USA > California > Merced County > A history of Merced County, California : with a biographical review of the leading men and women of the county who have been identified with its growth and development from the early days to the present > Part 3
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Ewing Young, a Tennesseean, who had been for some years a trader and trapper in New Mexico, in 1829 led the first party to follow Smith and the Patties into California. He turned north with- out the formality of entering the settled portion of southern Cali- fornia, and trapped the streams of the San Joaquin. Somewhere in this valley or the lower part of the Sacramento he encountered Peter Skeen Ogden's party of Hudson's Bay Company trappers.
Young later crossed over to San Jose and proceeded to southern California. He reached Taos on his return from California in the summer of 1830, and here formed a partnership with William Wolf- skill, a Kentucky trapper with several years experience in the Mis- souri-Santa Fe-Chihuahua trade. Little came of it; but in the fall of 1831 a partnership consisting of Young, Jackson, the former partner of Smith, and a man named Waldo, sent a combined trading and trap- ping expedition from Santa Fe to California. Jackson, with eleven men, was to proceed directly to California and purchase a large num- ber of mules to be driven back to Missouri and Louisiana, and he brought five pack animal loads of silver pesos with him for the pur- pose. Young was to trap on the Gila and the Colorado until the end of the season and then join Jackson in Los Angeles.
They met there about April 1, 1832. Neither had met with the expected success. They returned to the Colorado, whence Jackson was to go on east with his mules while Young returned to trap through central and northern California the following autumn. Jackson lost most of the mules within two days by an Indian attack. Young spent the summer hunting sea otter off the California coast, and in October
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left southern California with fourteen men by way of the Tejon for the San Joaquin.
They trapped the Kings, Fresno, and San Joaquin until they discovered that a party of Hudson's Bay men had been before them, and then pushing on to the Sacramento found the rival trappers camped. They crossed to the coast about seventy-five miles north of the Russian settlement at Ross, went up the coast to the Umpqua, and by way of Klamath Lake and the Klamath, Rogue, and Pitt Rivers, circled back to the upper Sacramento, traversed the length of the two great valleys and passed out over the Tejon.
He returned from the Colorado to Los Angeles in 1834, and passed northward up the settled coast portion buying horses, which he drove to market at the settlements on the Columbia. Young settled in Oregon, and continued for many years to make trips into California as a trader in mules and cattle.
We have mentioned the Hudson's Bay Company. They sent a number of trapping expeditions into California, some of which worked the San Joaquin, doubtless including what is now Merced County. The earliest, in 1828, was led by McLeod and guided by Turner, one of the two men who escaped with Smith when the rest of his party was massacred by the Indians. Another expedition, already refered to, under Peter Skeen Ogden, crossed over from the Snake River and spent eight months on the Sacramento and San Joa- quin, returning to Vancouver, Cleland tells us, laden down with furs. He mentions a number of others which found the Sacramento and its tributaries, such as the Feather and American, rich in beaver. It does not appear that they came to the San Joaquin.
It is interesting to digress here to remark that a few specimens of the beaver and the antelope, which these early comers found so plentiful, still survive in the county. Over along the Merced River in the vicinity of Snelling and Hopeton, the writer has seen where beavers have been at work. Only three or four years ago two young men there, with the willing consent of the owners of certain small irrigation ditches taking out of the Merced in that vicinity, which were being damaged, and under a special permit from the State Fish and Game Commission, trapped some thirty-five of these animals-perhaps the last instance of beaver trapping that has oc- curred or will ever occur in the State.
In the southwesterly part of the county in the vicinity of Mercey Hot Springs, a few antelope still linger and are occasionally seen. The writer heard a sheep man there state early in August, 1921, that he had within a few days seen their tracks at the pools where his sheep drank, and within the last six or seven years has talked with at least two men who have personally seen a few of the animals in that region. Within the memory of men not yet middle-aged a small band of
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antelope ranged the hills within ten miles to the north and northeast of Merced, and another small band stayed in the southeasterly corner of the county in the vicinity of Raynor's Ranch. Isaac Bird, for many years manager of the Chowchilla Ranch and later president of the Farmers & Merchants Bank in Merced, told the writer that he had seen antelope between the business section of Merced and where the county hospital now stands ; and there is no lack of men still living who remember when they used to be hunted in the Deane Colony and Robļa sections.
Elk also used to abound, though they have been all gone for many years. It is said that they used to migrate into and out of the Stevinson Colony section yearly. G. L. Russell, of Lingard, relates that his father told him of seeing a large pile of cast antlers in that vicinity.
In addition to these animals which are wild by nature, these early trappers and explorers found in the San Joaquin and Sacramento Valleys wild cattle and especially wild horses, escapes or descendants of escapes from the Spanish ranchos west of the Diablo Range.
"Multiplication of ranchos and increase of horses," Richman tells us, "led to the expedient of killing the surplus animals. As early as 1784 it had been found necessary to reduce by slaughter surplus cattle at the San Francisco presidio. But horses (mares more especi- ally ) were less valuable than cattle, and having increased to vast herds which consumed the mission pasture, and in the San Joaquin Valley roamed hither and yon in squadrons devastating though picturesque, it was ordered in 1805, at the instance of President Tapis, that their number be reduced; and between 1805 and 1810 they were slaughtered by tens of thousands."
Richman refers in a note to a communication dated 1805, pre- served in the Bancroft collection, from Mascario de Castro to Ar- rillaga, San Jose, on the necessity of killing mares, and to a petition of the Russian-American Company stating that immense herds of wild cattle and horses range as far north as the Columbia River, and that an annual slaughter of 10,000 to 30,000 head had been ordered.
Lieutenant Joseph Warren Revere of the United States Navy, an expert horseman, author of "A Tour of Duty in California," 1849, who tells us that he has mounted the noblest of the race in the stables of Mohammed Ali, Viceroy of Egypt, as well as those belonging to other potentates in Syria, Egypt, and Barbary, besides choice speci- mens of the Persian stock in British India, describes the horse of the Spanish Californian ranchero for us. He tells us it was of Anda- lusian descent, "beautiful and strong. White, dapple-gray, or chest- nut in color, he was full-chested, thin-flanked, round in the barrei, clean-limbed, with unusually small head, feet, and ears, large, full eyes, expanded nostrils, and full flowing mane and tail."
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It is interesting to note that this animal, which we thus find so abundant and figuring so considerably in the history of California at the beginning of the nineteenth century, and which in its wild state was of course entirely gone before the beginning of the twentieth, appears not to have been introduced into the present California at the beginning of the eighteenth. Kino, who commanded an exploring expedition to the Gila-Colorado junction in 1701, relates that the Indians there were amazed at the speed of his horses, an animal never before seen by them.
That wild horses were abundant in Merced County in its infancy is well established. Samuel L. Givens, a pioneer of 1852 to Mari- posa and Merced Counties, now living at the age of eighty-two on his ranch on Bear Creek about thirteen miles northeast of Merced, relates that there was within his recollection a corral for their capture somewhat further down the creek, probably on the Wolfsen Ranch, with a low fence or wing extending far out away from the creek to guide the animals into the enclosure. And in the minutes of the county for the first year of its existence (1855) it stands of record that certain citizens petitioned the board of supervisors, and the board granted the petition, to impose a license of $25 a month on each person engaging in the business of catching mustang horses within the county. The board imposed the license and gave the sheriff half of it for collecting it. Evidently there was no great rush to the county seat to pay the license; we may fairly presume that the sheriff earned his money at the job.
But we have wandered beyond the age of the explorers into that of the earlier settlers. It is necessary to go back some twenty years to notice one more early American exploring expedition from across the Sierra Nevadas. This is the one of Joseph Reddeford Walker, who, like Young, was a Tennesseean. Walker was one of the lieutenants of that Captain Bonneville whose expedition to the Great West has been chronicled by Washington Irving.
On July 24, 1833, Walker left Bonneville's main command on the Green River, and with thirty-five or forty men started westward to explore the territory beyond the Great Salt Lake. The party passed the lake, struck the headwaters of the Humboldt or Mary's River, followed it to its sink, and crossed the Sierra Nevada. Wash- ington Irving is vague as to their exact course, and Cleland tells us that it is still a matter of conjecture-that some place it by way of the Truckee and others further south, following up the river which now bears Walker's name and so crossing the crest of the divide. This would bring them in by way of the Sonora Pass to the head of the South Fork of the Stanislaus, by the same route by which Smith had crossed to the eastward. Cleland, however, quotes George Nidever, a member of the expedition, to the effect that the route
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down the western slope of the Sierras lay "through a valley between the Merced and the Tuolomi Rivers." Walker's tombstone, Cle- land notes, bears the inscription, "Camped at Yosemite, Nov. 13, 1833."
A map accompanying Richman's history shows Walker's route cutting approximately through the middle-from north to south- of the present Yosemite National Park, coming in a little north of Mono Lake, where the nearest pass would be the Tioga.
The party reached the San Joaquin Valley, at any rate, traveled southward a short distance, then turned westward to the coast and spent Christmas at Monterey, where the inhabitants proved courteous and diverting hosts. The trappers here got beyond Walker's con- trol and wasted much of Bonneville's substance, so that after some months Walker led them, except some who elected to remain, back into the San Joaquin again. He continued up the Valley to near its southern end and passed out by way of the South Fork of the Kern through the opening since known as Walker's Pass. Possibly explor- ing the Owens River Valley, Walker proceeded in a general north- easterly course and rejoined Bonneville on the Bear River in Utah.
These early American expeditions established a regular trade route with southern California; they increased the foreign popula- tion, so that the number of Americans coming by land rivaled those coming by sea; and they familiarized the settlers of the western American States with the resources and the easy conditions of life in the country west of the Sierra. We have just seen how some of Walker's men chose to remain in California. Some of the free trappers of some of these early expeditions likewise chose to remain behind, it would seem, in the San Joaquin region. W. L. Means, who lives on a ranch in the Merced River bottom a short distance below Snelling, states that when his father, likewise W. L. Means, left the Mariposa mines in 1851 or 1852 to come down into the Robla region some ten or twelve miles southwest of Merced to hunt meat for the market which the mines supplied, he hired amongst others to help him in curing the flesh of elk and antelope a man named McPherson, who had lived for some years among the Mariposa County Indians.
Doubtless among those wild and adventurous spirits there was every now and then one who preferred to stay in this new and pleas- ing wilderness. It is a reasonable conjecture, though with no very great chance of verification, for the circumstances of their lives would be greatly against any record except word of mouth surviving them. The day of the fur hunter who was also an explorer drew to a close, and the day of the earliest settler approached. From among the first, guides for the last were sometimes recruited-such men as Walker, Kit Carson, and Jim Bridger.
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More and more the situation was shaping up for the ultimate taking over of the territory by Americans. Well-grounded indeed was the increasing dread of the Mexican officials regarding the grow- ing numbers within their borders of the citizens of the vigorous young republic to the east. Before we proceed in the next chapter to follow the fortunes of the earliest Americans who came as settlers, it is worth while to remind ourselves here that already these forerunners of the settlers had done as much to occupy the region east of the Coast Range as Spain and Mexico in all their years had done.
CHAPTER III
FIRST AMERICAN SETTLERS TO CALIFORNIA
"The significant work of the, overland fur traders," says Cleland, "came to an end about 1840." We shall find settlement by Ameri- cans in the San Joaquin Valley-though we cannot say in what now is or ever was Merced County-had already begun before this date.
Anyone who has traveled the western slope of the Sierra Ne- vadas anywhere from the passes which lead over in the region of Lake Tahoe to as far south as the Stanislaus and the Tuolumne, has very likely been struck with the distant clear-cut peak of Mount Diablo, rising above the lesser hills clear across the San Joaquin Valley. As a landmark it stood without an equal to the weary emigrants from the East after their long and trying journey across more than a thousand miles beyond the then most westerly boundaries of the United States.
At the foot of this mountain, which now gives its name to the meridian and baseline from which nearly all the surveys of the State north of the Tehachapi are reckoned, Dr. John Marsh, an American gentleman of education and ability, had in 1837 purchased the three square leagues of the Rancho Los Meganos. The doctor lived in a small adobe house near the point where he afterwards built "The Marsh Stone House." Here he lived until his death in 1856, and his ranch or Captain Sutter's fort at New Helvetia was the goal of most of the early emigrant parties.
The following letter, which Dr. Marsh wrote to Hon. Lewis Cass, Secretary of War, in 1842, is so illuminative of the period and the situation, that we give it in full :
"Farm of Pulpines, near St. Francisco,
Upper California, 1842. "Hon. Lewis Cass.
"Dear Sir: You will probably be somewhat surprised to re- ceive a letter from an individual from whom you have not heard, or even thought of, for nearly twenty years; yet although the lapse of time has wrought many changes both in men and things, the personal identity of us both has probably been left. You will, I think, re- member a youth whom you met at Green Bay in 1825, who, having left his Alma Mater, had spent a year or two in the 'far, far West,' and was then returning to his New England home, and whom you induced to turn his face again toward the setting sun; that youth who, but for
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your influence, would probably now have been administering pills in some quiet Yankee village, is now a gray-haired man, breeding cattle and cultivating grape-vines on the shores of the Pacific. Your benevo- lence prompted you to take an interest in the fortunes of that youth, " and it is therefore presumed you may not be unwilling to hear from him again.
"I left the United States in 1835, and came to New Mexico, and thence traversing the States of Chihuahua and Sonora, crossed the Rio Colorado at its junction with the Gila, near the tidewater of Gulph, and entered this territory at its southern part. Any more direct route was at that time unknown and considered impracticable.
"I have now been more than ten years in this country, and have traveled over all the inhabited and most of the uninhabited parts of it. I have resided eight years where I now live, near the Bay of San Francisco, and at the point where the rivers Sacramento and San Joaquin unite together to meet the tide-water of the bay, about forty miles from the ocean. I possess at this place a farm about ten miles by twelve in extent, one side of which borders on the river, which is navigable to this point for sea-going vessels. I have at last found the far West, and intend to end my ramblings here.
"I perceive by the public papers that this region of country, including that immediately north of it, which until lately was the most completely a terra incognita of any portion of the globe, is at length attracting the attention of the United States and Europe. The world, at length, seems to have become awake to the natural advantages of California and Oregon, and it seems probable that at the same moment I am writing, their political destinies are about being settled, at least for a long time to come. I mention the two countries together because I conceive the future destiny of this whole region to be one and inseparable. The natural conformation of the country strongly indicates it, and a sympathy and fellow feeling in the inhabitants is taking place, which must soon bring about the con- summation. California, as well as Oregon, is rapidly peopling with emigrants from the United States. Even the inhabitants of Spanish origin, tired of anarchy and misrule, would be glad to come under the American Government.
"The Government of the United States, in encouraging and facilitating emigration to Oregon, is, in fact, helping to people Cali- fornia. It is like the British Government sending settlers to Canada. The emigrants are well aware of the vast superiority of California, both in soil and climate, and I may add, facility of access. Every year shorter and better routes are being discovered, and this year the great desideratum of a good and practical road for wheel car- riages has been found. Fifty-three wagons, with that number of families, have arrived safely, and more than a month earlier than
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any previous company. The American Government encourages emigration to Oregon by giving gratuitously some five or six hundred acres of land to each family of actual settlers. California, too, gives lands, not by acres, but by leagues, and has some thousands of leagues more to give to anybody who will occupy them. Never in any instance has less than one league been given to any individual, and the wide world from which to select from all the unoccupied lands in the territory. While Col. Almonte, the Mexican Minister to Washington, is publishing his proclamations in the American news- papers forbidding people to emigrate to California, and telling them that no lands will be given them, the actual Government here is doing just the contrary. In fact they care about as much for the Govern- ment of Mexico as for that of Japan.
"It has been usual to estimate the population of Upper Cali- fornia at five thousand persons of Spanish descent, and twenty thous- and Indians. This estimate may have been near the truth twenty years ago. At present the population may be stated in round num- bers at seven thousand Spaniards, ten thousand civilized, or rather domesticated Indians. To this may be added about seven hundred Americans, one hundred English, Irish, and Scotch, and about one hundred French, Germans, and Italians.
"Within the territorial limits of Upper California, taking the parallel of 42° for the northern, and the Colorado River for the southeastern boundary, are an immense number of wild, naked, brute Indians. The number, of course, can only be conjectured. They probably exceed a million, and may perhaps amount to double that number.
"The far-famed missions of California no longer exist. They have nearly all been broken up, and the lands apportioned out into farms. They were certainly munificent ecclestistical baronies ; and although their existence was quite incompatible with the general prosperity of the country, it seems almost a pity to see their downfall. The immense piles of buildings and beautiful vineyards and orchards are all that remain, with the exception of two in the southern part of the territory, which still retain a small remnant of their former prosperity.
"The climate of California is remarkably different from that of the United States. The great distinguishing difference is its regularity and uniformity. From May to October the wind is in- variably from the northwest, and during this time it never rains, and the sky is brilliantly clear and serene. The weather during this time is temperate, and rarely oppressively warm. The nights are always agreeably cool, and many of the inhabitants sleep in the open air the whole year round. From October to May the southeast wind fre- quently blows, and is always accompanied by rain. Snow never falls
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excepting in the mountains. Frost is rare except in December or January. A proof of the mildness of the winter this moment presents itself in the shape of a humming-bird, which I just saw from the open window, and this is in latitude 38° on the first day of February. Wheat is sown from October until March, and maize from March until July. As respects human health and comfort, the climate is incomparably better than that of any part of the United States. It is much the most healthy country I have ever seen or have any knowledge of. There is no disease whatever that can be attributed to the influence of the climate.
"The face of the country differs as much from the United States as the climate. The whole territory is traversed by ranges of moun- tains, which run parallel to each other and to the coast. The highest points may be about six thousand feet above the sea, in most places much lower, and in many parts they dwindle to low hills. They are everywhere covered with grass and vegetation, and many of the val- leys and northern declivities abound with the finest timber trees. Between these ranges of mountains are level valleys, or rather plains, of every width, from five miles to fifty. The magnificent valley through which flow the rivers of St. Joaquin and Sacramento is five hundred miles long, with an average width of forty or fifty. It is intersected laterally by many smaller rivers, abounding with salmon.
"The only inhabitants of this valley, which is capable of supporting a nation, are about a hundred and fifty Americans and a few Indians. No published maps that I have seen give any correct idea of the country, excepting the outline of the coast.
"The Bay of San Francisco is considered by nautical men one of the finest harbors in the world. It consists of two principal arms, diverging from the entrance in nearly opposite directions, and each about fifty miles long, with an average width of eight or ten. It is perfectly sheltered from every wind, has great depth of water, is easily accessible at all times, and space enough for half the ships in the world. The entrance is less than a mile wide, and could be easily fortified so as to make it entirely impregnable. The vicinity abounds in the finest timber for ship-building, and in fact everything necessary to make it a great naval and commercial depot. If it were in the hands of a nation who knew how to make use of it, its influence would soon be felt on all the western coast of America, and probably through the whole Pacific.
"I think it cannot long remain in the hands of its present owners. If it does not come into possession of Americans, the English will have it. This port in their hands, what will Oregon be worth to the United States ? They loudly threaten to get possession of Cuba as an offset against Texas. Will they not be quite as likely to obtain Cali- fornia, as an offset against Oregon? A British ship of war was here
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last summer, whose captain was a brother of Lord Aberdeen, and one of her lieutenants a son of Sir R. Peel. The gentlemen declared openly that this port would soon belong to them. This I take to be only a slight ebullition of John Bullism; but that they want this port, and will have it if possible, there can be no doubt, a consum- mation most earnestly and ardently to be deprecated by every Ameri- can. I hope it may direct your views to take an interest in this matter.
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