In Placerville as in Angel's Camp, the evening promenade seems the most
important event of the day. Young men and maidens pass and repass in an
apparently endless chain. The same faces recur so frequently that one
begins to take an interest in the little comedy and speculate on the
rival attractions of blonde and brunette, and wonder which of the young
bloods is the local Beau Brummel. The audience - so to speak - sit on,
chairs backed against the walls of the hotels and stores, while many
prefer the street itself, and with feet on curb or other coign of
vantage, tilt their chairs at most alarming angles. A sort of animated
lovers' lane is thus formed, through which the promenaders have to run
the gauntlet, and are subjected to a certain amount of criticism.
Everyone knows everyone. Good natured badinage plays like wild-fire, up
and down and across the street. Later on, the tinkle of mandolin and
guitar is heard far into the night watches.
Having determined to reach Auburn - thirty miles away - the next day, I
made an early start. Coloma lies at the bottom of the great canon of the
South Fork of the American River. Hastening down the grade, in a bend of
the road I almost ran into my friend. It seemed a strange meeting this,
in the heart of the old mining country, and I think we both gave a
perceptible start.
It was at Coloma that gold was first discovered in California, by James
W. Marshall, January 19, 1848. My companion had been so fortunate on the
previous day as to meet Mr. W. H. Hooper, who arrived in Coloma August
8, 1850, and who has lived there practically ever since. Though
eighty-three, he is still strong and vigorous. From him my friend
elicited some very interesting information in regard to Marshall
especially, the substance of which I append from his notes. Mr. Hooper
had known Marshall for many years, and his reminiscences of the
discoverer have a touch of pathos bordering on the tragic.
Marshall, a trapper by trade and frontiersman by inclination,
accompanied General Sutter to California, assisted in the building of
Sutter Fort and, on account of his mechanical ability, was sent to
Coloma to superintend the erection of a sawmill. It was in the mill-race
that he picked up the nugget which made the name "California" the magnet
for the world's adventurers. Unaware of the nature of his "find," he
took it to Sacramento, where it was declared to be gold. He was implored
by General Sutter to keep the mill operatives in ignorance of his
discovery, for fear they should desert their work. But how could such a
secret be kept, especially by a man of generous and impulsive instincts?
At any rate the news leaked out and the stampede followed.
From Mr. Hooper's account, Marshall was a very human character. Late in
life the state legislature granted him a pension of two hundred dollars
per month. This sum being far in excess of his actual needs, it followed
as a matter of course that his cronies assisted him in disposing of it.
In fact, "Marshall's pension day" became a local attraction, and the
Coloma saloon - still in existence - the rendezvous. These reunions were
varied by glorious excursions to Sacramento, his friends in the
legislature imploring him to keep away. After two years the pension was
cut down to one hundred dollars per mouth and finally was discontinued
in toto - a shabby and most undignified procedure. Opposite the saloon,
at some little distance, is a conical hill. For many years Marshall,
seated on the steps of the porch, had gazed dreamily at its summit.
Shortly before his death, addressing a remnant of the "old guard," he
exclaimed: "Boys, when I go, I want you to plant me on the top of that
hill." And "planted" he was, with a ten-thousand-dollar monument on top
of him!
The poor old fellow died in poverty at Kelsey, near Coloma, August 10,
1885, at the age of seventy-five. It is a sad reflection that a tithe of
the money spent on the monument would have comforted him in his latter
days; for the blow to his pride by the withdrawal of his pension, still
more than the actual lack of funds, hastened the end.
Mr. Hooper intimated that the population of Coloma diminished
perceptibly after the termination of Marshall's pension. To common with
the majority of the old miners, be saved nothing and never profited to
any extent by the discovery that will keep his memory alive for
centuries to come.
Coloma in its palmy days had a population variously estimated at from
five to ten thousand souls, with the usual accompaniment of saloons,
dance halls and faro banks. There was a vigorous expulsion of gamblers
in the early fifties and an incident occurred which quite possibly
supplied the inspiration for Bret Harte's "Outcasts of Poker Flat." A
notorious gambler and desperado, and his accomplice, demurred. Whereupon
the irate miners placed them on a burro, and with vigorous threats
punctuated by a salvo of revolver shots fired over their heads, drove
them out of camp. They disappeared over the hill upon which the monument
now stands, and were seen no more.
Coloma suffered severely from fires. Little of the old town remains but
ruins of stone walls, and here and there an isolated wooden building.
The ruins, however, are not only exceedingly picturesque, being half
buried in foilage of beautiful trees, but hold the imagination with a
grip that is indescribable. I could willingly have tarried here for
days.
But while old Coloma is dead, there is a new Coloma that furnishes an
extraordinary contrast.
