Histories of Specific
Settlements and Towns Within
Plumas County, California
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BECKWOURTH
Beckwourth, sometimes
erroneously listed as “Beckwith” on early census reports, was
named for James “Jim” P. Beckwourth, an unsung, genuine American hero of
mixed ancestry who created a lower, safer passage across the Sierra Nevada Mountains
in the mid-1800s. Jim Beckwourth, generally considered to be
an African American, played a major role in the early exploration and
settlement of the American West. Although there were people of many races and
nationalities on the frontier, Beckwourth was the only African American who
recorded his life story, and his adventures took him from the everglades of Florida to the Pacific Ocean and from southern Canada to northern Mexico. Beckwourth Frontier Days was established to honor the man.
Beckwourth dictated his autobiography to Thomas D. Bonner, an itinerant
Justice of the Peace in the gold fields of California, in 1854/55. After Bonner
"polished up" Beckwourth's rough narrative, The
Life and Adventures of James P. Beckwourth, Mountaineer, Scout, and Pioneer,
and Chief of the Crow Nation of Indians was published by Harper and Brothers
in 1856. The book apparently achieved a certain amount of popular success, for it was followed by an English edition in the same year, a
second printing two years later, and a French translation in 1860.
Beckwourth's role in American history was often dismissed by historians of the late nineteenth and
early twentieth centuries. Many were quite blatant in their prejudices,
refusing to give any credence to a "mongrel of mixed blood". Many of
his acquaintances considered the
James P. Beckwourth, from a daguerreotype c.
1855
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book something of a joke. Beckwourth was a man of
his times, and for the early fur trappers of the Rockies,
the ability to "spin a good yarn" was a skill valued almost as highly
as marksmanship or woodsmanship. And while Beckwourth certainly had a tendency
to exaggerate numbers or to occasionally make himself the hero of events that
happened to other people, later historians have discovered that much of what
Beckwourth related in his autobiography actually occurred. Truth is often
something much bigger than merely the accuracy of details. To discover the
truth of what life was like for the fur trappers of the 1820s, the Crow Indians
of the 1830s, the pioneers of the Southwest in the 1840s, or the gold miners of
California in
the 1850s, no better source can be found than the life
of Jim Beckwourth.
BELDEN
Stories vary about
how the small community of Belden was established. There is a plaque at Belden
that states that the community was named for the widow
of quartz miner Mr. Belden. Mr. Belden (perhaps John Belden, born about 1824),
a native of New York, married a Maidu Indian woman named Susan (born about 1845
at Yellow Creek near Belden) after he migrated from New York to mine for gold
in Plumas County. Mr. Belden and Susan initially settled at Mineral Township.
It is not known for certain whether the family
actually resided at what is now Belden
Town, or if the family lived closer to
the Bucks Lake area. Mr. Belden and Susan had two
children, Charles “Charley” Belden and Robert “Bob” Belden. Mr. Belden died
sometime between 1868 and 1874 and Susan remarried to Robert Workman at some
point before 1876. The couple had one or two children, one of which was William
Workman. By the 1900 Federal Census, Susan was once again using the surname
“Belden”. It is not known whether she was divorced
Robert Workman by 1900, or whether Robert Workman died at some point between
1880 and 1900. Whether Mr. Belden or his son, Robert Belden, filed a homestead
on the land now known as Belden is a matter of contention. It seems more likely
that it was Robert Belden who filed the homestead.
Regardless, the Belden family was granted legal title
to the land. Robert Belden opened a saloon and a general store during the
railroad construction years and also erected a dozen
cabins for travelers and year-round residents. The Belden Post Office opened in
1909 and a three-story hotel, The Riverside, was built
around that time. The Riverside
became a popular resort for fishermen and other travelers
along Highway 70.
Mining was
the primary activity at Belden and the surrounding areas in the early days of Plumas County.
While placer mining (by panning, dredging, or hydraulic methods) was probably the
most popular method in the Belden area, some quartz mining also occurred there.
Gold (usually in small amounts) is contained in quartz veins called ore. The
ore was underground. Therefore, miners created tunnels to get at the ore, as
well as equipment to break the ore into a powder, so that gold could be removed from it. A stamp mill was a piece of
equipment in which heavy pieces of steel were lifted
vertically by a cam and then suddenly dropped. Miners dug out ore from
inside deep mining shafts and sent it out on carts or hoisted it out in large
buckets. The ore was then place on the stamp mill and the steel “feet” of the
stamp mill landed on the ore and crushed it. The ore was then
washed with chemicals, which left behind pure gold. There is a beautifully
preserved stamp mill (the Ebbe Stamp Mill) displayed at the rest stop on
Highway 70 across from Belden.
With hydroelectric
power demands on the rise, the Belden powerhouse was
completed in 1969. The Belden Powerhouse penstock is 1,292 feet long
with a drop of 770 feet. The powerhouse taken water from Belden Forebay below
Seneca on the North Fork Feather River
As
of the 2000 Federal Census, there was a reported population of 26 at Belden.
Today (as of 2006), only three individuals live at
Example of a stamp mill
(not the Ebbe Stamp
Mill)
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Belden year-round – the town and
resort remain privately owned.
Lake Almanor
You know that you are nearing Almanor country when
you spot Mt Lassen, which used to be the only active volcano in the United States.
Its last official “tantrum” was in 1917 and, since then, it has become a
national park - a good place to spend a day seeing the sulfur hot springs, or
climbing to the top of the 10,448 foot volcano to look out over Lake Almanor,
which lies at the volcano’s base.
Lake Almanor is
currently one of the largest man-made lakes in the
State of California and is sometimes referred
to as the “Gateway to the Lassen
Volcanic National
Park”. Located in Plumas
County, where 1,000 of the 1,600 acres
in this county are unspoiled national forest land, Lake Almanor
sits against a backdrop of gorgeous mountain scenery. The lake itself offers
swimming and boating, water skiing, hiking, biking and camping. Fishing in Lake Almanor
is available year round and is excellent, especially in spring for salmon and
trout. There are several other streams and rivers in the Lake
Almanor area, including the Middle
Fork of the Feather River, which has been named a National Wild & Scenic River.
Before there was a Lake Almanor,
the Maidu Indians called the area "oy-ding-koyo", or Big Meadows -
the lush, bountiful land at the foot of the volcano where evil spirits dwelled.
For a number of centuries the Maidu took from and repaid the land for their
living, surviving the Sierra winters by migrating to lower elevations.
Spanish explorer Luis Arguillo
was the first European to enter Feather River
- named for the feathers floating on the waters. He was followed by a
scattering of trappers and lone mountain men until 1848, when Peter Lassen led
a party bound for California via a "short
cut" from the Oregon trail
that wound through Big Meadows. These parties were shortly
thereafter followed by other seekers of the “new land out west”:
ranchers, dairymen, farmers and miners, who recognized the varied riches of the
area and saw no need to travel further.
Mountain streams, abundant hunting and fishing and the cool summer climate brought
vacationers from the Sacramento
Valley long before there
was a lake. Since the 1860s, travelers have come to Big Meadows from the hot
valleys and busy cities to spend weeks or months. Julius Howells, a geology
student from Harvard
University, visited the
area in the early 1880's. When he returned in 1901 again,
he envisioned the hydro-electric potential of the Feather
River and convinced Edwin Earl and Guy C. Earl, of the Great
Western Power Company, to finance the building of a dam. In 1914
the first dam was completed and Big Meadows became the bed of Lake Almanor,
named for Guy Earl's three daughters, Alice; Martha; and Eleanor.
The Great Western Power Company
later became part of Pacific Gas and Electric Company (PG&E). PG&E,
along with the U.S. Forest Service, developed Lake Almanor
into a beautiful recreation area. The lake is approximately 52 square miles,
rests at an elevation of 4,500 feet, is 13 miles long and six miles wide, and
is approximately 90 feet deep at its deepest point (when the lake is full). The
present dam was constructed in 1926/1927 and stores 1,308,000 acre-feet of
water which covers over 28,000 acres of land.
Golf is popular sport at Lake Almanor,
since there are several courses laid out in beautiful, lush, natural settings.
Wintertime brings skiing, snowboarding, and other outdoors sports to the lake.
Autumn in Lake Almanor
is dazzling when the mountains are set ablaze with color and is a jewel in the
northern California
wilderness and a great place to spend a vacation.
Since the creation
Lake Almanor, numerous resort-type
communities have been laid out in the Lake Almanor
and Lake Almanor Penninsula areas. Today, many of those communities are grand,
gated neighborhoods.
Walkermine (Walker
Mine)
During the 1920s and 1930s, Plumas County
was Number One in state copper production. Engels Mine on Lights Creek in
northern Indian Valley produced $25 million over its
lifetime. Walker Mine, 15 miles south, put out $23 million. Walker Mine
competed with Engels Mine as the most productive copper operation in the state
during the 1920s, achieving this status in 1929. Situated at a 6,500-foot
elevation in central Plumas County, the mine is about 12 air miles east of Quincy. During its
two-and-a-half decades of operations, Walker Mine had more than 1,000 employees
and 3,000 residents during its peak years.
George Bemis made his discovery
at Walker Mine with local assistance in 1904. However, mining operations did
not begin until 1911. Initial yields by 1914 were sufficient to warrant
construction of a bunkhouse and three cabins for workers. High-grade ore
assaying 12 percent copper was struck during October
1915. A new flotation plant was completed in 1916 with
a daily capacity of 85 tons. The mine’s sawmill, run by Charles Campbell, was capable of cutting 7,000 feet daily. Electricity arrived
in 1917, when a power line was brought from Indian Valley
to the mine by the Great Western Power Company.
A unique feature of the Walker
Mine operation was its 9-mile tramway, completed in 1919. It was
built to transport copper ore in 3-foot- by-4-foot buckets from the mine
to the Western Pacific Railroad (WPRR) siding at Spring Garden.
There, the copper ore was loaded into gondola carts and freighted to Tooele, Utah
for smelting. Also transported by the tram during winter periods were food,
freight, mail, and occasionally people. During winter, the company town was cut off from the outside world, except for the tramway.
The line ran on wooden towers, each from 20 to 60 feet in height. In winter,
when the snow was extraordinarily deep, crews were employed
near the summit of Grizzly Ridge to shovel the snow out of the line of travel
of the buckets.
The Boca & Loyalton Railroad
(B&L) was built in 1901. The first B&L feeder
track into Plumas County was laid in 1902,
northwesterly through Sierra
Valley and on to
Beckwourth. In about 1907, a 2-mile spur was built
north along Grizzly Creek in order to haul logs. Five years later, in 1912, ice
from Charles Gulling’s 14-acre ice pond became another commodity to haul. The
Walker Mine Copper Company also used the Grizzly spur for a brief period.
Copper concentrates from the company’s mine on the slopes of Mt. Ingalls were hauled by wagon to the Grizzly spur and the B&L for
shipment to the Southern Pacific Railroad (SPRR), then eastward to Utah.
During Walker
Mine’s most productive years, it was operated by the Anaconda
Copper Mining Company. The company town of Walkermine was
built to support work crews and their families during that period. The
town supported a hospital, a movie theater, a school, a library, dining
facilities, a store, a tavern, a post office, a service station, a baseball
field, and a ski hill. Occupants of Walkermine lived in 132 company-constructed
homes, 4 bunkhouses of three stories each, and 68 private homes. During its
heyday, 75 students attended the school at Walkermine and were
taught by just three teachers. Walkermine officially became a defunct
settlement in 1941, when Walker Mine closed permanently. The mine and the town were sold at auction in 1945. The beginning
of the end for Walker Mine and its company town occurred when copper
prices and yields began dropping and the company suffered a loss of $300,000 in
1939. The monthly payroll in 1940 for the 325 remaining employees was $75,000.
Now, nothing but scars and a logged-over bit of rubble remain of this
once-flourishing area.
Want to learn more about Plumas County
history? Contact the Plumas County Museum or Arcadia Publishing in order to purchase
a copy of the wonderful book, Plumas County:
History of the Feather River Region, a Making of America Series by Jim Young.
Elizabeth E.
Bullard-Watson
Plumas County, California GenWeb Project
Coordinator
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Elizabeth E.
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Taylorsville, CA
95983-0114.
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