, or at least that its sponsors in departing from the commonplace were distinctive in their ideas, To be sure, the region round about teemed with odd and unique nomenclature. Hepsidam was just across the ridge, bordering on Hell's Half Acre, with Whiskey Diggings in close proximity. Jericho Flat lay between Jerusalem and.Gormorrah, with Mount Zion looming up in the background, while Brandy City and Port Wine were flourishing camps in the immediate neighborhood, Fancy ran riot in the early fifties, with a tendency toward the vulgar and profane; but "The City of Six" was distinctive, Perhaps when one learned that Hog Ravine was on the other side of the slope and that the city was built on a high plateau at the head of Slug Canyon, there appeared in this name a certain incongruity, a refinement not altogether in harmony with the practical ideas of its nieghbors, Over at Hepsidam the dwellers referred to it as "the camp of half a dozen jackasses," which they quickly abbreviated to "Jackassville’; and it must be confessed that the place was better known by that name than by the one given it by its founders, The beauty of its site could not be vulgarized even by the irreverent, A bench of a dozen acres of level ground overhung the head of the canyon, on the edge of which one could stand .and cast a stone into Downieville on the river bank two thousand feet below. And straight across on the other side the curling smoke from the cabin chimneys of the town of Monte Cristo was visible, The formidable Sierra Buttes crowned with eternal snow — the culminating heights of the rarge — loomed up grandly to the view. The ridge in the background climbed to an added altitude of seven hundred feet, clothed with giant pines, impressive in the majesty of their growth and telling of the ages that had passed during which the solitude had been unvexed by the presence of man, But that was of the past, The lure of gold had brought an invasion, and in the deep gorges, in the préfound canyons, and on the hills and mountainsides, an army of toiling humanity, like busy ants and as insignificant, wis unceasingly active in scarring nature with work and waste, To this spot a. half-dozen pioneers had found their way. They had drifted together down on the North Fork and had mined and prospected up the stream, pausing to test a bar, a ravine, or a promising gulch, until in 1852 they had scaled the steep trail to the head of Slug Canyon, where "ounce diggings" had served to stay their wanderings and settle them permanently, In those nomadic days shallow placers were soon worked out, and gulches and ravines quickly exhausted, The deep diggings of the buried channels came later and served to build up permanent and flourishing mining-towns, which took the place of the former clusters of log cabins, the rude and temporary habitations of the early pioneers, These half-dozen gold seekers had found fair reward for their labor on the head of the euphonious Slug Canyon and had also discovered that where it lost itself in the plateau the rich streak kept on, and that the gravel followed the now level bedrock into the mountain, This was a new problem and one not easily

solved, although it was not long until it was demonstrated that ancient rivers, blotted out for ages, had coursed through old channels hundreds of feet above the bed of the present flowing streams, and that the yellow gold was sifted through them in quantities that yielded fabulous returns to their exploiters, ‘The Cit It was. one of those old riverbeds that they had stumbled on, that had enriched the canyon with a portion of its wealth where it had been eroded out by the North Fork; and the canyon was now a treasure-house at whose door they were knocking, Virgin gold, coarse gold in profusion in the gravel, and theirs for the gathering! The chill winds of autumn betokened the approach of a Sierra winter, a season which at their altitude of four thousand feet meant a blanket of snow over mountain and hollow, an icy breath freezing the tumbling waters of the canyon, and hurtling storms that would drive every living thing to the shelter of earth burrow or a migration to the more temperate lower foothills, There was a grave consultation among the Six, Should they temporarily abandon their find and seek the comfort of winter quarters that Downieville offered? There were many tempting distractions in that town: hotels where square meals were -procurable, fandango houses in which Mexican girls for the price of a drink invited brief companship in the dance, gorgeous gambling-houses within whose hospitable doors one could flirt with fickle Fortune, and a church with a high-priced preacher and a sparse congregation, Rance Poole voted for Downieville and its allurements, Rance was the youngest member of the aggregation, a Mississippian, who for love of adventure had left his old plantation home at the inception of the gold fever, and bringing with him two likely young darkies from whose labor he reckoned on gathering a golden harvest, had reached the goal just before California entered the Union as a free State, Naturally the bondsmen repudiated the bond, and Rance was confronted with the dire necessity of providing his own living. It was either gamble or work, and his predilection was for the first named; but the Goddess of.Chance was shy and fickle, the association of rough professionals and rude desperadoes not exactly to his taste, After a brief career as a sport he turned to mining, in which pursuit he had had fair success, In brawn and sinew he was not the equal of his companions, He could not lift as heavy a boulder, not was the stroke of his pick or the steady rock of the cradle as effectual; yet he stuck to it with quiet energy, and, as Mike Donovan, the rollicking Irishman of the party put it, "did his best, and who the devil could do more?" After a time he assumed the functions of cook, and here he really excelled — that is, after a brief apprenticeship, during which he learned not to salt the beans before they were well boiled, or to make too liberal a use of saleratus in the dough. His skill with the rifle kept the camp supplied with fresh venison, varied with an occasional bear rib, while squirrel stews were quite common in the camp menu, There were times when the absurd inappropriateness of his occupation disturbed Rance's meditations, Busied with his pots and pans or carefully regulating the heat of the oak coals around the Dutch oven, his costume a woolen shirt and duck overalls, he could not help contrasting the crudities of the present with the refinements of his former existence, when clothed in immaculate linen he lolled on the broad veranda of the plantation home, servants at his beck and call, eager to save the young master from every: exertion, In these self-communings he often asked himself why he had given up the life of luxurious ease to become one of the "mudsills" whom he had been reared to despise. Surely the "governor" would have considered his part in the camp duties an impossible degradation, and a horrified mother and sisters would have been utterly incredulous that he could stoop to such menial labor; Not only provided with a liberal education, he had had instilled into evéry fiber of his being the belief in the superiority of the men of the chivalrous South and had been reared in the expectation of either taking his place at the bar, adopting a political career, or entering into a matrimonial alliance that would link him to some other prominent family and annex broad acres and human chattels as a compensation for the relinquishment of careless young bachelorhood. But it came about that legal studies failed to interest him; there were not enough offices to go around among eager aspirants of the same ilk; and eligible heiresses did not grow on every bush, Although the fertile paternal lands under the super-vision of driving overseer brought in a handsome revenue, it