My Original Intention Had
Been To Walk Thence To Sonora, Twenty-Four Miles; But Finding The Road
Would Take Me Again Into The Valley, I Decided To Make For Angel's Camp,
Only Thirteen Miles Away.
It is uphill nearly all the way from Copperopolis to Angel's Camp, but
mostly you are in the pine woods.
My spirits rose with the altitude and
delight at the magnificent view when I at last reached the summit.
Toiling up the grade in the dust, I met a good old-fashioned four-horse
Concord stage, which from all appearances might have been in action ever
since the days of Bret Harte. At last I felt I was in touch with the
Sierras. The driver even honored my bow with an abrupt "Howdy!" which
from such a magnate, I took to be a good omen.
In common with all the old mining towns - though I was unaware of it at
the time - Angel's, as it is usually called, is situated in the ravine
where gold was first discovered. It straggles down the gulch for a mile
and a half. There are a number of pretty cottages clinging to the steep
hillsides, surrounded with flowers and trees, the whole effect being
extremely pleasing. I registered at the Angel's Hotel, built in 1852.
Across the street is the Wells Fargo building, erected about the same
time and of solid stone, as is the hotel. Nothing on this trip surprised
me more than the solidity of the hotels and stores built in the early
fifties. Instead of the flimsy wooden structures I had imagined, I
found, for the most part, thick stone walls. It was evident the Pioneers
believed in the permanence of the gold deposits in the Mother Lode.
Possibly they were right; Angel's is anything but a dead town to-day.
The Utica, Angel's and Lightner mines give employment to hundreds of
men.
In the afternoon I visited the Bret Harte Girls' High School. It is a
very simple frame building, on the summit of a hill overlooking the
town. The man who directed me how to find it, I discovered had not the
remotest idea who Bret Harte might be; "John Brown" would have answered
the purpose equally as well. In fact, all through the seven counties I
traversed - Tuolumne, Calaveras, Amador, El Dorado, Placer, Nevada and
Yuba - I found Bret Harte had left but a hazy and nebulous impression.
Mark Twain, Prentice Mulford, Horace Greeley, Bayard Taylor, even "Dan
de Quille," seemed better known.
The next morning I started for Sonora. In seven miles I came to the
Stanislaus River, running in a deep and splendid canon. The river here
is spanned by a fine concrete bridge, built jointly by Tuolumne and
Calaveras Counties, between which the river forms the dividing line. In
the bottom of the canon is the Melones mine, with a mill operating one
hundred stamps. The main tunnel is a mile and a half in length; the
longest mining tunnel in the State, I was told.
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