Site Visit: February 29, 2020In the late 1990s I was the County Archivist in one of the Gold Rush counties. We didn't get a lot of researchers so I was able to spend a lot of my time going through the records myself. While indexing the court records from the 1850s I conceived a brilliant idea for a TV show. I'd use the stories from the court cases as the basis for the storylines for my show. Sort of like Erle Stanley Gardner did with Perry Mason, only set in the Gold Rush with an honest-as-the-day-is-long, handsome sheriff solving the crimes, often with the help of his neighbor, the attractive and sharp as a tack schoolmarm who are both secretly smitten for each other. (If we can get to picked up for a season 4, we'll even get to see them hook up!) If I had to pick a location to set the show in it would be the quaint Calaveritas in Calaveras County, where I went to see the historic adobe house on Main Street. Calveritas sits in a beautiful small valley, about 4 miles to the east of the county seat San Andreas. Running just south of town is the previously very prosperous Calaveritas Creek. At one time it was a booming mining town with as many as 2000 people from all over the world. The town bustled with Americans, Chinese, French, Mexican/Sonorans, Italians, and other Europeans. It must have been remarkable to see. If given the chance, go visit. Especially in early spring when the grass is green, and the air is still crisp. What makes it nice is that the town is not directly on Highway 49, so it has a slow (in a good way) feel. There are only a few historic buildings left in Calaveritas, including the adobe house. Although I swear it looks more like it was a barn than anything. I'm pleased that the adobe brinks are being protected with the wood siding. However I would have loved to have seen it as the 1948 Division of Mines building survey did when they traveled there. They described the structure as having been built in 1850 and still having the original lime plaster to protect it. They also noted that "just beside this adobe are the remnants of two other buildings whose basement walls, four feet high....(E)ach has an arched doorway." Seeing these relics was nearly as gratifying as the adobe. The best-preserved buildings in Calaveritas are at the north end of town. These buildings, the Costa Store and Cuneo house, seem to beam with pride at having conquered the ages. It must be a testament to their owners through the years that they are both in such good condition. The Costa Store, in particular, provides an excellent view of how well the adobe bricks have held up over the years. Calaveritas never recovered from a fire in August 1858 that destroyed nearly all of the town. Maybe we are even lucky to have just these buildings, based on how ominous the early accounts were. Before the fire though, the town knew how to have a good time. You can tell because they even had a dance school. At one point it had 60 men signed up for lessons. No word however on the number of women. They probably needed to know how to dance with all of the balls and parties that were held in the town. They used just about any occasion to hold a ball including the 4th of July and even the inauguration of a new president. I'm sure I could have even crafted a story for my show from the dance school and balls.
0 Comments
Visit Date: November 6, 2021One of my best excuses for visiting the Gold Country and tracking down the historic stone and brick buildings ended last weekend. My son's high school cross country season finished. As he was a senior this was the last time I would get to use his cross country meets was a reason to head for Highway 49. This meet was at the Calaveras County Fairgrounds in Angels Camp, Calaveras County. Making for a nice quick stop on the way there was San Andreas and a photo of the IOOF Hall on Main Street. This building is old by the standards of this study, having been constructed in the 1856. According to one source, the Old Fellows used the top floor while the lower level served as an armory for the local militia unit, the Home Guard. Curiously a quick scan of the buildings found in the 1948 Division of Mines study, I could only find five Old Fellows Halls, one shared Odd Fellow and Mason Hall, and no strictly Masonic Halls. Seems like the Masons would have been better represented in the a study on stone and brick buildings. Curious? Unfortunately I think that San Andreas is unexpectedly going to be a bust for me in my quest to re-photograph that buildings from the 1948 Division of Mines historic building survey. There are four San Andreas buildings featured in the study, one of which was already listed as destroyed in 1948. (WHY EVEN INCLUDE IT!) However there are a number of other really interesting buildings in San Andreas that make the town worth stopping to visit. Right next IOOF Hall is the old Hall of Records, an amazing looking building. It was built well after the Gold Rush so it did not qualify for the Division of Mines survey. I wonder if I did a search if I would learn whether Hollywood has ever used it as a stand in for the Hall of Records in Anytown USA? Today it houses the County Museum and Historical Society. Seems appropriate. Just two buildings east of the Hall of Records (the Saloon in front of the American Hotel on the Sanborn map) is the current County Archives. I want to work there!
Visit Date: February 29, 2021Sure, sometimes I complain about the drought and how it's effective this project. Take a look at the smoky images from my visit to French Corral. Not to mention the potential for like ALL of these buildings and structures to be impacted (i.e. burned) by the drought-stoked fires. There is one small benefit though and that's that I can travel to and photograph these sites just about anytime and not be interrupted by the weather. Take for example when I visited the I.O.O.F. Hall in Copperopolis, Calaveras County, on Leap Day, in 2021. No clouds or rain to ruin my day. [Note: I liked it better when it rain season was rainy in California.] You don't need a sharp eye to notice that these photos were taken at different angles. My goal for this project has been to taken the repeat photograph from the exact spot where the authors of the Division of Mines survey did in 1948. In this case, a new fence (new since 1949), a temporary building, and a CDF station that sits in front of the IOOF Hall made it impossible to actually get to the spot that I needed to. As you can at right when I did try to get the right angle, these obstacles came into play. I did however get a really great photograph of the back of this day care building. If your first thought was that this building must be a church, it's because you are a very observant person (and probably good looking too!). While the authors refer to the building as an Odd Fellows Hall, it was constructed in 1866 as the Congregation Church for Copperopolis. The 1860s were the heyday for Copperopolis. The town boomed during the Civil War when there was a need for copper for war efforts. Later the church was sold to the Odd Fellows in 1903, who used it as their hall until 1939, when the community took it over. It continues to be used to today as a community center. It was nice to be able to drive up and park right at the building. I had free range to explore the grounds and walk right up to the building. Thankfully it is in remarkably good condition, despite the passage of 150 years since Copperopolis's peak. It's weird though I did keep expecting church bells to toll throughout my visit.
Visit Date: November 9, 2019In a previous post, I discussed the amazing day I had visiting the Angels Hotel in Angels Camp. The day was fantastic but not all of the buildings I saw that day were. The Angels Hotel is still in superb conditions, still being used as an active business as well as having an owner who is actively maintaining it. In contrast, just prior to photographing the hotel, I visited a structure in absolute dire need of repair, if that is even possible at this point. The Romaggi Fandango Hall in Albany Flat, Calaveras County needs help now! The Romaggi Fandango Hall was been in a state of disrepair for many years. The building seems to have really suffered since 1948 when the Heizer and Fenanga in their Highway 49 building survey wrote that "Few buildings in the entire Mother Lode can match this for size, excellence of construction, and elaborateness." However by 1961, one historian noted that the while walls of the main building were still solid, the side walls were in ruins. The structure though was still notable enough that it was specifically identified on the 1962 USGS Angels Camp topographical map. It's actually surprising that the building even still stands. In the 1930s the Historic American Buildings Survey visited and documented the "James Romaggi Fandango House". The photos from this survey are available online from the Library of Congress. Those photos are shown below. Note the condition of the roof in these photos, but more importantly, look how close to Highway 49 the building sat. How did someone not plow into the house after after having a few too many on a Friday night?
Every passing year without repair makes the job of saving the building that much more difficult. As you can see in these 2019 photos. I do hope that they are able to save the building. I just don't want to get to the point where I say that I am happy I visited in 2019 because it no longer stands. Too many of these building save disappeared already. I wish this building had the love of the Angels Hotel. Site Visit: November 9, 2019Have you ever had a really great day? Everything seems to go just right. People are nicer. The food tastes better. The weather is ideal. Well, the day I made this visit was that type of day. I like any day I get to drive through the Gold Country, but this was better than most. I headed first for the Calaveras County Fairgrounds (where they annually hold the best named county fair, Calaveras County Fair & Jumping Frog Jubilee!) to see my son complete in the high school cross country sectional finals. While the day didn't go too well for him that morning, after a really nice deli lunch I was left with all afternoon to track down old buildings, including the Angels Hotel, Angels Camp, Calaveras County. This building is fortunate. It has an owner who is continuing to care for it. During my visit, the building was in the middle of having a new façade added to it. It seems that only a few years of neglect, deferred maintenance, or even mild disinterest is the death knell to these buildings. Once they start to deteriorate, it's so hard to reverse the process by doing the needed repairs and maintenance, while keeping their historic character. By selecting to write about this building, I believe am required to inform you that during a visit to the hotel in the 1860s, Mark Twain he first heard the story that he would go onto write as "The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County. Needless to say, the building is old. Starting as a simple wooden structure erected in 1851, by 1857 it was re-constructed as a two story building which is partially obscured in the center of this 1857 bird's eye view drawing of Angels Camp. I think this is the oldest image I have found of one of the buildings from the 1848 Building Structures Survey. In the 1850s, the building was known as Lake's Hotel. C.C. Lake though wasn't completely sold on the idea of running a waystation. In 1855, prior to re-building as a stone structure, he put the operation up for sale and planned to leave the state. I guess he couldn't find any suitors for "so desirable a property", because a year later he hosted the New Year's Ball, which celebrated the opening of "his new Stone Hotel". The day was amazing but it wasn't perfect. Trying to get a clear view of a building when shooting across Highway 49 was a real challenge. Check out all these people who had no idea that they were going to end up on the internet when they got in their cars that day.
Visit Date: May 16, 2020The Covid pandemic has been awful. Truly awful. Not good for anyone. Like many others, our family really hunkered down at the start. Limited trips to stores. Short or no visiting with family and friends. One personal small casualty was the aim of the blog, finding buildings featured in the 1949 Division of Mines Geological Guidebook along Highway 49. After two months of staying at home, I finally had enough and headed back to the Gold County. The destination was Murphys in Calaveras County and its bounty of freakin' awesome buildings. The Victorene Compere Store is no longer a store but instead serves as a very nice personal residence. It seems that few of the other stone buildings in the guidebook have been treated as well. Too often they are in extreme need of repair, if they still exist. Murphys has many nearly as well preserved buildings that could have been featured. Like the Volcano photo from a previous post, the authors used an existing image of the Compere Store instead of taking their own photograph. The problem with them using that photo is that it was taken during the Depression and not on their building survey in 1948. The photo below was probably taken in 1934, as part of a New Deal work projects. The benefit for me though is that the Library of Congress collection contains these photos and the quality is better than the scan of the image in the Guidebook. Main Street Murphys is one of the best spots to visit if you want to go back to the Gold Rush Days. Many, many fine old buildings, quite a few of them stone, line the street. The town retains a sense of history while still feeling evolved. The Compere Store sits on the north side of Main Street as you enter Murphys along the old road from Altaville. In its day it must have been a striking site as you arrived in Murphys. In the upper corners of the Compere Store are decorative metal work flourishes. I don't think that they provide any structural help but they really finish off the building. They aren't all of the stone and brick buildings, but I have seen a few, probably because you had to pay extra for this detail work. The examples below are from Copperopolis (left) and Plymouth (right).
|
AuthorMy name is Jeff and I am on a hunt to find historic brick and stone structures along Highway 49. Archives
January 2022
Categories
All
|