Discussion Topic |
|
This thread has been locked |
Bad Climber
Trad climber
The Lawless Border Regions
|
|
|
Jul 19, 2016 - 06:59am PT
|
Great photo, Blue. I can just make out Donini putting up an FA on Traveler's Buttress. Look really closely.
BAd
|
|
Gregory Crouch
Social climber
Walnut Creek, California
|
|
|
Topic Author's Reply - Jul 19, 2016 - 07:57am PT
|
I can just make out Donini putting up an FA on Traveler's Buttress. Look really closely.
With a horsehair rope.
Somebody also mentioned the lack of trees. You'll notice that in lots of Gold Rush Era paintings and photography. They logged the heck out of the western slope, yes, and even more the eastern slope and the Tahoe Basin during the Comstock heydays, but I had this conversation via email with our own Tom Lambert a few months ago... the forests on the Western slope were exponentially less dense in those days due to the regular passage of fire, pre-suppression. (As a Yosemite West resident, he's got more than a passing interest in future forest fires.) I can't find our thread, but I think the figures he cited was a pre-1850 average stem count of about 40-60 trees per acre whereas now it's often over 400 per acre. The old forest would burn much more regularly, and also not as hot, that lower density allowing the passage of a "cooler" ground-level fire that didn't climb to the crowns of the trees and cause the "Dresden-style" forest fire we have so often in modern times.
Also, Ed H: From your post are we to conclude that the name is much more modern? That makes it sound like "Lovers Leap" probably wasn't in use during the 19th century. Or only a local usage?
I like the "Lovers Leap" story posted above, but I don't see anything linking it to "our" Lovers Leap. (Interesting to see the bit directly below it about female suffrage. A hot topic in those days.) Also, about the state of the road that is now the PITA Pony Express Trail--it was maintained. I think it was a toll road to begin with, and then received state funds for maintenance, which would explain its excellent condition.
VERY quickly after the discovery of the Comstock Lode (6/1859), Virginia City/Gold Hill grew into the largest urban & industrial concentration between Sacramento and Salt Lake City (and arguably San Francisco and Saint Louis, depending on how you categorize Sacramento and Salt Lake, since neither was industrial), and that road was the most important link between VC/GH and California. It saw a huge volume of traffic until the transcontinental railroad advanced as far as Cisco, which made the route via Donner Pass and N. Lake Tahoe faster. (I think that happened about 1867.) And once the RR reached Reno, traffic came via that settlement, which was originally known as Truckee Meadows.
|
|
micronut
Trad climber
Fresno/Clovis, ca
|
|
|
Jul 19, 2016 - 08:34am PT
|
Enjoying this thread. I too have an affinity for the written word of the last century. I've been trying to give my children an appreciation for outdated lexicon by "bringing back" a few of my favorites.
I often use "thusly" and "alas" with my wife and kids. They seem to dig it.
(When changing my son's dirtbike oil last night) "Here, gimme that crescent wrench....you gotta get under the oilpan and turn that bolt thusly."
(Also last night when my wife passed the plate of porkchops around the dinner table and I got the skinny burnt one) "Alas....Father will find himself hungry after dinner yet again, kids."
|
|
Gregory Crouch
Social climber
Walnut Creek, California
|
|
|
Topic Author's Reply - Jul 19, 2016 - 09:17am PT
|
^^^ Sherman is high on my list of admired Americans.
Did you know he was an Army lieutenant in California in 1848 and that he was a member of the small expedition that roamed through a portion of the Sierra foothills and sent the official confirmation of the gold discovery back east? And that he spent a good portion of the 1850s in California and was a banker in San Francisco?
|
|
Gregory Crouch
Social climber
Walnut Creek, California
|
|
|
Topic Author's Reply - Jul 19, 2016 - 09:40am PT
|
That was a well-executed campaign. The big four: Sherman, Thomas, Sheridan, Grant.
|
|
Gregory Crouch
Social climber
Walnut Creek, California
|
|
|
Topic Author's Reply - Jul 19, 2016 - 10:10am PT
|
I just read McPherson's Battle Cry of Freedom, and he makes the case that even more important than any actual economic damage done by the March-to-the-Sea was the clear demonstration that the South couldn't do anything to prevent a Federal Army from wandering around in the southern heartland. It was the perfect demonstration that the war was lost.
|
|
Wayno
Big Wall climber
Seattle, WA
|
|
|
Jul 19, 2016 - 11:03am PT
|
Has anyone checked OED or other resources for the first use of Lover's Leap as a place-name? I tried OED online but I don't have a subscription to use their search engines. I tried some other stuff for about ten minutes and did come up with this little tidbit:
http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?term=elope
|
|
micronut
Trad climber
Fresno/Clovis, ca
|
|
|
Jul 19, 2016 - 11:43am PT
|
I went to The Medical College of Georgia for 7 years, and during my time there learned so much about the Civil War that I never knew existed beyond the six pages allotted to it in the Californicated history books of my youth. That war was a historical afterthought in my education really. Not so for the young southern student. They get years of it, and it seeps into dinner table and schoolyard life as a kid growing up there. Still a big part of who you are as a southerner for many.
Amazing how deeply the fiber of the "war of northern aggression" is knitted into many a modern day southerner's fabric of life. Many of my personal friends from the Atlanta area still see Sherman as a Hitler type character in History. His burning of Atlanta and that whole campaign is like a boogeyman story to young southern kids today. They hate that guy. Still to this day. And to think we here on the West Coast name our big trees and campgrounds after him. An interesting concept to mull over eh?
|
|
Edge
Trad climber
Betwixt and Between Nederland & Boulder, CO
|
|
|
Jul 19, 2016 - 09:55pm PT
|
Some interesting tidbits here, with references that may have greater detail.
http://www.dougstepsout.com/2013/12/17/american-river-canyon-part-6-kyburz-to-lovers-leap/
Strawberry Valley House was very important stop along the Placerville-Carson Road. A traveler in the spring of 1861 gave us the following description: “in a long, narrow plain hemmed in by bare mountains of granite…is a commodious hotel, where I dined”.
The hotel was built near Lover’s Leap in 1856 by Swift and Watson. In 1859 the owners were Irad Fuller Berry and George W. Swan, who not only ran the hotel but worked tirelessly on improving their portion of the toll road.
It became a remount station for the Pony Express on April 4, 1860, when division superintendent Bolivar Roberts waited with a string of mules to help Pony rider Warren Upson through the snowstorm on the summit.
There is a plaque on the north side of the highway designating Strawberry Valley House as a California State Historic Landmark (#707).
How the valley got its name has been a constant argument since the 1850s. Some say owner Berry stuffed the guest’s pillows and mattresses with straw rather than goose down, which resulted in them calling out derisively: “Do you have any more straw, Berry?”
|
|
originalpmac
Mountain climber
Anywhere I like
|
|
|
Jul 20, 2016 - 02:05am PT
|
Really cool thread, Mr. Crouch. Great bits of history. I recently moved to the area, never have much time to climb anymore, but I ride a motorcycle past Sugarloaf and Lovers Leap often enough. Love the area. Kyburz is beautiful. Any idea on the origin of that name?
Couple of things I would like to throw into the conversation, though drifting here...
Micronut: Love the use of somewhat 'archaic' words, bringing the vocabulary to the young generation. Bit of a thread drift, but language, music and art I feel is what makes us human, separates us from the animals so to speak. This day and age, vocabulary is going down the tubes, so good on you for trying to instill an appreciation of it with your kids.
Crouch and Micronut: Interesting how Sherman made it into the conversation. I grew up in rural VA, (it's part of the south, despite what some damned yankees may say :-) ) the War of Nawthern aggression, as it is pronounced colloquially is way more discussed down there than the west, for sure. Interesting how it is viewed from people not from the south. I don't hate Sherman as many in the south do, but I do joke about it all the time.
Like Sherman through Georgia, or You know who through you know where.
in example; When I was a bartender in my mid twenties in Ouray, I was plowing through women like you know who through you know where. Not much to brag about if you have ever spent anytime there.
Anyway, thanks for the history. Apologies for the thread drift.
|
|
Gregory Crouch
Social climber
Walnut Creek, California
|
|
|
Topic Author's Reply - Jul 20, 2016 - 08:05am PT
|
OriginalPmac: I was wondering about Kyburz, too. I have NOT seen that name used in any of the stuff 1850-1880 I've been reading.
I'll reread J. Ross Browne's "A Peep At Washoe" in the next few days (written in the spring of 1860), but I don't recall any direct mention of Lovers Leap when I last read it. Strawberry Valley and Station gets a scene, if I remember.
I'll link to it at archive.org, which is a phenomenal resource if you're interested in stuff in the public domain. (Pre 1922, or thereabouts.)
The road to Strawberry Flat descriptions start on Page 10 and continue into the next article. (It was a serial.)
Most books and magazine articles pre-1922 can be found there if you're patient and creative with your search terms and don't take no for an answer until you find what you want.
The map above gives us a 1891 start date. Great find, that.
When i was in the Army, I visited a lot of the Civil War battlefields within easy driving distance of Fort Benning. Especially if they happened to be close to climbing areas. Or in them. Love that stuff. But I'm not a Lost Cause lover. Not by any means. I think there has been tons of historical distortion of what was being fought for and why, and if you dig at root causes, it's hard to think it was one worth fighting for.
The two best places in the country to have been during the Civil War were likely San Francisco and Virginia City. About as far from Petersburg as possible.
|
|
Gregory Crouch
Social climber
Walnut Creek, California
|
|
|
Topic Author's Reply - Jul 20, 2016 - 08:16am PT
|
BTW, to my mind, by far the most historically significant event to pass before Strawberry Station was not the Rush to Washoe or the Pony Express, but that which displaced it--the transcontinental telegraph line, which went into operation in 1861. The Pony Express ceased operation that very week.
|
|
Gregory Crouch
Social climber
Walnut Creek, California
|
|
|
Topic Author's Reply - Jul 20, 2016 - 08:27am PT
|
Edge, nice link. I don't know if there's any connection, but San Francisco had a famous "What Cheer House" saloon that I suspect was a fabulously lucrative business. I wonder if they were franchising?
I read fabulous newspaper descriptions of the city-wide celebration of the transatlantic telegraph line (1858) that SF sponsored. HUGE parade. Several wagon-loads of inebriates from the What Cheer House rolled through the city as part of the parade. Dozens and dozens of city businesses entered wagons (what we would today call "floats), and the most popular ones were those of the city's breweries, who "liberally distributed" their libations to the multitudes assembled to view the parade. Unsurprisingly, the state politicians followed directly behind the brewers.
|
|
Ed Hartouni
Trad climber
Livermore, CA
|
|
|
Jul 20, 2016 - 09:24am PT
|
I find the amount of detail in those early USGS Quads astounding, one wonders how much was "inference."
But the fact that producing those quads takes quite a bit of time, the place names that appeared on them must have been known for years before the quad's release...
there is a map in the Library of Congress of El Dorado County dating back to the same period, leading me to believe that a concerted, coordinated effort to map the various regions was underway in that closing decade of the 19th century.
here is a Rand-McNally map from 1881 that shows Sugarloaf and Strawberry, which fell off their later maps displaced by more prominent locals...
...but in the rush to get maps of the area out, I'm sure the map makers succumbed to the representations of a small number of acquaintances for their geographical information.
|
|
micronut
Trad climber
Fresno/Clovis, ca
|
|
|
Jul 20, 2016 - 11:55am PT
|
Originalpmac funny anecdote about Sherman. Digging this conversation....
---SUGARLOAF
A sugarloaf was the usual form in which refined sugar was produced and sold until the late 19th century, when granulated and cube sugars were introduced. A tall cone with a rounded top was the end-product of a process that saw the dark molasses-rich raw sugar, which was imported from sugar cane growing regions such as the Caribbean and Brazil, refined into white sugar.[1
|
|
Gregory Crouch
Social climber
Walnut Creek, California
|
|
|
Topic Author's Reply - Jul 20, 2016 - 01:32pm PT
|
^^^^ Nah, that's just a Grand Illusion...
|
|
BLUEBLOCR
Social climber
joshua tree
|
|
|
Jul 20, 2016 - 04:37pm PT
|
how come nobody put up a pic yet?
everyone's climbed there; lewis and clark, daniel boone, kit carson, ben and lil'joe carson, wendal robie, luke skywalker, petch, warren harding, geneva, ed hartuni, tony yaniro, beth rodden, tad, royal robbins, aiden, blueblocr, and everyone else.
the place is iconically SWEET!
|
|
|
SuperTopo on the Web
|
Let us know!