Grass Valley is a much larger town than Nevada City. We stopped here for breakfast before heading back to Angels Camp. Mill street has been converted to a pedestrian street and is filled with nice shops and restaurants. We had a great breakfast here.
And so it goes.
Twenty years ago, I had just moved from South Carolina to Virginia and begun my career at James Madison University. Although it happened later for Elizabeth since she was staying behind to sell our house, my move north fell between a month long trip to South Africa and 9/11. A time of extremes...just like now.
Pine Grove is one of the better cemeteries we've visited in a while. There are many interesting people and their markers here.
I know it looks like all we do when visiting Nevada City is visit cemeteries. perhaps you are correct. But this is one of the places to learn about the people who built this corner of the world.
As we saw yesterday, there are plenty of wooden grave markers here. Some, like the one above, are clearly made by a hand not practiced in wood carving.
About 30 minutes out of Nevada City, as the crow flies, is the Malakoff Diggins State Park. This is the location of what was the largest hydraulic gold mine in California. Like many other mines, it were shut down due to the immense amount of toxic waste it produced.
The transition from the 1850's to the 1950's involved moving from man power to mechanical power. This included electric motors, steam engines, and Pelton wheels. On-site displays of some of the equipment reveals the technology of this gritty world. This device below has wooden brakes.
This Pelton wheel illustrated the importance of water in working this mine. Not only did they need water to help in the chemical separation of gold from the rest of the ore material, they also used water to drive these wheels to, in turn, run the stamp mills.
Ore was moved out of the mines and about the property in cars such as these.
Some of the remaining buildings are maintained here.
Inside this one is a machine shop for building and maintaining the operation. This was a self-contained operation. Amazing, dirty, loud, and very polluting. This is a big part of what put California on the map as the Golden State. But by the time this place closed down, that title was well supported by Hollywood.
One of our reasons for this particular venture in northern California is to see the Empire Mine. According to the California State Parks website, this is the site of one of the oldest, deepest, and richest gold mines in California. In operation for more than 100 years, the mine extracted 5.8 million ounces of gold before it closed in 1956. The park contains many of the mine’s buildings, the owner’s home and restored gardens, as well as the entrance to 367 miles of abandoned and flooded mine shafts.
Above is a gas pump that remains from the era of operation in the last century. I always find it a little unexpected to see a "modern" thing in what my brains associates with and "old" time. The trucks and gas pumps in Bodie were also like this. But, as you will see, there are many of these kinds of "cross over" items to be seen.
This young man seems to have lost his head at some point in the past but a good Samaritan re-attached it. Nevertheless, he is dressed in what seems to me to be clothing of another era even older than the provenance of this cemetery.
Naturally, we have to explore all the cemeteries. So we headed off to Grass Valley to see another Catholic cemetery. This one is also of god rush vintage but is still in use.
Not far from our B&B in Nevada City is a small, but interesting Catholic Cemetery filled with local history.
About 3.5 hours north of us (but still 3 hours or more south of the Dixie fire) is the small town of Nevada City. We decided to visit to see this place and the surrounding area. More on that in upcoming blog entries.
Along with the deer and foxes that frolic in the neighborhood, we also have flocks of Rio Grande Wild Turkeys. The other day a flock of females came past our house making it easy for me to get a few images.
The Kennedy Mine, near Jackson, was a large and deep mine that operated until 1942. Above is one of the ore buckets used to bring ore to the surface.
A cemetery with a long history always has plenty of children. This marker announces its resident with a rattle and a baby shoe on top.
As you can tell, our adventures are beginning to repeat. We made another visit to Sutter Creek to have a coffee and a scone at the place on Main Street we like. This time we had a pistachio scone...very nice.
This town hasn't had wooden sidewalks for quite some time. But you can tell that this sidewalk has been here and seen lots of action.
On a hot Sunday afternoon we drove east on CA-4 to Bear Valley. At 7,000 feet it was a little cooler, but not a lot. Our purpose was to attend a concert of the Crawdad Republic.
Amador City is near Jackson, the county seat of Amador County. We decided to stop in again at the Serbian Church and have another look about.
The county just to the north of Calaveras is Amador and the small town of Amador City is found there.
After exiting Yosemite on the western side, the first indication of civilization we encountered is the tiny town of Groveland. It is clearly a jumping off place for getting into the park.
After our explorations east of the Sierras, we headed back toward Angels Camp. However, we decided to try an alternate, longer route back west. We used our seniors pass for the national parks and drove back through Yosemite. To actually visit the park, reservations are required and things are really packed between now and late October, after we are back in the PNW. But, it is possible to get a timed pass for the purpose of simply driving through. This is what we did.
It is clear that some people interred here are of modest means. The marker above is made by hand with love.
Mono Lake cemetery sits up the hill just north of the lake. From this higher vantage point, you can see the road leading down to the lake. A turn just before the lake takes you to the left in the photo and out to the cemetery.
As the town decays, there are juxtapositions of things from different eras. A wagon from the 19th century and a truck from the 20th hep create a tableau of this mining town.
Driving east of the Sierras we find a place that is cooler and clearly wetter than the central valley and the western slopes of the mountains. At the end of a narrow paved road followed by a drive on dirt we come to the ghost town of Bodie.
Above is the Methodist Church built in 1882. There used to also be a Catholic Church as well (also from 1882) but it burned in 1928.
Although it once held as many at 10,000 people, only about 5% of the structures from its heyday still stand. Multiple fires have seen to that.
We headed east over the Sierras because, like the proverbial bear, we wanted to see what we could see. One of the first things we noticed is that, to our surprise, the eastern Sierra Nevadas is greener.
The Rural Cemetery in Stockton was founded in 1861 and contains many residents that are well known for their successes and failures. Some were pillars of the community, others were, well, of ill repute.
I don't know who the fellow buried above is but he has an interesting tombstone. A quick look at the hand pointing up suggests that perhaps the wrong finger is raised. However, if you count the fingers you see that it is indeed the index find and the thumb is in an unexpected place. Still, it catches you attention.
We drove to Jackson for the once/month flea market. It was small and filled with lots of stuff that rates as useless junk in our book. I'm sure that some found treasures there, but we were clearly in the wrong place.
I did find a couple vehicles worth a look. The first is this old truck that one of the vendors arrived in.
Just off of main street in Sonora in a parking lot, we find the certified organic farmers market. Being organic and all makes this are bitmore upscale that some markets. But we still find the street performer singing a song that only he can quite put into into its current form.
As you have seen, there are variety of cemeteries in Jackson. The high point of this tour is the cemetery at St. Sava Serbian Orthodox Church. Just a short way north of downtown is the oldest Serbian Orthodox Church in the America.
The main portion of the pioneer cemetery in Jackson has many monuments and fenced sections. The trees here are mature and the space is well shaded.
In a portion of the pioneer cemetery in Jackson, we find the jewish section. Above we see that poor little Rosa made it in this world less than a year.
This 135-acre park preserves a great outcropping of marbleized limestone with 1,185 mortar holes — the largest collection of bedrock mortars anywhere in North America.
About 12 miles east of Jackson is this intriguing state park. There is a campground and a large glade surrounded by mountains. In this pleasant valley we find a display of bark houses. These resemble Teepees but they are built of cedar poles and bark interwoven with willow or grapevines. These are the style of homes built by the Miwok peoples who lived here.
These are indeed handsome animals. Their colors blend well with the browns and greys of the landscape. It is fun to stand and watch them explore the world.
Mom is done with this feeding even if all the kits are not. Once she get clear of them, that's all there is. She doesn't let them near here again this afternoon.
It turns out that the family of foxes are living under the neighbor's back deck for now. In the mornings and afternoons they come out to frolic and investigate the world.
I typically go for my morning run about 5:45 or so. The sun is up, or soon to be up, but it is not yet peeking over the higher Sierras to our east. I often see animals. Lots of Black Tailed Deer, families of California Quail, and the occasional Grey Fox. But on this morning I was greeted with a fox posing on a rock in our front yard.
