Tuolumne

In 1849 Gold was discovered in California, and the 49ers came. In 1886 though, the gold plumb run out, so the 49ers were 86ed! But during that golden era a legacy was born.

Actually, It's estimated by geologists that only 30% of California's gold has been found and 70% remains in the ground. Hot cha cha cha! How do I get me some of that?

So us argonauts packed up the Sienna and headed to the Sierras to the Mother Lode region for the weekend.

And made our way to Tuolumne County. California's gold region has the best county and town names doesn't it? Tuolumne, Calaveras, Stanislaus, Amador, and Mariposa counties, and the towns of Angels Camp, Chinese Camp, Copperopolis, Mokelumne Hill, Fiddletown, Placerville, Folsom, Clipper Gap, Secret Town, Gold Run, Rough and Ready, Malakoff Diggins, French Corral, just to name some of my favorites.

We are going to start out in Jamestown, or as the locals call it, Jimstown, situated roughly between San Fransisco and Yosemite on California State Highway 49.

Jamestown was home to the Harvard Mine, operated as recently as 1994, but as an open pit mine. It was closed due to falling gold prices.

Some of the folk that operated the old Harvard Mine.

Jamestown is home to some beautifully restored hotels.

We moseyed into Gold Prospecting Adventures on Main street for our guide to finding gold.


Here is their 1849 Mining camp on Woods Creek. This is where we are going to pan.

After “booting up” we jumped right in to panning.

Cindy's searches her pan for her early retirement.

Let Prospector Parkie learn ya the finer points of panning:

First, shovel some oar from your diggin's into your pan and take it down to the creek for “processin'”. We's going to let the water do most of the work.

Submerge the pan at an angle into the water careful like so's not to let any oar slosh out.“Massage” the silt out of the oar. Let the water work for ya, not against ya.

When the water runs clear, agitate the pan so that the heavier material settles to the bottom, again careful not to let any of the oar fall out. Gold is heavy, so it will settle to the bottom.

Lift the pan out of the water at an angle, allowing the lighter oar to wash out. Do this 3 or 4 times. Remember: Water is your friend.

Using a little bit of water left in the pan, swirl the water lightly over the remaining sand, gently washing it away to reveal that the pan contains absolutely no gold whatsoever. Repeat said steps until your at your wits end.

Oh boy~ this is going to be a long day. I guess I won't be quitting my day job anytime soon.

Next, we moved on to using a sluice box. Now this is the way to go. The average one can pan is about 5 pans per hour. Using a sluice box, we can now process an average of 100 pans per hour! Heck yeah! The odds have got to be in our favor now.

Your friend, the water, is now doing all the work. In this photo, the water is flowing left to right. Those metal ridges help trap the heavier oar behind it while the lighter stuff tumbles on down. There is a screen and a mesh that will hopefully trap the gold. Old timey prospectors learned this from finding gold trapped in moss growing in the water. Clever old timey prospectors.

After running oar through the sluice for an hour, the sluice is carefully removed from the stream and disassembled. Each part is then rinsed into a bucket. Now all the oar in the bucket has to be panned. Since Rachelle is the only one out of all of us who had any luck finding gold while panning, she gets the honor of panning the bucket.

Eureka! Gold! Now thats more like it.

Well, here it is, our haul for the morning. About $30 - $35 worth of gold. Of course it cost us over $100 to find it!

A warm sunny day. A cool, shaded creek. Fresh Sierra Nevada air. The prospect of finding gold. Away from electronic entertainment. All the ingredaments for a great family outing. Now thats the real gold, ain't it?

Next blog on A California Adventure:

After spending the morning doing the equivalent of about 100 squats while panning for gold, we were ready for a relaxing ride on the “Movie Train”. See ya then!

The 100 year old lantern: a small Imagineering type project.

As a cartoon animator, I tend to be a little anthropomorphic (or is it since I’m anthropomorphic, I became a cartoon animator?). Regardless, allow me to indulge in a little anthropomorphism now.

The lead character of this latest blog post? This antique lantern. Yep! A 1907 Paull’s #0 kerosene lantern that I came into possession of with a little help from eBay.

And to help celebrate this lanterns centennial birthday, I’m going to build a lamppost to which to display it from. It’s the retirement dream of lanterns everywhere.

Notice it's June 30th 1907 imprint. It's a 100 years old this year!

In studying historical photos of mining complexes and boom towns, I found that these types of lamps were never hung from lampposts. More likely, they sat on a table or were hung from beams or rafters, inside, not outside. Towns tended to roll up their sidewalks after dark back then. If a town did have outdoor lighting, it would have invested in fancy gaslamps along the main boardwalk. If a fella was out and about after dark, he would have carried this sort of lantern with him.

So I decided to take the Disney philosophy of “these didn’t exist back then, but if they did, this is how they would have looked” approach with this lamppost. I really like the ones they built for the Big Thunder Mountain Railroad. So I’m going to build this lamppost following their design.

The BTMRR’s lamps are actually electric with a little “magic” involved to make them flicker like a lantern. Believe it or not, the BTMRR’s lanterns are “listening” to “music”! You’ve seen the levels on your stereo “flicker” to your music; the higher the intensity of the music, the more level indicator lights light up. The less intense the music, less level indicator lights light. Disney’s lanterns are doing the same thing, except they are listening to special music that though would sound terrible to us, is perfect for mimicking the flicker of a flame! If you watch closely, you might catch two or more lanterns listening to the same track! You never realized those lanterns were having so much fun, did you. Rock on!

My lantern is 100% kerosene powered, thus simplifying this project immensely. I can do this since I don’t have to light hundreds of lamps night after night. And not having to deal with hiding electrical wires helps a lot too.

Bill of Materials:

Disney Imagineering used leather strapping, but I'm going with a heavy hardware look typical of old mining equipment. So the first order of business is to paint all the hardware as close as possible in color to iron. I'm using brown Rust-oleum Hammered Paint Spray.

Me pour concrete! Me man!

(edit: Apparently I chose the wrong footing, the Post Base flexes too much under the weight of the post. I suppose the post itself should have been set into the concrete. I'll have to find a way to remedy that).

There is like, “technology” behind these old lanterns! Turns out they changed the world. By using this technology, they burn a few times brighter than candles, thus allowing American ingenuity to continue after dark!


Here the Heavy Angles are installed on the crossarm, and I included a 1/2” rod through the crossarm and into the post and cap to help increase its strength. A big thanks to my friend Don Simon who was gracious enough the let me borrow his drill press to drill perfect 90° holes to accept the hardware.

I cut the angle brace the old fashioned way. And boy are my arms sore!

Done! Cool. Pretty much everything turned out as planed. Just in time for it's 100th anniversary later this month on the 30th. At that time I'll fire up the lantern and drink a toast to it and American history.


Welp, here we are, June 30th 2007, toasting the 100th anniversary of the lantern. We even BBQed a steak dinner and dined under the soft glow of the lantern. I'm a geek! I know. Leave me alone. I'm going to relax and sip my Long Island Iced Tea in commemoration, listen to the crickets, watch my lantern glow into the night and enjoy this simple little moment.

Switzer~Land

Ah, the utopian wonderland of Los Angeles at the beginning of the 20th century. Frolic in the surf and sandy shores of the Pacific by morning, then scale the alpine heights of Switzer~land by afternoon.

Switzer~land?


Yep. Time for hike and campout #2 with Dax’s Boy Scout troop 888. This time to Switzer Falls in the San Gabriels Mountains in Los Angeles. Don’t worry, I’m not going to blog about every campout we go on. But this hike is through another historic location only a few of miles from Mt. Lowe.

The Serpent Patrol: Dax, Brandon, Michael, Ryne, and Phillip.

Apparently, what with the “Ye Alpine Tavern” and Switzer~land, turn of the 20th Century Angelinos were in love with the idea of transforming the Sierra Madres into the Swiss alps.

The Switzer Falls area is set in the deep Arroyo Seco canyon and contains a series of waterfalls cascading over smooth rock into rock pools. In warmer weather some of these falls can be used as water slides. But today the water is snowmelt and is far too cold for us to swim in.

The nearby Mt. Waterman is named after Bob Waterman and his new bride when they took a month long honeymoon camping adventure and discovered the falls in 1883. When they returned they told their friend Commodore Perry Switzer all about it (I don’t know where he gets off calling himself “Commodore”, maybe I should adopt such a title! ). Excited by the news of this paradise, Switzer built a trail and packed in tents, food and kitchen equipment, creating the first tourist resort in these mountains.

Very little remains of the original road, so the boys had to make about a dozen stream crossings, balancing on rocks with full packs! Dax discovered that he has a natural ability for this and did quite well (Do I sound like a proud papa?).

Lloyd Austin and his wife bought Switzer's Camp in 1911 and renamed it Switzer~land. With donations, they built Christs Chapel on a rocky outcrop 200 feet above the upper falls. It looks small, but the Chapel and it's amphitheater could seat some 200 people, and was a popular location for weddings, conferences, retreats, and Sunday morning prayer.

Fighting the urge to yodel, I managed to snap this pic of the Chapel site today- minus the Chapel. Once again, the historic structures had to be dynamited by the U.S. Forestry service for safety concerns. Why can't we hang on to our history?

Here you can see some of the remains of the arches laying on the hillside. I don't blame the U.S Forestry Service for doing what they had to do. I blame heartless, ignorant folk who think their actions have no consequences! One of the reasons I believe Scouting to be so important.

Switzer's Camp today is still very beautiful, and is very popular for day hikes and camping. The stream in the deep valley is shaded by white barked alders, tall oaks, sycamores and maple trees, keeping everything nice and cool. We set up camp next to the stream, and although it looks placid in this pic, the stream is actually quite lively and we fell asleep that night to it's calming rushing sound echoing off the valley walls.

Assistant Scoutmaster and Troop Chaplin Tim, tries his luck in one of the many rock pools. And yes, he dined on rainbow trout that night for dinner.

Nice effort early Angeleno's! It looks like it was fun while it lasted. But these days, I guess we can just jet to the real Alps. But really, the Sierra Madres are respectable in their own right, they don't need to be the Alps. There is something to be said about this area reverting back to it's natural state. It made for a mighty nice getaway for us, camping in a relatively remote location and getting away from the electronic world (not the slightest cellphone signal could be found). And with everyones care, it should stay this way for the next 100 years. Or else the U.S. Forestry Service will have to Dynamite the whole dang mountain range to smithereens!!!

Okay! Okay! So I'm not a philosopher! Take it as you want.

Signed;

Commander Dav