ANOTHER VISIT WITH “POMP” CHARBONNEAU

How close we are to our distant past…

Jean Baptiste Charbonneau was the child carried by Sacagawea across the span of the continent while accompanying Lewis and Clark in 1804-06.  Captain William Clark is said to have nicknamed him “Pompy” or “Pomp.”  We learned about him as grade school kids, remember?

[Note:  Clicking on any image accompanying this post will enlarge the photo and render most print therein, readable.  It might be worth doing.]

In May, a few years ago, I found myself at Pomp’s resting place at Inskip Ranch on the Owyhee River near Danner, Oregon.  There, he’d fallen from a horse, taken ill and died at age about my current age: 61.  He was en route to the Idaho/Montana gold mines. 

Later that summer, I visited Fort Clatsop, the spot on the Oregon coast where Lewis and Clark’s Corps of Discovery wintered with Sacagawea and her son in 1805.

Curious about the man this child had become, I did what all great students of history do:  I Googled his name.

While crossing the continent to find the Pacific Ocean was a spectacular discovery, what I found was pretty neat as well.  Charbonneau spent about a dozen years rooting for gold at a sinister sounding place called Murderers Bar and clerking at an Auburn  hotel - both within a day’s walk of my suburban Placer County home. http://www.hmdb.org/marker.asp?MarkerID=44067

A favorite area walk has been following the grade of the old railroad past the confluence of the north and middle forks of the American River to the Mountain Quarries limestone quarry. 

Along the route, the Mountain Quarries Railroad Bridge, built in 1911, was the longest concrete railroad bridge in the world at the time. 

A mere half-mile beyond, the USGS has located Murderer’s Bar.  The pin is on the south side of the Middle Fork. What may be a rather conflated story about an incident at Murderer’s Bar - perhaps prompting its place name - is shared by the Seaside (OR) Historical Society Museum http://seasidemuseum.org/murdersbar.cfm. Locals share that Charbonneau may have established a hostelry or way station here with, perhaps, James Beckwourth. 

Hiking past the quarry and scrambling through thickets and over boulders, a concrete post (probably from the quarrying era) is found here…

...and a bedspring (perhaps from the hostelry?) there…

...but not a lot of flat ground for any type of establishment.  Perhaps it is lost to the slagheap from the limestone quarry. 

Still, I can’t shake the feeling that I am walking in Pomp’s footsteps.  I go home happy.

Months later, I am exploring Mammoth Bar, a spot on the north side of the Middle Fork. 

Annotated photo. Click to enlarge. 

Located in the Auburn State Recreation Area, several old trails and roads once frequented by miners, foresters, squatters and those just passing through are now enjoyed by mountain bikers, equestrians and hikers.  They are well marked. 

Halfway down the paved stretch to Mammoth Bar is a sign indicates a trail leads to Murderers Bar.

The several hundred yard walk is much easier – no thickets or boulders - leading to a sweeping, gradual slope on the depositional side of the river's curve, much more suitable for building a rustic townsite.

A survey of the lay of the land just a few feet about river level indicated crude foundations and a bit of land leveling may have taken place a century or more ago.

Rusted detritus from those earlier days protrude from rocks along the river’s edge. 

The Middle Fork provides a springtime soundtrack is quite pleasant.  The pooling water, on a warmer day – and there are many quite-a-bit warmer days in summer – invites a swim.  Fishing trails lead both up and down stream until blocked by rocky bluffs.

Not a bad place for Pomp to reside for a while, pan for color and help out his fellow Argonauts.  

I clocked the distance from Murderers Bar to home.  Eighteen miles and change. 

On that journey home, the grade-school boy in me realized: I’d hung out where Jean Baptiste Charbonneau had hung out.  I’d walked where he’d walked.  I was only, like, two or three degrees of separation from him, from Lewis and Clark and another degree from Thomas Jefferson!

Then I did something no legitimate seeker of truth might do.  I checked Wikipedia.  Here I discovered that “Charbonneau lived at a site known as Secret Ravine, one of 12 ravines around Auburn.”  Secret Ravine runs just behind our house.

Well hell!  I think.  I probably cross Pompy's footsteps just gettin' to the mailbox.

o0o

Additional Resources: 

The previous Church of the Open Road entry about Pomp Charbonneau may be found here: http://thechurchoftheopenroad.blogspot.com/2013/05/pomps-circumstance-locating-jean.html

About the life of Pomp Charbonneau and some folk’s belief about his impact on Oregon history, please see: http://www.offbeatoregon.com/o1107d-life-of-sacagaweas-mountain-man-son-charbonneau-tantalizing-mystery.html

Under the heading “Who was Jean Baptiste Charbonneau?” the lewisandclark.com omit specific mention of his time in California’s Gold Country or his life on the American River: http://www.lewisandclark.com/facts/factspompy.html

Thankfully, the Placer County Historical Society fills in some gaps with this: http://www.placercountyhistoricalsociety.org/histories.htm
(Note: To navigate the PCHS site, in the left hand column, you'll need to click on the word "Charbonneau.")

Auburn State Recreation Area Trail Information: http://www.parks.ca.gov/?page_id=1345

© 2015

Church of the Open Road Press

CLEMENTINE

The sound was of the breeze blowing through bare winter trees – only much louder.  Like a huge, distant orchestra shrouded by a curtain of canyon wall, warming for a performance.  Blended notes.

Canyon wall, to be sure.  I was perched on a paved strip half way up and half way down.  Motorcycle cooling behind me. 

Over the edge I peered. 

The symphony was of water cascading over an ancient, gray concrete dam barricading the American River.  Built to halt debris from upstream mining or timber operations, but halting, momentarily, the river itself.  Rivers are only halted momentarily, if at all. 

Mist from this crashing water wafted up the canyon side and rested on the clear plastic face shield of my black Arai helmet.  I opened it.  Droplets, fresh and pure, coated my face and beard.

In washed the smell of the duff wetted in last night’s rainstorm.  Breathe deeply.

Standing in a nearly vertical shaft of sunlight – the only degree from which sunlight would ever strike this winter canyon ground, viewing the water thundering over the dam, smelling the history of last night’s storm and the history of this place:  Wherever I’ve just ridden is my favorite place to be.

 

© 2003

Church of the Open Road Press

DOG GONE!

The Auburn State Recreation Area boasts a complicated web of trails scored into the rocky canyon that, at one time, would be inundated by the Auburn Dam.  The Stagecoach Trail leaves the ridge top near Russell Road splitting about two-tenths of a mile into an upper and lower Stagecoach.   

We typically take the upper for a distance, then, break down into the canyon on a series of marked deer paths and dry stream courses, twisting along the wall of the North Fork to the abutment of the Foresthill Bridge, then link up with Lower Stagecoach for a steady climb back to the top.

For the past two years, a restoration of the 730-foot high Foresthill Bridge finds hikers, when rounding a final bend down by the river, nearly deafened by a cacophony metallic sounds – hammering, sawing, pinging – the soundtrack of engineering moving from paper to product.   

Music to some, but to Jax-the-Dog, our 12-year-old Aussie mix, this is yet one more example of something that’s somehow out to get her.  (Her list includes thunder, the cat, cars passing on the street, and my utterances when this computer malfunctions.)

Off-leash, because I’d forgotten this detail this day, I turned to whistle her near as I rounded the bend, but she was nowhere to be found.  My mind flashed on the Cowardly Lion’s response when first encountering the Wonderful Wizard of Oz.  

Brother Tim and I immediately started one of those search and rescue operations often televised on the Weather Channel – although there was no category 5 hurricane in the canyon this day – wading through tickets of poison oak and ducking under unbending stickery oak branches and past abandoned homeless encampments.

After forty minutes, we had to call off the search.  We'd be losing daylight in about six hours.  A mile-and-a-half from the parking area, our best hope was that someone would find her, discover she was chipped, we’d get a call and all would be well.

Still, on our return, Tim took an uncharted high route and I retraced our steps, calling “Jax! Jaxie!” every ten to fifteen seconds or so.

Halfway back through the maze of trails and brush, my call returned three sharp reports.  Across the draw, on an open spot of the trail, the black and white Aussie had stopped, recognized something through her aging ears or glassy eyes and came racing my way.

I bent down to offer a welcome rub of her ears and she licked me with a too-familiar fetid tongue but, this time, I didn’t pull away.  Clipping her leash I told her how she’d damned near broke my heart and how it would be broke again when I had to tell her mom and how, most of all – another of her nemesii – Edward-the-Lab-Mix’s heart would be broke for having lost his favorite chase-n-chew toy.  In fact, I talked gently with her all the way back up the trail, pausing occasionally to run my fingers through her fur and scratch her neck. 

Once back in the pickup, her time-honed malodorous breath filled the cabin and I sorta wished I’da left her on the trail.

© 2013

Church of the Open Road Press

Christmas in the Gold Country

If I’m lucky enough to break away in December, I usually find myself exploring a dirt road into or out of a deep river canyon somewhere east of the money vortex that is Roseville. I like to get away from the freeways and the neighborhoods and the shopping outlets, and imagine a simpler time.

On a December ride, typically, I’ll pull through an old town site or homestead that had a rather finite history. Remains will be a silvered-wood, clapboard building, long devoid of whitewash; or a brick chimney left standing after the house burned; or a sprawling web of non-native green-leafed Vinca Minor crawling over a brick or rock foundation, vines that in the spring will yield delicate periwinkle blossoms in this decidedly rugged and non-delicate place. Or a piece of rusted corrugated tin. Or an ancient apple tree with broken, worm-holed bark.

I’ll sit myself on that foundation, finger the vine and think about the yesteryears. The days before Feliz Navidad came on the Safeway sound system right after Halloween; the days before retail success was based on only one month’s worth of activity; the “good ol’ days” when Black Friday related to the plague or some such disaster. I’ll wonder about the busted miner who gave up his gold pan and planted the apple tree so’s he could provide for the wife he’d promised he’d come back for when he wuz rich. And about the schoolboy or schoolgirl who must have lived in the house that was supported by this foundation – walking seven miles to school (uphill both ways) in the snow. I’ll wonder about the difference between a good year and a bad year. And then I wonder about Christmas.

In 1823, Clement Clarke Moore anonymously penned “A Visit from St. Nicolas.” In 1848, gold was discovered in the California foothills. By the mid 1850s, any flat or meadow with access to water had a town. During the 60s, the gold played out and the folks that stayed, set to farmin’. In 1897, the New York Sun confirmed that there was, indeed a Santa. In the 1930s, Haddon Sundblom helped Coca Cola show us what he looked like and, in 1947, we found out he worked for Macy’s.

But not out here. I wrap my finger around a strand of Vinca and wonder, “Did Santa visit out here? Back then? Did the kids know about or believe in him? And if there were no Wal-Mart, no K-Mart, no local mall, QVC or on-line shopping, how would the kids ever know that there was a Santa to believe in?”

Of course, the miner-turned-farmer and his gingham-clad wife and neighbors in this section were resourceful people. With some scraps of fabric, a corncob or a carefully dried apple or some good time spent whittlin’; with some penny candy spirited home recently from the general mercantile in town; with a Christmas eve feast of wild turkey (the game bird, not the whisky), dried venison, something from the root cellar, and a pie made of the apples from that tree; with stories of wonder told by candlelight until the sandman pushed shut the eyes of the little ones – Christmas would delight all and Santa Claus would live through this generation and be passed on to the next.

I saddle up and begin the climb out of the canyon, starting the journey home from yesterday and wonder this final thought: “If there were no Wal-Mart, no K-Mart, no local mall, QVC, or on-line shopping, would we have a Christmas?”

I drive home just wishin’ I’da lernt me how to whittle.

© 2009
Church of the Open Road Press