Mike Kochis shares family roots in Grass Valley/Nevada County (back to 1868) and describes local mining heritage (Empire Mine, Idaho Maryland Mine, North Star Mine), nearby factories (Central Shaft), and Cornish miners; mentions a great-grandfather who was a safety engineer and mine connections that reached the North Star. Recollections of growing up before the freeway, fishing and playing in town, and visiting Olympia Park/Lake Olympia; a story about the Nevada County Narrow Gauge Railroad and the first paying passenger in their family history. Details about old rail infrastructure and schooling geography: a railroad yard on Bennett Street/Union Hill station, and a path through Belle Hill and Hennessy; notes on building a new school in seventh grade, with dirt fields and outdoor graduation rituals. Reflections on education and career: the nickname "School of the Bombers," a donated bomb in the gym, attending Nevada Union High School (class of 1973), then Sierra College and Sacramento State, leading to a teaching career and Little League coaching; mentions hydraulic mining sites like Malakoff, Scott's Flat, and Empire Mine, plus NID canals and swimming at Jones Bar. Additional memories of community culture: the Independence Trail ditch, Jones Bar as a swimming spot, a cable-cart crossing, a benign injury story, references to the 1968–69 first-day student packet with uniforms and no-weapons rules, the Lyman Gilmore plane legend, Grass Valley's first yearbook, and humorous pranks by Union Hill teachers (hair dye, skeleton hunt).

Full Transcript of the Video:

Well, good afternoon.

This is an oral history interview.

We're the Nevada County Historical
Landmarks Commission, and I want to really thank my coaches for being here today.

My
name is Chex Samaica.

I'm a commissioner with the Landmarks Commission, and it's our
function to try to preserve history for present and future generations.

And Mike was kind enough
to volunteer to be interviewed today because he's lived in Nevada County for many years,
and as I understand it, your mother and father and other relatives have lived here for quite a
while themselves.

Right.

My first relatives came here in 1868.

That is interesting.

Very
interesting.

I'm the first generation to go to college.

Everybody else worked down here.

So we're, if I have, I'd like to ask you this, what mines were those people working at the time?
The Empire Mine.

A lot of them were in that.

The Idaho Maryland Mine, and the North Star Mine.

The factories went out there called the Central Shound, and they worked in that.

And they were all pretty successful.

They were Cornish miners from Cornwall.

My great-grandfather
was a safety engineer at the Empire Mine, and the Empire and the North Star connected underground.

So by the 1950s, he would go down the Empire Mine and come out the North Star Mine on the other
side of town.

So I've heard there were a lot of mine shafts in the vicinity of Grass Valley.

There are.

They're all over the place.

Miles, is that correct? Miles, yes.

In fact,
the bottom of the Empire Mine as it goes down is at Empire Market, way down.

Can you tell me what it was like to grow up as a young man here in Grass Valley?
It was great.

I lived right in town.

So Wolf Creek, before the freeway, was built, ran through
town, and so we could go down there and fish right by Hennessey School and catch trout.

And I played at the Empire Mine because it was in my backyard, and you knew everybody.

It was wonderful.

There weren't any problems.

Just had to be home by dinner time.

Well, then what kind of sports did you guys do? You say you played, so I guess basketball or something?
I lived here in town, so I was at the park or the kids in the neighborhood, or we played at Hennessey
School.

So we spent a lot of time playing baseball and basketball and swimming and maybe some tennis.

They didn't have soccer and all that, like they do now.

I see.

You know, new to the area myself, I've heard of a place called Olympia Park or Lake Olympia,
and was that around when you were a youngster? That was supposed to be out in the northern part
of Grass Valley? Yeah, it was out where longs and staples and that area is.

In fact, you can still
see remnants of it today, and there's some little cabins up on the hill that are going to be torn
down.

Those were cabins, and there used to be a giant racetrack out there.

This is all before my time,
but my parents remember going out there swimming, and then Nevada County Narrow Gauge used to come
from Colfax to Nevada City, and that was one of their stops out there, so they would have excursion
trains and everything.

And one story on that, when the Nevada County Narrow Gauge was made in,
what, 1890? 1880 something? Something like that.

My great-great-grandmother was the first paying
passenger on it.

Oh, that's amazing.

Yeah, she bought the first ticket, and so I've got an article
from the newspaper describing that.

You have the ticket? I do not have the ticket where she did.

So, and it was interesting too, that was the dividing line, so when my father
in Grass Valley and mother, you didn't associate with people from Nevada City,
so that was like the no man's zone out there.

Between both towns? Between both towns.

I could
see that.

Yeah.

I could see that.

So the train went on from where? From there.

Continue to Nevada
City, I see.

Oh, yeah, it's topped up by the Chevron station up there, and then we turn around
and come back, and then the other station is on Bennett Street, which is the remnants of the old
railroad yard.

Bennett Street, right here at Grass Valley.

Right.

And then I guess it must have had
a series of stops on its way back to Kofaks.

It did.

Yeah.

Pairdale, there was Union Hill,
and Union Hill, where Union Hill School is, that's not Union Hill.

What is it? No, the actual Union
Hill is out where Greenhorn and Brunswick and Bennett Street meet.

I see.

Out there where the
big cement shaft is.

In fact, that was the Union Hill train station out there.

In fact, Bennett
Street used to be called Union Hill.

Well, Mike, tell me what elementary school you went to.

What
was your first kindergarten class? Well, I went to Belle Hill.

So that started that in 1960,
and I went from kindergarten to second grade over there.

And then I went over to Hennessy,
and we were third through seventh grade there.

And in seventh grade, they started building
my mongola.

So I came here for eighth grade, first year.

So we got to open this school.

Oh, so the eighth grade class was the first class here.

Well, they had the other classes.

Eighth grade, it was in this wing.

Seventh grade down below, and then sixth grade was on the other
side.

So it was the sixth, seventh, and eighth grade school.

Six seventh and eighth.

And the field
was dirt.

We'd have to walk to Condon Park for PE and walk back.

It's interesting seeing the lockers
over there.

The lockers they gave us were in the breezeway.

Well, when a storm would come, it would
come this way.

And my locker was on the outside, so it would get trenched, soaking.

So you had
extra clothes all the time on a rainy day.

Did you have locks or something like that? Yeah,
they had locks on them.

So you didn't have to worry about anybody taking your stuff anyway.

So where did you actually graduate from? The auditorium or something? No, we had it right
out on the block top.

We were the ones that named the School of the Bombers.

Ah, yeah,
because of Lyman Gilmore, the pilot.

And we had some connections with Beale Air Force Base and
somebody gave us an actual bomb of this tall.

And we hung it from the ceiling in the gym.

Is that here anymore? I don't know.

I have no idea.

They haven't changed their name.

I don't think so.

Okay, well, so you graduated,
and then you went on where to high school? To Nevada Union.

I graduated in 1973, went on to
Sierra College and went on to Sacramento State and got into my career.

And your career was teaching
on the kid girl? It was, yeah.

I taught my coach Little League and then it was fun and just kind
of fell into teaching because other things were not my forte.

I see.

Well, we've heard a lot
about the mines of this area, but what we don't hear much about are the hydraulic mines that used
to be in the area.

We always hear about the hard rock mines.

Did you know anybody that was associated
with the hydraulic mining or any information at all about that? I did not.

Not until later on
and about exploring did I find hydraulic places and stuff.

Where was one of the first hydraulic
mines located in Nevada County that you were aware of? Well, Malakoff was always fun.

Learning about
Scott's flat reservoir up there when they had hydraulic and then the backside of the Empire Mine
and there was some hydraulic that went on there.

Those are the biggest ones.

I got to explore quite
a bit of Nevada County.

My father loved to deer hunt.

We weren't successful deer hunters, but we
saw a lot of country hiking.

We would walk the NID canals, which is now the, what's the trail?
Oh, the Gracie Ditch? The Gracie Ditch and the Handicap Trail.

Well, the Handicap Trail, that's the Independence Trail.

The Independence Trail,
here it was all wood flume.

At least for hours up there.

Yeah, the Independence Trail is a few
miles long.

It goes both west and east, I think, of Highway 49 today.

Yeah.

I learned to swim at
Jones Bar.

Oh, you did? We used to go down there all the time.

I've heard Jones Bar used to have
what they called a way to get from one side to the other on a mining cart or something.

It went
across the pond.

They had a cable that was stretched and it had two pulleys and one person could get
in it and work the pulley to do it.

Oh, so it wasn't powered.

You had to work yourself across.

Yeah, and I remember one time my great aunt got her finger cut.

Oh.

Yeah, that was a way to get
across the river and that was in the 60s.

Yeah, from what I understand, the Independence Trail
was the Excelsior Ditch of its day and it was one of the largest, longest,
uh, many miles, over 20 miles long, all the way from upstream of 49 crossing down to Smartsville
for hydraulic mines.

There was a bunch of hydraulic mines probably down in that area.

Yeah, all over the place as we find them now.

Yeah, yeah.

So, uh, when you were here at
Lyman Gilmore, did you play sports? I did.

We had a basketball team.

It was seventh and eighth graders in the same team, so they had an A team and a B team,
and they had a flight football team.

That was about it.

You know, and if you wanted to play
baseball, you had to sign it for a little bit.

They didn't have a girls team.

Well, what did
the girls do here at Lyman Gilmore for sports? Watch the boys play.

I assume you're serious.

I am serious.

They didn't have girls sports.

They were cheerleaders or they were nothing.

Times change.

Times do change.

That's right.

Um, that's interesting.

Talking to you.

You want to
show something here? Yeah, let me show you this.

This is, uh, this is the first day packet
that your parents got, and they had rules and everything in it.

So, every student got this.

Yeah, paper.

So, uh, now that says what year is it? This is 1968.

So, it was 68 and 69.

This is
height of the Vietnam War, too.

That's right.

So, a lot of my friends had brothers that were
off in war and stuff.

So, uh, pretty interesting that, uh, some of the rules says that each student
must cooperate with the wishes of any teacher or aide, and they must refer to them as miss, misses.

And that's how you talk to teachers this.

Yeah.

Is that what you did? I bet I did.

Okay.

And same
rules apply today.

No knives, guns, bullets, cap pistols, water pistols, caps for cap guns.

I don't
think these guys know what a cap gun is.

Mike, I'm looking at your, I guess is your introductory
packet for each of the students, and I see something that looks like a submarine on the front there.

It says Lyman Gilmore and Gilmore in the bottom, and this object in the center.

What in heaven's
name is that? That's the, it's supposed to be a drawing of Lyman Gilmore's plane.

That's the plane.

Okay.

So, Lyman Gilmore supposedly flew before the white, white brothers did.

Now, can you tell me
how you know that? Just historical research and stuff, and, uh, okay, my, uh, I forget when he
passed away, but my mother remembers him seeing him around that he was, uh, scruffy and had a beard.

Him and his brother and they had a, uh, airport out here, and they would fly.

Interesting.

In fact,
one of the stories is they flew over town and clipped the top of a big redwood tree that stood for
many years down there in town.

Well, we had to place a monument.

Yeah.

A plaque there.

But what do
you have there? So this is the graduation program, um, 1969.

Not much in it, but less all the speakers
and stuff.

So that was what, 57 years ago? And then it's the yearbook.

I don't even know if the
school has the yearbook at this time.

Well, I had no idea.

We'll have to ask the students.

Yeah.

So
that's the yearbook.

That's the yearbook.

Very first one.

The very first yearbook.

Lyman Gilmore
Bonners, 1968, 1969, Grass Valley, California.

Oh, and there's photographs inside.

Oh, yeah,
lots of photographs.

And Mr. Vernon was the superintendent.

Mr. Vernon Bond.

Is that the
principal or? He was the superintendent of the Grass Valley School District.

Uh-huh.

Okay.

Well,
there's a lot to see there.

There's a lot of students.

How many students do you think in that
first year? Any idea? I think we had seven eighth grade classes.

So I don't know how many.

So I said
32 or something.

200 or some students.

Now I'd probably be quite a few more.

Well, then you went on after you came back to Nevada County.

You were a school teacher at
Union Hill.

And I thought I'd point out this.

This is my coaches.

And another fellow instructor
that they changed their hair color.

Now, why would you do something like that for the students at
Union Hill? Well, we like to have fun with our eighth graders.

So we would always make bets with
them.

And I think that was graduation too.

So if they could meet our demands or something,
we would dye our hair pink, or we would dye our hair blonde.

Well, I think it would have been fun
to go to your school, Mike.

It was fun.

He was a character.

He was a science teacher.

One time he
had a skeleton in his classroom.

So he was very protective of that skeleton on wheels.

So
it was the real thing.

So one of my eighth grade classes, we snuck in, we stole the skeleton,
and we took it and we hid it around the campus.

Well, that freaked the whole junior high out,
because now everybody had to find the skeleton.

Everybody ran out of every class.

And it didn't
matter who was teaching what, that skeleton all over the campus.

But everybody had a good time.

It was great.

Well, I want to thank you very much for your candid answers to my questions.

Sure.

Fantastic job.

Sometime I'd like you to come back and we can talk more.

Sure.

You guys are okay with you? Awesome.

Thank you very much, Mike.

Appreciate it.