Hands-On Doin’s at the Diggins

Malakoff Diggins Park Association 23579 North Bloomfield Road, Nevada City, Ca 95959 Volume 30 Issue I www.malakoffdigginsstatepark.org Winter 2013-14

Park Facilities to Open May 2014

Although the park has remained open, many facilities which were closed due to the recent revenue and economy crisis, are planned to

Re-Open in May, 2014.

Chute Hill Campground and Group Camp will be available on a first come basis.

Three Miner’s Cabins will be available on Reserve America.

The Museum / Visitor’s Center will be open and staffed; weekends at first and more

often during the summer.Those facilities are scheduled to close

at the end of September.

Helping Hands

State Park Volunteers Muster at North Bloomfield.Work Parties Endure.

Drizzle Ignored.Clampers Turn Out.

After much planning and coordinating,a work party formed at NBF onSept. 21 and attacked a number

of “On Hold” projects.

Concrete slabs were poured to supportfive Environmental Living tent frames,thus preventing animals from burrowing under the tents anddetering snakes from lurkingwhere the kids run in and out. see p2.

Also, in the ELP camp, volunteers demolished the candle making oven, which had deteriorated.

A concrete slab was poured, then a brick and mortar edifice built upon it.

Over in the Skidmore yard, a gazebo, donated in by the DiCesensa family in 1973, had also deteriorated.

The crew built new braces, remounted detached bench seats and tightened others,

A future work party will paint the gazebo and the nearby Cook Shack.

On this day, wotkers constructed shutters to enclose the place to the weather and critters.

Many thanks to Debbie Pfanner, Jason & Linda Thorn, Mark Sellards, Tom Stark, Chris & Jeff Winge, Ronald D. Lewick, Tyler Sooms, Chuck & Nancy Bynes, Robbie Shimmer, Tiffany Strob, Mike Elliot and Jennifer Stark....for turning out, On a rainy day at Malakoff.

In a effort to inform potential park users that Malakoff Diggins is Not Closed, MDPA has funded advertisements to be run in various

newspapers and outdoors related internet sites.

Malakoff Diggins State Historic Park is NOT Closed!

One of the best kept secrets in Northern California is that despite a bout with the state parks closure list, Malakoff Diggins survives and is OPEN! Bring the kids out to the park and hike or ski trails throughout the old Diggins or Upper Humbug Creek. Spend anidyllic afternoon picnicking, fishing or lolling by the enchanting Blair Pond. Video the Hiller Tunnel, giant water Monitors, and NorthBloomfield’s Gold Rush History. Park Campround, miner’s cabins, Museum and Visitor’s Center open in May, 2014. 530-265-2740 malakoffdigginsstatepark.org Be a Malakoff “Angel” by joining the Malakoff Diggins Park Assn. 23579 N. Bloomfield Rd. Nevada City, CA 95959 ($10)

Not a Chinaman’s Chance

Ohhh Murph, our future ghost town spectres are astirrin’. Aye, Dooley, It’s good we stayed here in the hills instead of dancin’ round those, “No Irish” signs in the city. Still, could be trouble abrew’n. Some miners are holding a meeting since McShane and Laroche tussled with the Asians down in the China’s Garden patch. It’s God’s truth the two were up to no good trying to lordy-lordy over the Celestials, and on their own ground at that. But Murph, they say they were insulted cause they didn’t get proper respect. Dooley, it’s well know those two have been looking down their noses at folks who’s just trying to make a livin like most everyone else here. I fear the drink will flow faster’n the words and before you could say, “saints preserve us”, a vile mob will be chantin for some queue cutting. But it would be stupit Murph to tear up the plots that provide us our vegetables. Oh Dooley,a mob has no conscience. It’s like an angry bully seein red; arootin and astompin weaker folks. Remember the land lords back in the Old Sod. Aye! Likely the Chinese came here for the same reasons, come to a new place offerin riches, a new life, freedom, what with their secret Tongs and all. Secrets? Dooley, I wonder what a Chinaman would think if he poked his head in the Mason’s Temple over Knotwell’s Drug Shop. Talk about secret! They’d be as amazed as us poking our noses in their business. Still, look around, some miners think they have to stand on the backs of others just to keep them down and feel superior. They’re over at King’s getting fortified. Them down by the creek will be wise to stay in their shacks tonight.

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It’s too bad Murph, that McShane and Laroche and their lot were not with us laying track over those Sierra Mountains.

Tis sure Dooley, we had a good Irish laugh when Charlie Crocker brought in his Coolies. We said they’d freeze in the snow and couldn’t carry a man’s load. But the way they divided into crews, worked together figurin’ and sketchin…..and danglin’ over the side to drill and set powder…… Oh, you didn’t find me danglin’ on a rope. They were fine workers Dooley and still are. Ah yes, but what thanks did they get? Crocker convinced them if they laid track all the way to Promontory, he’d give them free passage back to California. They built his railroad, won his race, made him even richer. What then? After breaking their backs for Ol Charlie, t’was with a smile, he reneged and left hundreds awandering in the desert. A foul deed it was! Come on Dooley, let’s siulover to King’s Place and seeif we can talk some sense toMichael Malachi McShane. Bring your shillelagh!

L. Clark / Sources: CPRR Museum / Library of Congress / The Chinese in America, by Iris Chang

Interpretive Master PlanState Parks are Partnering with Sonoma State University to Develop an

Interpretive Master Plan for Malakoff Diggins State Historic Park

On September 25, a Stakeholder Meeting was held at the Madeline Helling Library in NevadaCity. The event brought together representatives from California State Parks, Sonoma State University and interested members of the public.

The purpose of the meeting was to lay the groundwork for the development of an InterpretiveMaster Plan for Malakoff. According to parks, the plan will be a blueprint for public interpreta-tion and education in the park. It will set an Interpretive Vision for the park and help expandvisitors’ experience by improving how the park’s many wonderful features are interpreted.

An Interpretation Master Plan takes a long-range approach to interpretation planning and may be developed for a unit, sector, or geographical region, or may be used for particular resources found throughout the state. It updates and expands upon the General Plan and is intended to help guide park unit staff toward realizing its vision for interpretation. The Master Plan provides greater background and context, while analyzing existing conditions and looking at opportunities and constraints for expanding interpretation and meeting visitor needs. A Master Plan offers recommendations for facilities, media and programs, with objectives and strategies that are in line with the park unit’s goals and guidelines. The Master Plan can be a stand-alone document or combined with an Action Plan. Master Plans may be used to request and attract funding for project-specific development. (CA. St. Pks.)

Some Interpretive Signs are Wordy Others are more Suscinct

Attendees broke into groups and brainstormed the many features, history, lore and legendsof Malakoff. SSU students and staff will pore over the resulting material and prioritize, emphasize and categorize the lot, then submit their recommended plan to state parks.

Some of the obvious points made were: Interpretive Potential, Sineage or lack of; panels, brochures and exhibits for the wandering visitors to explore on their own; visitor surveys; targeted school groups; preservation of resources, plus traditional and innovative ways to accomplish the ultimate goals, etc.

State Park Regional Interpretive Specialist Bill Lindemann, Supervising Ranger Don Schmidt and Sonoma State University Staff moderated the session.

The Bad Man From Bodie Bodie is a ghost town—perhaps the West’s best preserved ghost town, where abandoned weather- beaten buildings stand stoically against encroaching sagebrush and wandering cattle. But years ago, the remote mining camp east of the Sierra Nevada Mountains in California became the scene of a gold rush that gave rise to one of the West’s wildest boomtowns. Saloon brawls, stagecoach robberies, vigilante justice and gunfights earned Bodie a reputation for violence that rivaled Tombstone, Deadwood and Dodge City. Those boomtowns are famous today, recognized largely for celebrated gunmen who stalked their streets, such as Wyatt Earp, Doc Holliday and Wild Bill Hickok. Yet Bodie’s killers, depraved or otherwise, were soon forgotten.

After prospector W.S. Bodey and his companions discovered gold in 1859, Bodie remained peaceful a until a bonanza strike in 1877 attrracted a variety of characters. On January 15, 1878, gunfire pierced the wintry air. In the initial moments of the exchange, James Blair, age 28, received a bullet in the left arm near the shoulder, but he continued firing until John Bresnan, age 30, lay dead. A week later, doctors administered chloroform and operated on Blair’s arm. They removed the shattered upper portion of his humerus bone, but the patient died 26 days after the street fight. Some 20 miles away, at the county courthouse in Bridgeport, the recorder wrote the names Bresnan and Blair on a clean page in the spanking new Mono County Register of Deaths, an impressive leather-bound volume adorned with gold lettering. The official record of violence at Bodie had begun.

Bodie’s penchant for trouble gave rise to one legendary figure. Though his fame was short-lived, the “Bad Man From Bodie” was a name recognized across the country. Evoking peril, “bad man” was a popular 19th-century expression that meant “ruffian,” “tough guy” or “cold-blooded murderer.”

Did the “Bad Man From Bodie” really exist? Or does he just stand exemplar for the shady characters who drifted through the dangerous boomtown?

In the spring or 1878, San Francisco’s Argonaut published a tall tale by journalist and humorist E.H. Clough that spoofed the distant mining town’s rough-and-tumble inhabitants. Titled “The Bad Man of Bodie,” the story told of Washoe Pete, a “bluffer” whose wild exaggerations were sources of amusement. “He swaggered and boasted to his heart’s content,” the yarn began. Whenever Pete drew his revolver and shot out the lights, he only evoked onlooker smiles and remarks of “purty fair shootin’.”

In a San Francisco courtroom, a defendant charged with “vulgar language” argued that the city’s press had unfairly dubbed him the Bad Man From Bodie. “I have been mortified by glaring headlines,” complained W.H. Branch. “I am suspected of carrying nitroglycerine in each pocket, of having a large and ugly-shaped knife in each boot and a brace of pistols in my belt.” The defendant begged for leniency, arguing that the reports were overstated. “Yes, your honor,” he implored. “Despite the implication, I have never been in Bodie in my life!”

The expression “Bad Man From Bodie” had become well known by 1880, when the writer who coined the term two years earlier published a second tale that appeared in Sacramento’s Daily Bee.

“Having made a close study of the peculiar class of ‘bad men’ generally known as Bad Men from Bodie,” E.H. Clough proclaimed, “I am prepared to add my plethora of wisdom in this respect to that already extant in the world at the present time. One of the peculiarities of a Bad Man from Bodie is his profanity. A Bad Man From Bodie who never used an oath is as impossible as perpetual motion or an honest election in Nevada. This trait is especially noticeable whenever he kills a man or endeavors to kill one. . . . Meeting an eligible candidate for a place in the graveyard, he emits his stereotyped oath and blazes away.”

The columnist later admitted that killings actually did take place in Bodie, but only among its rowdy citizens; “As to the occasional homicides which occur here, there never has been yet an instance of the intentional killing of a man [that] was not a verification of the proverb that, ‘He that liveth by the sword shall perish by the sword’.” “As to the health of Bodie, there were about 111 deaths in this place [during 1879], out of a population varying from 5,000 to 8,000 people. A very considerable number of these were killed by accidents in mines.”

A newsman in Bodie remarked, “But Bodie is much misunderstood by those outside. They have met with an occasional ‘Bad Man from Bodie,’ and have been too ready to judge the entire community from the bad man’s standpoint.”

While law-abiding citizens sought to change outside opinion, their efforts did little good. Bodie’s violent reputation did not subside until years after the boom. The town’s population decreased precipitously beginning in mid-1880, then leveled off at around 800, comprised of mostly wage-earning miners and their families before ebbing to a population of 3 by 1943. In 1962 Bodie was designated a California State Historic Park.

by Michael Piatt

96 Years Afoot and On Horseback If grandma had seen this photo of Glacier Point in Yosemite, (and she may have) she would have hooted and exclained, “He doesn’t know whether he’s afoot or on horseback”. The man in the picture was actually one of the forefathers of parks and, of the idea of protecting and preserving our prescious natural wonders.

Cordial to all who passsed through his domain, whether a tired teamster or the likes of John Muir and Ralph Waldo Emerson, Galen Clark was know as the Guardian of Yosemite....arguably the first park ranger.Oh, and he did know whether he was on horeseback. Muir wrote, “He kindly furnished us with flour and a little sugar and tea, and my companion, who complained of the be-numbing poverty of a strictly vegetarian diet, gladly accepted Mr. Clark’s offer of a piece of bear that had just been killed.” (1.)

1n 1855, suffering from “Consumption” (TB) Clark had abandoned the life of a packerand relocated to the mountain air of Yosemite, to “beat it or die trying”. The mountain air rejuvenated him. He spent most of the remaining 50 years of his life overseeing, both officially and unofficially, the well-being of Yosemite. Muir considered him the best mountaineer he had ever met, noting, “He sought few comforts when selecting a bed for the night. “He would lie down anywhere on the ground, rough or smooth without taking pains to remove cobbles or sharp angled rocks“. (1.)

Two years later Clark built a log cabin near a river ford and trail that provided access to both the Mariposa Grove of Big Trees and Yosemite Valley. Clark’s rest stop, soon known as Clark’s Station, furnished visitors with meals, shelter, and a place to graze their horses. There, Clark engaged his guests on a variety of topics from fauna and flora to American Indian history and geology. (2.)

cont.

Clark’s tireless efforts, with Muir and U.S. Senator John Conness, to convince Congress to preserve and protect Yosemite, resulted in President Lincoln signing, in 1864, The Act of Congress transferring Yosemite Valley and the Mariposa Grove to the State of California as a grant, reserved from settlement. Terms of the act required that the “State shall accept the Grant upon the express conditions that the premises shall be held for public use, resort and recreation; [and] shall be inalienable for all time.”

However, as an entrepreneur Clark proved to be less successful. To keep his stage stop at Wawona afloat he was compelled to borrow money and take out a mortgage. Unable to clear the debt, he sold out to the road-building Washburn brothers in 1874. The site was eventually developed into the Wawona Hotel complex that continues to serve Yosemite visitors today. (2.)

During the following decades much of the Yosemite wildernesswas prey to illegal logging, sheep grazing, squatters, Indian raidsand exploitation in general. Clark kept up his quest via his job as “Guardian” but in truth had little authority. Commissioners and the United States Army were variously sent in to provide protection and peace keeping. Continued efforts by Clark, Muir, Fredrick Law Olmsted and others resulted in 1890 of the Federal Govermnent taking control of the Greater Yosemite area outside the Valley. Ultimately, Muir toured President Teddy Roosevelt through the future park for three days, resulting in Roosevelt signing a Bill in 1906 that took the valley from the state of California and unified the entire Yosemite National Park. On March 24, 1910, a few days before his 96th birthday, Clark died at his daughter’s home in Oakland, California. Decades earlier he had chosen his final resting place not far from Yosemite Falls. He dug his own grave, planted seedling sequoias from the Mariposa Grove and selected a granite marker.

Today, visitors can stand at Galen Clark’s gravesite in the Valley Cemetery and marvel at the growth of those sequoias amidst the expanse of his conservation efforts. (2.)

L.ClarkSources: 1. Wikipedia 2. National Park Service

MDPA Board of Directors

President Tom Stark tscnsltng@hughes.net 530-265-8591 Vice President Larry Clark Newsletter fentclark@att.net 530-432-1706

Secretary Jason Thorn j.thorn.ca@gmail.com 530-432-8639

Treasurer Jennifer Stark gizzmo6089@yahoo.com 530-254-5679

Director Nancy Bynes bynesnancy@gmail.com 530-265-0525

DirectorMark Sellards m.sellards@sbcglobal.net

DirectorWes Nelsonwesleynelson@comcast.net 916-412-3277

Director Barbara Thornton-Hill bathca@gmail.com 530-265-5704

State Park CooperatingAssociating Liaison Supervising Ranger Don Schmidt don.schmidt@parks.ca.gov 530-273-3024

Gold Rush Options for a Happy New Year! were: Slim and None!

MDPA Recent Expenditures:

Wall Mounted TV for the Museum to Enhance Audio Visual presentations of History and Hydraulic Mining.

For the Sales Center: A Point of Sale SystemIncluding an Inventory Scanner. No more chicken-scratching marks to count...12 Blue T-shirts, 9 Red T-shirts....

Re. A reference to the Knotwell Drug Shop found in the Chinese article on page 4. John Knotwell’s partner, A. A. Smith had been a State Assemblyman, school teacher, constable and Justice of the Peace in N.B.F. As a “druggist” of sorts since 1875, he was noted for selling medicine to a man who subsequently died. He married Knotwell’s daughter in 1881, conjoining the Smith-Knotwell Drug Store.

MALAKOFF DIGGINSPARK ASSOCIATION

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Nevada City, CA 95959www.malakoffdigginsstatepark.org