Return to the El Dorado County Page Return to El Dorado County TalesWritten by Joanne Burkett from research taken from Paolo Sioli's History of El Dorado County California, from El Dorado Co. birth, marriage, death and land records and often from interviews.
Lewis Bloom Meyers was just 18 years old when he left his hometown, McConnellsville, Penna. He was born there, in Bedford County, on Oct. 26, 1812. It was a long way from the shop in St. Louis, Mo. where the teenager would go to learn the cabinet-making trade. It was even further from the adventurous life he would pursue in the Rocky Mountains as a fur trapper. His mountain man life led to a job as an interpreter among the Sioux Indians, a job he held until he met and joined up with a band of Mormons traveling to Salt Lake City some 20 years after leaving his family in Pennsylvania.
Once at Salt Lake, it was not long before he was stricken with gold fever and became part of a company heading across the plains for California.
On June 7, 1849, while the party was in the vicinity of Ragtown, on the Carson River near the Sierra Mountain crossing, 37-year-old Lewis married 17-year-old Maria Lane, who was born in 1832. The couple arrived in Sacramento around the middle of July 1849.
Being resourceful, Lewis took his bride to the little community of Brighton, where he threw up a structure consisting of willow poles and canvas where he sold meals and drinks.
Three months later, the couple was in El Dorado County where Lewis partnered up with Nathan Fairbanks and Louis Lane (possibly Maria's father or brother), opening the first store in Long Valley, which was later renamed Lewisville, after the Meyers' firstborn son. However, the town's name was changed to Greenwood when the post office was built, as there was already a town called Louisville in the county. Greenwood was chosen to honor John Greenwood, a giant of a man and the son of the famous trapper and guide Caleb Greenwood. John came to California overland in 1845 and opened a trading post there either in 1848 or the spring of 1849. The town was located about five miles south of Georgetown on the road to Cave Valley. It lay along a picturesque valley, growing and thriving over the next few years, its lively population eventually numbering some 400 residents. Local miners were pleasantly surprised to find the best newspapers of the day available in the inns and stores. The Illustrated News sold for $1, while most of the others went for half of that.
At this point, the area was mostly populated by men, but Lewis' young bride held the distinction of being the second white woman in Greenwood Valley.
Louis Lane died shortly after the partners' store opened and Lewis and Fairbanks took in William P. Crone as a replacement partner. After the trio added a butchering business, Lewis sold his share to his partners and purchased the Penobscot House, one of the oldest public houses and stopping places in the township. Lewis ran the business until 1854, when he sold it to the partnership of Page and Lovejoy. That same year, Greenwood was offered up as another choice for county seat during what had become a contentious fight. However, he did not win.
Upon the sale of the Penobscot House, Lewis bought the property known as the Chimney Rock Ranch. Here he made his home for the rest of his life, farming the land as some of his neighbors did, probably hay making.
Soon after their marriage, Maria was pregnant with the couple's first child, a boy they named after his father when he was born on March 25, 1850. Little Lewis was the first white child born at Greenwood. The family seemed to have everything going for it when Margaret Louella was born on Jan. 31, 1852. Margaret was followed two years later by Ann Maria, who was born March 25, 1854. The family was growing and prospering and were now living at the Chimney Rock Ranch. Another daughter, Mary Elizabeth, was born on Jan. 27, 1856. But then, the following year, tragedy struck when little Ann Maria was accidentally killed. Margaret would die before she could reach adulthood, too.
On Aug. 14, 1858, Maria had a new baby to fill her arms when George Grant was born. That same year, the town's business district was destroyed by a fire that was said to have originated in an ash barrel in Charles Nagler's home.
Nagler had been the owner of the area's largest and most successful hydraulic mining venture, the so-called French Claim. Over the course of its history, the mine would produce some $2 million in gold.
Besides the mine, which Nagler would later sell, he had also been responsible for several of the town's businesses, including a bakery and a hotel with saloon and billiard room.
By 1860, the town's population had grown to almost 1,000 and boasted a theater, four hotels, 14 stores, a brewery, a sawmill and four saloons. Five years later, a nugget, call the Fricot, was found at the Grit mine near town. It weighed 200 ounces. The Greenwood mining district would give up nearly $5 million in gold, nearly half coming from the Sliger Mine.
The 1880 census shows Lewis and his family still on the old homestead. The Pennsylvania boy had done well. His parents would have been proud.
Permission is granted by the author to use or republish this article, but proper attribution to the author -- Joanne Burkett -- is requested.
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Last Updated on: 30 May 2006