This reminiscence traces Grass Valley and Nevada City from a hydraulic mining boom to a mid‑century, immigrant‑driven economy powered by transportation and electricity. It blends intimate family memories—births, social life at the Kidder Mansion, and frontier legends—with broader histories of a railroad network, road building, and PG&E's shift to supply power for the Bay Area. It highlights environmental and legal shifts (the Sawyer ruling), the move from hydraulic to hard‑rock mining, deforestation, and later oil, alongside diverse immigrant communities and local landmarks. The narrative ends with mid‑20th‑century changes—the 1960s freeway controversy, ongoing growth amid mining and lumber decline, and a culture rooted in service, farming and forest trades, dances, radio, and nostalgic links to Lake Olympia, the Empire Mine, and regional film/history references.

Full Transcript of the Video:

You
You
Fred Morgan and his wife Anne gave birth to my mother in
1913
It was during a snowstorm in grass Valley.

It was in January
The doctor was on his way on the trolley car which ran between grass Valley and Nevada City
The trolley got stuck in the heavy snow on Main Street Hill
My family at that time lived up on Linden Avenue
And the doctor had to walk up Main Street to get to the to the home by that time my grandmother had given birth to my mother
Jean Morgan Simmons
I think it was my my
My mother's grandparents ran the street car for a period of time and it ran out
East Main Street and down into the Brunswick Basin
And the turnaround spot was right right in that intersection where B&C lumber and the uber professional building is my mom's mom and dad
always went to Lake Olympia as my mom did as a young girl too back in those days and
they'd ride the
Trolley out and get off there and and had to walk in then to Lake Olympia, which probably was it was good
Half mile at least I guess in there off of that
And so they'd go out there and go dancing every Wednesday and Saturday night
so Broad Street used to freeze over in the winter and they also stops get at the very top of Broad Street and
Sled or skate all the way down to the bottom on the ice.

There was that much ice formed
They also used to have ice cream socials in the summer and they used to go on the trolley
Between Grass Valley and Nevada City to visit their friends and that was by the way
Was put in by the two guys that started PG&E to Saabla and Martin
The trolley car was electrified, you know, and they were really in into power
Every mine had a water pipe coming in that would run a pelton wheel like the Empire Mine
They had two huge pelton wheels that ran the hoist
they had another pelton wheel that ran the machine shop and
Then it was very shortly after that that
Electricity came in and they turned right around and used the pelton wheels to run
like the generators city gas electric company wasn't always PG&E
it was a gas company and it became a electrical company and then
They they combined to become PG&E corporation for a long time each mine kind of made his own electricity and then
a guy
Glass and I believe his name was
put in a
Power plant on Deer Creek.

Well every more people start using electricity and it couldn't handle it
So then they built the Rome powerhouse, you know, right out of Nevada City and the foothills of Nevada County
They found that it was ideal for hydroelectric power plants because the the steep gradient of the water and the way it was carried here by the
flume they actually
Ran wires clear to the Bay Area if you can imagine running a wire from here to the Bay Area
Of course, they needed the system that was already there
to sell their product and
Of course at that time in in San Francisco, there was a lot of systems
They were all all over San Francisco run by coal
but
It wasn't really efficient because they were always cutting each other's throat and one pipe ran alongside the other
Cutting their rates and they just decided, you know, you know, there's only one way to do this one company
We're standing here at the main entrance of the Nevada County narrow gauge depot and
This was the hub of transportation in Nevada County
Grass Valley and Nevada City never experienced a depression because of the prosperity of the gold mines
And so as a result you had lots of prominent citizens mining engineers entrepreneurs of all kinds
Entering these steps to go between Nevada City and the Transcontinental Railroad at Colfax
It was really a happening place
1874 they did charter the Nevada County narrow gauge railroad to be built from Colfax
To Grass Valley and then to Nevada City if you were coming hauling equipment from Auburn to Grass Valley
During the winter via wagon, you know depending on the weather it could take you maybe up to three days to get it here
You know because of the mud John Kitter was hired
By the Coleman brothers who owned mines here in town
To build the railroad this was after the main railroad was put in the Central Pacific
You know went over and met with the Union Pacific and so at Colfax
they they built a station there and
The narrow gauge railroad started there
All the mines were very important at this time and it came like between the Brunswick Mine and the Union Hill Mine and
then came over Cedar Crest and came on in Bennett Street wound in Bennett Street and
Got the Grass Valley and the main station there and then went on down the Creek Wolf Creek and
Went right on out to the Idaho Maryland Mine.

Well, the Idaho Maryland Mine was owned by the Coleman brothers
Kitter was a surveyor and had surveyed many railroads
he began buying up a lot of the railroad stock and
eventually had enough stock to become
president of the railroad itself and
he
Ran and operated the railroad until I would say about
1899
and whereas
He became ill and passed away
his wife Sarah Kitter took control of the railroad and
operated it very successfully until
1913
Well, we're here at the site of the famous Kitter mansion
This was not only the hub of the railroad operations from
1876 to 1912, but also the hub of Grass Valley in general.

This was the first modern mansion built in Grass Valley
John F.

Kitter already being extremely accomplished by the time he came to Grass Valley
he had been a
surveyor a state assemblyman for California he had engineered construction on numerous railroads before coming to
Grass Valley in 1875 to oversee the construction of the Nevada County narrow gauge
The the benefit for using a narrow gauge in this area is because of the the tight windy terrain
it's a lot cheaper to
make the cuts and
this was a
tremendous amount of work
That needed to be done to build this road
cutting through the foothills and
over rivers a
Lot of bridges and tunnels had to
Be built and so it was it was a big job, but it was done in two years
Well, where the dam is you can when you look to the left you see the dam for Rollins Lake
Just this side of that was where this big wooden bridge was constructed back in
like 1885 so the railroad
Could cross and hook up in Colfax, of course the railroad closed in
1940 with World War two and they needed the lumber of the metal and everything else
So the bridge was still there until 1968
6568 and
That's when they were going to put the dam up and create Rollins Lake
And it was going to be a big party
Everybody was invited out to watch the demolition dynamite at the bottom and halfway up and half way
That's the tall bridge
It was as tall and as high in the air as the top of the dam is now
They went out there and thousands of people gathered to watch this thing and they
five four three two one push the plunger and then the thing went
Settle back down
It couldn't even blow it up.

It was so well built
Sarah Kitter actually
During her tenure as president of the railroad provided returns and dividends on
The stocks being held by individuals whereas before when John was operating
The railroad most of it just stayed within the company.

So anyway
She also
Modernized the railroad in 1906
By 1906 most of the locomotives
save Nevada County engine number one had already been converted from
wood to oil
Right alongside Red Mountain just I don't know maybe a thousand feet downhill from it
There's what looks like a concrete pillbox that's built on the side of the hill
That was built back in the 1870s by the railroad
Because if they have a wildfire anywheres in that area it is going to destroy
Tens of thousands of acres possibly which they needed because this is where they found the wood
To be able to throw in the boilers on the trains.

These were all steam power trains.

We didn't have electric trains
We didn't have diesel trains.

They didn't ever use gasoline at least not around here
But they did use steam and there's only one way to fire that steam up and that's to burn the wood
So they to harvest this stuff.

So they built this lookout so they could you know
Muster up a fire crew in the event that they saw smoke and I've been up there so many times
You can see from miles to the west and miles to the almost all the way to Donner Summit
What what had happened, you know in in mining
Around 1880 is they ran out of wood
Everybody was heating with wood
Building with wood cooking with wood the mines used huge amounts of wood for timbering and
Building their buildings and they just ran out of wood
We look around now and there there's trees everywhere, but at that if you look at photographs
It was pretty much denuded
You know the timber being used for the mining efforts in building homes along the Nevada County air gauge right away
They used the wood for fuel it came to a point where they can had to convert over to oil
As a primary source of fuel for a long time the Kidder mansion sat at the corner of Bennett and
I guess 49 now
and it was a derelict it was a
Destroyed house, but its majesty was still evident when you drove by it was beautiful Victorian house.

I think she passed away in
1915 or 16 and it became a boarding house and a halfway house
I'm pretty soon.

It was just vagrants were living in it and there really wasn't any way of
Fixing it so it was still magnificent, but it was too sad that it just had to go.

I
Have somewhere in my business I took
probably a piece of
wallpaper
It was leather
pressed
embossed leather on the walls
Think about the cost of wallpaper that's leather and I'm talking wherever there's a flower on that wallpaper was embossed
I mean it was three-dimensional.

I mean it's classic, you know the golden era
We got more money than we need and we're gonna show it off type situations and it was a beautiful home
I would have loved to have seen it in that say day
The Nevada County Nairgage hauled a lot of gold out of Nevada County and
And then it was transferred in Colfax and then down to San Francisco
The hydraulic miners were extremely filthy rich in a short period of time
It's the cheapest way to extract gold hence
They were kidders biggest clients
They were spending lots of money with him to transport their gold
over to Colfax and of course in the late 1800s
Hydraulic mining was banned, you know by the Supreme Court
Thank goodness because it was just silting in all the rivers and Delta and everything it was just a
Not a very good way to extract gold.

It was not efficient and it was just so polluting
1884 Sawyer, Judge Sawyer ruled that hydraulic mining had to cease.

It was destroying the environment
So when Sawyer handed down his decision the miners
had to be served physically served by federal agents and the rumor was that Kidder
had a secret
compartment in
His house in which he hid them
So if you can't be served don't have to turn off your hose
That was called the Sawyer decision and it was a very important decision that
that put more focus back on the hard rock mines in Grass Valley, Nevada City and
Really curbed all the hydraulic mining
Finally this Kidder mansion was being torn down.

Somebody had bought it and they were going to build apartments there
But I got a chance to go while they were dismantling it to go up and take pictures and that kind of stuff for the paper
And I'll be darned if they hadn't taken off the third floor and they were down to the kitchen and right below where the kitchen table
Would have been was the chasm that was probably three feet deep.

It was about four feet wide and eight feet where
Obviously
Somebody could have hid under that floor.

I'm convinced.

That's where they were hiding.

That's my story
I love that story and I want to stick to it.

It was a it was a
Flourishing mine for a while the alpha and the omega diggings are still visible when you're traveling highway 20
There's a rest stop that state put in a number of years back and the Landmarks Commission put a
landmark
marker up there and
Shows where the diggings were and if you stand on the edge of the
Parking lot of that rest stop you can look down in and you can see this massive area that was
Hydraulic out Marysville, which is basically 16 feet below the ground level
Most of what Marysville is today is wash out of the mountains from the hydraulic mining
More flat is about well is dead north of Nevada City
If you take a Tyler foot road and you head out toward Graniteville
It's pretty close to Graniteville all the topsoil was taken away with the hydraulic mining and the level of the town went down
They moved the town three times which meant that all the buildings had to be taken down
Which they did in those days they just took down the clapboard put it on the back of a cart and rolled it away
Where's flat was a small little town, but it once again was like a lot of the mining towns
They've flourished for a while and as soon as the gold ran out
It was gone.

It was a complete town with streets and add
Buildings there was hotels.

There was bars.

There were
Habadash trees and clothing stores general clothing or general stores and just a number of different things
Well more flat is a place that most people have not heard of
You know people have heard that there was a town called red dog and there was a town called you bet
And but most people have not heard of Moore's flat, but there's a funny little twist to Moore's flat
They had people that lived there, and they also had people that died there when they buried these people
They found a few years later, and it was 1858
That there was gold under the coffins that they buried there
so they exhumed a hundred forty five bodies and moved the cemetery to a new location and
Then they mined out the tertiary riverbed that was in there that gave them the gold and as soon as the gold was gone
Everybody was gone
There's so many different areas that are called flats, and that's because that you know
They would settle along Creekfront's and of course they would if it wasn't flat
They would create it a flat area so they could build their their homes in 1875
There were 2,500 people living in scots flat.

I've been asked many times.

Well, who was Scott?
And I said no no no it was Scottish people
Scott's flat was named after scots that moved there and settled they were minors now blue tent is just a road
But at that time blue tent developed very quickly as a little town and
It's called blue tent according to what I've been told because Levi Strauss
Put up the first tent there, and it was blue and so they called it blue tent
So anyway pretty soon there were a lot of other tents little cabins and tents and there was the old blue tent school
Where my great-grandfather went to school?
Timbuktu was the outgrowth of
Roses bar, which was the little mining bar on the Yuba river things started to grow and they kind of
Came up hill a little bit Timbuktu turned into a real bustling little town Timbuktu was
kind of a little all the way place
knew they had the
Telegraph line going through it had many bars and several bakeries
It had a theater hotels
Telegraph office, so you know it was it was kind of the business center of the mining communities there
Timbuktu had it's I guess some kind of a
Power line
Transmission or a Telegraph line or it had its name claimed a fame.

Oh, well, there's a couple of stories about how it got its name
one was that
Someone when they came there a couple of African-American men mining
In the ravine and they said oh look we must be in Timbuktu because Timbuktu is of course the famous gold city in Africa
but the other story is that a
Gentleman was prospecting up in the ravine which now is called Timbuktu ravine
and as he came back down the hill into to
Rose's bar the storekeeper there said oh look here comes the Sultan of Timbuktu
Meaning, you know, he was making his riches
up there and
So those are the two stories.

I kind of tend to go with the the one about the African-American miners because
We actually see them on the census
people were arriving on on ships from all over the world and these ships and
Read an estimate one time where there was something like a hundred ships anchored in San Francisco Bay and
The crews they would just abandon their ships and head for the gold fields and then the the streams
You know we're just shoulder to shoulder.

I think something like five thousand people living in Red Dog and you bet if you can imagine that
Five thousand people out there.

Where would they sleep? You know when they slept everywhere, you know
Very well trained highly educated engineers from all over the world were drawn here
because engineering was a
critical part of
mining
Railroading and everything else and and that really
Set us apart as far as the level of education and schooling and everything else was part of this community a great grandfather
Was at one point a manager and as I understand it a small part owner of the Empire mine
There's very stories on how he lost that interest, but he did he was a mining engineer and the stories
Written up in the history books where he was sent to Canada to do consulting as well as South America
There was a guy named George Starr
That was the cousin of William Bourne
He didn't have any particular
Occupation and William asked him if he would like to work in up at the mine and it was his niche in life
and
Before you know it he knew all about mining and in fact in about six years
He was the shift superintendent and then about 1893
he met up with a
Another man named John Hayes Hammond who was a world-renowned
Mining engineer and they went to Africa and he talked about
You know if I was here in
Grass Valley, he said I would probably have
200 miners working for me, but over there doing the same thing.

I would use
2,000 miners
Because they were doing a lot by hand
You've probably seen movies were
They're bringing things out of the holes with baskets handing them to each other.

It was a whole new ball game
We think of the mines
as being predominantly
People working there from Cornwall and in that sort of thing
But by the turn of
the 20th century
The amalgam of different nationalities that were pouring into this country
most of them people migrating for Europe spoke a
single language and
So they would matriculate to
Places where they were understood their foot, you know, their culture was
Supported because there were so many people pouring in from all over the world, you know to mine and in California and especially this area
So it's not unusual to to look around and figure out.

Oh, there's all these different nationalities and people and when they move
They you know, they wanted to stay together, you know
The Scottish people wanted to you know group together because they knew each other and they knew what their their capabilities were my wife's grandma
Nelly she was born in Italy three when she moved here her parents
Bought and ran the Italian hotel
Which essentially in those days was a boarding house for all of the miners particularly the ones from Europe that came across in the early
Part of the century and migrated West in search of gold and that kind of work and I understand through another close friend of mine
Chris ends
That it's was a lot more than just a boarding house for Italian miners, which is the way my family
recognizes it
There is a
restaurant in
Grass Valley called the South Pine Cafe and the South Pine Cafe has a great deal of history associated with it
It used to be called the Golden Heart Hotel
And it was a place for miners to come and stay and the third story of
The Golden Heart Hotel was a place where all the miners had little rooms
Now before it was sold to be the South Pine Cafe
The people that owned it were very frightened by the disturbances that took place there
They believe that the whole third story was haunted
There were three murders that occurred up there of two soiled doves and one was a miner and
When I was there doing the research on it the people were so
Bothered by the disturbances of the third floor that they had
Boxes and crates against the door leading up to the third floors though that would have
Deterred any ghosts or goblins from coming down and bothering anyone
In Seattle, Washington, they've got an entire
Underground tour you can take today where the underground was the above ground at one time
Downyville's got an underground Grass Valley's got an underground and it sits underneath the Nevada club and William
Stationery were the the windows and the doors that had existed in the buildings when they were at ground level have all been
Bricked in my mom remembered as a little girl that
Tresais brothers had who were the proprietors before us had toys in the in the basement
We have a full cemented basement in the store
But can't really use it because it's too dangerous if we have a bad winter and paper products and water obviously don't mix so
We
Use it for a little bit of storage, but not not too much
But back in the day, I guess they had some floods there and probably some damage to to product and stuff there was a
A knowledge that when you were constantly wet you were constantly sick and
If you were constantly dry you weren't as sick in 1877
Aaron
Died of typhus which was a very common death to the people working in the mines at that time a lot of the men died of that
You know once the disease got going in a camp
It just ran rampant there was no way to stop it and a lot of times the men were sitting in standing sitting in
Water up to their hips and they were cold and it there was just no way to stop disease
So somebody had figured out this is before we had microbiologists and people that understood disease
Communications and there was no CDC and this was just people being sparse and you know
We've got to get out of this wet and so they did they brought it up
There's a photograph of the downtown of grass valley on Main Street
Sean a whole bunch of miners out there picking up rocks and moving stuff around and in most of the captions under the pictures say
Ah, here's the miners picking up gold out of the rock out of the roads
That was rocked.

It was brought in it was higher
It was mine ore that they put in and a lot of times the mine work still carried gold
They weren't able to get it all out and you could actually see visible gold in some pieces
but they they loaded that area up from work currently is is
Auburn Street to Mill Street that was known as
As a floodplain downtown being known as the waterfront and I don't know the actual origin
And I don't know if that goes back before my father's time or if they kind of started it, you know in that era or not, but
It was basically
You know like you'd hear the waterfront in any any town it was like I was saying it was the lower end of town as far as
Geographically so if we had heavy rains and stuff we get a little localized flooding
And we always had flooding in our basement at the store if we had a normal winter and there was also a few more
You know bars and watering spots downtown that you know can be included in that too as well as the you know in the early days
To the housesville repute there were several in the neighborhood, too
So it was kind of the waterfront, you know, and that's how
Well the term soil doves is a very
Kind way of talking about the prostitutes in the Old West
Certainly you weren't able to say prostitute very often in any written publication.

So you said soil dove
Certainly when you think about that you think about Miss Kitty on any of the Dodge City episodes
But it wasn't anything like that.

I mean it was a very difficult line of work
Women died at a very young age a lot of the women that came west and there were a lot of them in Nevada County that came
West with their fathers or their brothers or husbands and their family died in route my grandmother found out that
my grandfather
Had been or still was married to someone else
she was really kind of ahead of her time actually because
She took off in the 20s.

I think it was probably the late 20s from Joplin to get away from him
With those three children.

I don't have any idea how she supported herself or those children.

It just don't
and she started across America and
wound up in Grass Valley and
Just about the time
That she arrived here and was settling down
Charlie Carter her husband found her and
My mother said we were packing to leave when we got the
Got the the message that Charlie had taken a job in North Star Mine here and
They got the message that he had been killed in the mine
He was on an ore cart and stood up and he was decapitated
I
Want to share with you one of my favorite stories about the Nevada County area
And it was a teacher that came to this area.

It was a mail order bride by the name of Eleanor Berry and
Eleanor Berry
advertised for a husband and received a response from a minor that lived in this area and
She came out and was very excited about
Meeting him for the first time after they courted through the mail for a long period of time
And so she was excited about coming out and meeting him and she's on a stage
and she just gets into Nevada County and
She has her true.

So all packed up and
Highway robberman hold up the stage and she pleads with them, please please let me go through
I'm about to get married and
All of my belongings are here my wedding dress, please let me go through
finally the acquiesce and
She gets to her future sister-in-law's home and
Changes her clothes and she walks down the aisle very excited about meeting her
Intended for the first time and as they're exchanging vows.

She thinks to herself
That gentleman's voice sounds very familiar.

Where have I heard it before and
Then she realizes
This is one of the men who robbed me as I was coming out here
You know they poured up in our little foundries, you know each mine had a had a foundry and they would pour it into
The bullion bar, which was a thousand ounces about you know about that long
and
Which by the way is just under 70 pounds
but they would pour those up and
In order to cut down on theft if you just took that down to the post office and shipped it out
Somebody could pick that up and run with it
So the mines always used to build a little box with either two or three sections in it
And you would put say two of those in there
Well now you have a hundred and forty pounds and you would screw a nice tight lid on it and put a metal band around it and
Take it to the post office and ship it off
And Frank was born in 1851 started out being a minor
Then became a stagecoach driver
And at the age of 30
He was running the stage from Nevada City
To North Bloomfield and then that stage would go
Along the ridge North San Juan Ridge and end up in Smartsville
and
When he left Nevada City heading out North Bloomfield Road
He headed down towards
Edwards crossing and the second switch back up from the bridge
Black Bart was hiding behind a rock and came out and robbed the stage.

I think one of the Nevada County's most infamous criminals
was a gentleman by the name of Black Bart and
Black Bart was a highway robberman
He would lie and wait for people and he knew exactly the Wells Fargo route
He would wear
Sacks on his feet.

So it would cover up any of the tracks that he would leave.

He would he was very smart about
making the drivers believe that he had a
Team of people with him that were helping him to rob the stage
He would set up sticks to make it look like there were a lot of guns trained on a Wells Fargo stage
And really it was just himself and his gun was rarely if ever loaded
Black Bart my grandfather had told me that he lived at the reader ranch
He did the books for the reader sawmill and later years my grandfather
Sharky owned that sawmill there at the reader ranch
But Black Bart was a bookkeeper and a gentleman and they never realized that he was Black Bart
in the captured Black Bart detective and
Went to jail and the story is that after he got out of jail
They asked him if he was going to tell poetry or be a robber
He said well, I can't do poetry because I said I'd never rob again
if you can imagine in
1849 and 1850
We still didn't have a court system here in Nevada County
We did have a system called the Lynch system the Lynch system was trial by minors around February of
1851 a
Man was caught stealing
$1,500 from his partner upriver near Downeyville
Well, they caught the individual
Drug him back to Bridgeport, which is where they like to have their minor courts tried him found him guilty
And he was fortunate.

He was only given 99 lashes a few months later in June of
1851
Yankee Jim happened to be up towards French Corral
He was accused of stealing horses and then making false spills of sale
Selling them he got caught.

He was brought back to Bridgeport
And he was given a fair minors trial and he was promptly hung
An old story goes
That he was hung
Not here at one of the trees because it was in front of a family residence
The wife said no, you're not going to hang him here in front of my house.

Go hang him on the bridge
We don't know how true that is
But if it was it was an earlier bridge built by Matthew Sparks in 1850 in the late 1920s
The owner of this property who was a farmer
Alfred kneebone decided to develop what he called the Bridgeport swimming resort
that consisted of a
Facility about a quarter of a mile upstream from here where there was a wonderful natural
swimming hole and he built two diving boards a
dining hall a
Dance hall and in order to accommodate his visitors.

He built this gas station which opened in
1927 and was partially a store where he sold food and ice cream and drinks
Because he had power in this building at that time from a Kohler generator diesel generator that was nearby
he ran two wires all the way up to the swimming resort and had
Lights for nighttime swimming
This bridge was completed by David Wood in the summer of 1862.

We know that it was
open for operation in september of 1862
This ties into a route that started in mary'sville
Cross this bridge
went on up
to San Juan
today north San Juan
on up to grizzly fort just above Oregon creek
On past Plum Valley
On over the Hennis Pass and then on up to the Diggins at the Comstock
The man that built this bridge and another friend Thompson
They surveyed that route and it rapidly became the busiest route
In all this part of the sierras that was 1859
Where over a hundred wagons a day would come across this bridge and on to the Comstock strike
When in 1960 when I moved here there was no freeway and there were great debates
In both grass valley and nevada city
As to how to split the town or whether to split the town
With the freeway and this went on and on and created a lot of anger
The freeway certainly changed things in the 60s
When they started building that a good batter and different extremely controversial to you know, they didn't need a freeway going anywhere
But obviously town would not be like it
Is I I can remember it just seemed like torture to drive from grass valley to nevada city because you'd be following
Logging trucks or slow traffic of one sort or another all the way and it may take you 20 minutes to get from one town
To the other going around the curves and up the hills and waiting like that.

So it's
Not necessarily a better era, but a bygone
1961
62 63
That towns were devastated
Nevada city was almost a ghost town people don't realize that
The lumberhead industry
Was failing
The mines they couldn't it cost some more to
Mine for the gold than the gold was worth
So they started building the freeway
brought a lot of people in here
they
Cut the two towns went right through the middle of them
And all the forefathers wanted them to go the outskirts of the town
If they would have done that we wouldn't have what we have here today
so
I'm all for
The freeway going through nevada city and grass valley
Step back in time after I got home from vietnam
I flew into the reno airport
And rented a car because my parents weren't quite sure when I was going to be out of the service
And so
Here I come I could down the road everything nothing much had changed the interstate
They still had great big holes in it and highway 20 was crooked
And
Part of it still gravel at that time
But when I came down highway 20 at downville I hit this new freeway section
Wasn't there when I left.

I mean, I knew they were working on it, but it had been completed
So I could see my mom and dad's house from the freeway.

They took all the houses
along
Out in front of their place on five or six for the freeway and so I could see mom and dad's house
But I I didn't know how to get to it.

There was a sign said coal facts turn off, but I didn't want to go to coal facts
And so I parked the car on the freeway
There was nobody on the freeway.

I mean, I thought it was two cars.

I was amazed went up hop the fence went
my mom and dad's house
You know where carolines coffee is now the building adjacent to it across once a bank street
Was the an old hospital
And I don't remember the name of the hospital.

I think my wife was born there
And later worked there as an intern
but anyway
The only doctor in town he was the only one with a car back in the early part of the century
And his garage that I was identifying where the behind the post office and where the police department is
was where he drives that car
And because he didn't go in reverse he had a revolving floor
That he'd pull in and then pull this thing around so he could pull out in a hurry
And I didn't believe that I was saying you got to be kidding
I'm getting this information from my father in law and he says no it's still there
And I'll be darned if I go down there in the next day and look in the wind
And you could see that floor was it's a wooden floor or he had to turn that thing around
A big part of our life
In those days was the grass valley volunteer fire department also
and my dad was chief in 1950
And my mother's father was was chief in 1915 and he ordered he didn't drive
But ordered the first motorized vehicle that grass valley had in those days.

It was a great honor to
to be a volunteer there were
There was a waiting list to be a volunteer fireman and
In my dad's later days when he was unable to
Actually go out and fight fires still he'd run down there
He would be there before the police would and he'd direct traffic for the trucks to go through and stop traffic and everything and
My grandmother it was born again in forest springs
In 1889 and when she first started teaching school, she would ride her horse
From the forest springs of allison ranch area through what is now alta sierra
But she went to chico normal school, which is now chico state got her teaching credential
Came back to nevada county and actually got her high school diploma after she got her
Teaching credential for some reason the high school exam was only offered once
A year and she missed that because she couldn't get all the way from forest springs to nevada city where it was offered
So she did things in reverse
This was a wonderful place to come of age
There was always plenty of work and ways for you to pick up
You know spending money or christmas money or whatever it was
And in the summertime
We had plenty of work to do and nobody played because everybody had a job
You know easy work for the forest service
building trails and and as fire
fighters
Or they went down and worked in the packing plants
Which were down in lumas or or in in colfax or mary'sville
Where they had the fruit packing mainly peaches down in mary'sville
Pairs and apples down in lumas and everything so people had jobs including all the teachers
They were usually the supervisors in those places before I was old enough to play softball over there
We'd we were honored to go over and be a bat boy
You know for the teams that were playing and listening to the giants game on the radio at home
And you could hear lessiva who was the the secretary and the voice of fast pitch softball from like 1936 on
At memorial park and so if we weren't over there we could we had uh like a dual broadcast we'd hear
Russ Hodges and Lon Simmons with the giants and uh and willy maize and willy mccovey and and all those players and
And then they announced the softball games in those days so you could actually follow the game from
From your house too played
junior varsity football at grass valley high
And then when I was a junior and senior I played for the varsity
And then of course our great rival was here in nevada city
They were the hornets and we were the miners and and we usually prevailed over to that
Nevada city at that particular time
Nothing better than those days and then I went on to play and and work in the summertime
Either in the neighborhood.

I had five or six lawn jobs and and I actually one day a week go to on saturdays
Usually go down to handson brothers and work down with the gravel plant at the river
Graduated in 1950 and I would had been admitted to enroll in stanford in september
And I planned to play freshman football which I did
and
At that time we had a good family friend by the name of truck
That was his nickname truck
But he was an engineer out at the empire mine
And he had gone to stanford and run truck for stanford
And he still was interested in the athletic program and he said
Come on up to the mine.

I'll give you a job and we'll get you in shape for football
starting in the fall
so the day after
I'd gotten out of the
From graduated from high school
I went up and drew my
Part hat and boots and all that sort of thing from there and bought that
And then on the following monday
I reported to work
As a mucker.

I was being given a job as a mucker
The mucker is the guy who really shovels the the ore into the ore car
In some places, you know, you can stand up and you can do pretty well
Other places it was very tight like like where I was
But that is where most people start in a mine
Herbert Hoover when he was a student at stanford studying engineering worked here in nevada city as a mucker
My miner as it turned out was a fellow by the name of dormant wasley
Who was a very good cornish man in world war two?
And he kind of took me under his wing and lived up above us on alto street
So he would pick me up in the morning
William born
inherited
The empire mine from his dad when his dad had kind of a tragic accident
But
He brought george star up when from the bay area they lived in san francisco
When george was 19
and actually
William was only 24, but people were really grown up and in business
When they were 24 30, you know, they could be millionaires by the time of 30
But anyway, I tell the story
That uh, he brought his cousin up
And introduced him to the superintendent of the mine and uh, george
Was given a tour of the mine.

He thought he was taken down to the bottom of the mine
And the superintendent picked up a shovel and he said here you go, sonny
He says put the broken ones in the cart
And george star was the mucker
So my first day we tapped in and then
We take off our street.

We would have two lockers
And on one side of a shower room, we had our street clothes and we took off our street clothes
And then we'd walk across the shower
Make it in the way that we would have
Another locker and that's where we kept what the miners called their diggers
In my case, it was levies and leave I ever in long johns and you kept your boots there and
and your hard hat and
Lamp carbide lamp and this for that and you would put on your clothes that you were going to work in the mine on
And a few minutes about
Seven or eight minutes before seven o'clock
We would go up what they called the head frame.

That's the
Went up 92 feet
And they would have all the man skips
This was the cars that they would have and each one carried 11 miners
And you kind of
Sit cheek to jowl and put your lunch bucket in and in our case
We were working at the 5000 foot level and that main shaft there at the empire goes down to the 4,600 foot level
So they stopped at the 4,600 foot level.

That's how much cable goes down
and then turned north
And ran a long cross cut at 4,600 foot level and then right underneath what we used to call the old post office
There's another hoistroom
Every bit as big as the one they have on the surface is just carved out of rock
That goes down to the 8,000 foot plus level
So we would go walk that point
We would get off at the 4,600 walk three cores of a mile get on another car
We would have the hoistman with us and he would lower us down
another
400 feet
We think of the guy down there setting dynamite in the walls and
Mucking out the the shelves and everything else, which is work.

We romanticize as historians.

We think oh, that looks like fun
It wasn't it was gut wrenching horrible horrible work.

It was very dangerous
And my father-in-law did in fact die of
Of lung disease as a result of working in the mines
I watched the miner as he set up his machine, which was a drill a pneumatic drill
and
And then he told me and showed me how I would put the ore in the our car and it was you couldn't stand up
I had to shovel on my knees
And and I shoveled into this little go devil car and the miner he would start drilling his holes
As he was and pretty soon he would be just in a fog
Because you had air and water going in and so he was I I could see his
His carbide lamp, but he looked I was only seven or eight feet from him
But it was just almost like a fog.

I'd barely see this light so the
Visibility was was not that good
About 12 we would break for lunch 30 minutes off for lunch and then about
Two o'clock.

I think as I recall
The miner would have drilled perhaps
22 24 holes
four feet in length
By that time I was expected to have
Mucked out everything that had been blasted on the day before
And then the last thing we did would be the miner and myself
Once I got the hang of all this, you know, it was the first day.

It was pretty green.

I would help him
Fuse the mines where he had used
non-electric caps on dynamite
And then he would fuse his sticks of dynamite and then I had a long pole
That I would push to keep the dynamite in there good and snug
And because there were non-electric caps you couldn't hit it too hard because that was at the bottom
So you always said now tapper light tapper light son tapper light
But he wanted him in there good the snug
But he always cautioned me now tapper light and then
He would eventually cut all these fuses so that they would go off in a sequence
And then the last thing we did was take our
carbide lamps and we start lighting we would go out down to down the drift and and we listened to all the
Charges going off and you hear the cap going through the rock go click
And and you know that was going on then you feel a little concussion from the wind
And then you counted them all because if you didn't get all didn't count them all
Then you had to go back and relight the fuses and you had to wait 15 minutes
But but Norman was a very experienced
Miner and that never happened to us.

Yeah, they're
They're interesting stories of all the things that happened around the mine and
It was maybe some were horror stories people getting blown up and things that
I didn't relate there was one about the guy that
Didn't light all the fuses for blasting, you know, all the fuses come out into a bundle
And they all go to dynamite charges which is in the holes that were drilled the same day
Anyway, you're supposed to light all the fuses and once and at one time and leave the area
away from the blast
Well
The guy who was lighting fuses
didn't light every fuse.

There was one fuse half lit
And
The fuses all
blew up the charge
But the half lit fuse didn't blow up a charge that it's supposed to
And men went back down working
With this half lit fuse and the dynamite still in place
And you know what happened and then people were working around there boom
blew up
So then we would start coming up the same way we did and as we were going up night shift would be coming down
And when you get up to the collar of the shaft and we drop our lunch buckets right there at the collar
Norman show me how to do that
We go back up to the
Into the dry take off all of our
diggers
Which were now wet from perspiration and water dripping down and that sort of thing
And take a shower right in front of the shift boss
Then we go over to our
Get our other locker room and put on our street clothes
Go down and pick up our lunch buckets, which had been subject to inspection
by that time
And and that was uh, that was the real purpose of the dry was a passive way to prevent what they call it high-grading
So just a huge cavern and it was held up by just one central pillar
and uh, it's where everybody gathered for
lunch and break and everything else
And it was almost one solid piece of gold
But they could not figure out how to remove it without the whole overhead
Caving in so the guys would sit next to it
Lean up against it and then just kind of scratch the
With their fingernail put it in their lunchbox
The story about, uh, you know the cornish miners singing
Well, why they sang and why they sang at the church doorsteps
on sunday was because high grade was being
Handled in the in the basement of the of the uh of the church the Methodist church
and the miners singing
Allowed them to be able to break the gold up the high grade gold
at that time and I was not involved in
In any of that rich ore, but but there were miners who you know, and they could really in places
It would really be rich.

They would take it out in potter boxes
And I've heard miners describe
Some of the veins and the veins are not that big in the empire or in the grass valley mining district.

They're only
you know anywhere from
10 inches to about two feet or something like that.

They're not that
But they're very rich
And there were some that were just like you could take a gold paintbrush and run it across that that it was just that
And then they would take that out in power boxes and everything else
so it was a
It was a good experience
uh
of the summer and uh
And I did get in shape and I did
play uh my first year at stanford for for uh played football
My dad and granddad came to the united states around 1905
And settled up the empire mine
Later my mom uh came from san francisco
and
Was a mail order bride
And she married my dad in about 1924
And
Later they settled up the empire mine
cabin
below the foot mansion
And there were seven kids in our family
And i'm next to the youngest
They were not the mine owners.

The mine owner was james haig
He lived a built a house later on up on the hill behind us here
But he again lived in san francisco much like i mean most of the mine owners
So he was just back and forth a little and part of of the foot's job was to entertain investors and young mining engineers and things like that
So the house was large
because of
The different aspects of their job
But yeah, he was the mine manager for the north star mine
Now those two mines over the years, you know
It's one they kind of went back and forth with ownership a little bit but
but this uh
This was the the north star mine my father-in-law used to
hijack
rides on the narrow gauge from here out the sebbly's pond which was a
Famous place for everybody to picnic.

The miners picnics were all held out there.

It's on 174.

It's still there
and
he and his
Friends as kids and they're six seven years old
Would just jump on the train and get free rides out there and the conductor would throw them off say you can't ride anymore
So he threw them off at sebbly's pond and then
He let them jump on and then throw them off again when they got back to grass valley
Everybody went to the picnic
They would go to all the businesses in towns
And the business would pledge to close their business and send their employees to the picnic.

That's how important it was
Everybody went to the picnic on miners picnic
And of course we think of the miners picnics now is going on at the empire mine.

Well, that was a working mine
So the picnics had to be taken out of town
And that's where most of them took place
And it's just hardly it's fallen off the face of the history here hardly anybody knows about it
they know about lake olympia because
Well, I don't know we're sitting in the middle of it work
Hi, i'm jim mal and i'm standing on the shores of lake olympia.

Well the former lake olympia
Until the late 1950s this area used to be covered
Behind me here with a lake when I was a kid.

I swam in this lake
I caught bullfrogs at this end where the creek comes in
And we used to have polywogs and other things we'd chase around at the other end
It was quite the place
Actually, it started with my my brother
We were living in berkeley in
1949 and 50
And my brother was going to college
At cal and he was in a fraternity with two guys named pete and pat ingram
my brother used to tell my dad about
Grass valley because he'd come up here and visit the ingrams
and so dad came up and
And he looked around and he ended ended up buying lake olympia at the resort in good book
And this pipe right here is about the only remaining structure that was there when I was a child
These pipes would go up out of the water and became part of it
Were part of a swing in which people would swing out over the water and drop into the deep water
I believe just to my right was a tower that had a 30 foot dive off point
People had actually dived 30 feet off of that into lake olympia
And and they built a dancing platform
In the middle of the lake right on that island
So here you have a dancing platform with lights all around it and it's all surrounded with water
You know the big band era was over
And the days of bringing in bands and having big dances on the dance floor
Just didn't pay anymore you couldn't pay the bands to come up and do that and you can't mix
Roller skating and dancing
Because with dancing you need a slick floor, you know, we used to have to put out it's like a soap
I don't recall what it was
But it would make the floor nice and slick but the next time we would have roller skating
Everybody was falling on their head.

So we had to do one or the other and we found that roller skating
Paid off a lot better than the dancing and there was a walkway going across
To an island over here
Where these big trees are big pine trees are over here on the island
And on that island was a building that had spring floors on it
That was used for both roller skating and dancing
And a lot of other functions parties and other things
I've talked to many many mostly wives who are so nostalgic about
Meeting their husband at Lake Olympia at the at the dance platform
And it it just beautiful memories for a lot of people
Well, my mom as you had had mentioned
in 1945 right at the end of the war
They had a tradition in those days for the 4th of july parade
Of having the goddess of liberty they called it and so different young ladies from the area were chosen like
Not unlike a grand marshal I guess for the parade and
and
And his mom Helen was
She was a beauty queen here.

I mean she was elected
And I saw pictures of her and
Yo, she'll knock your socks off.

She's a beautiful lady.

She was 25 years old and and
She was the goddess of liberty in 1945 and so
I was trying to think I can't off top my head now think of some of the other
Women that I knew outside.

I know ken holbrook's mother was too and he said that
His mother was the prettiest girl in the vat of city and my mom was the prettiest girl in grass valley and
And they knew each other of course everybody knew each other in those days and so
in 1958
You didn't have the peace officer standard of training
You went in one day and he took a badge and he he pinned it on your shirt
and
You were a policeman what?
Struck me funny when I first went to work some of the guys that were already there had been there
for quite a number of years and
When something would happen, they wouldn't say a certain address like 240 South Auburn
Just say it's down there next door to mithus smith's house
Well, of course you just started you don't know who mithus smith is everybody knew everybody
We never locked a door or window and in the house, you know and very
Very little if any crime rate really, you know in those days and and
So anyway, it was a good time to grow up and there was of course more respect for policemen at the time too
If there was a let's say a fight in the bar
You would walk in the door and blow your whistle and the guys had quit fighting
You know and get back up on the bar
And like 1984 when we started our negotiations was universal studios to get
Nevada county engine five back to Nevada county
Uh, little robinson
Contacted madeline heling who was then the president of the stork site and said if you get that engine
I'll go get it and bring it back for you
So of course
Obviously he didn't know what he was getting himself into but
Because you know 30 years later.

He was still hauling equipment for us, you know, the kids went to school together and
played together and
Went to church together a class when I graduated in 1950
numbered about 110 as I recall
So growing up here was a lot of fun when I was a kid.

There was there was no freeway.

There was
There was nothing here.

It was just a little town still had a a Chinese section here in town when I was a kid
When uh engine number five was purchased
Around 1940 it was purchased by review studios and they were making a black and white movie called the spoilers
there was a lot of footage of
the engine operating and
and
I hear stories like from bob pain how
when spoilers
Was shown in grass valley everybody
Went to the movies
So they could see engine five
I don't know about john wane, but they wanted to see engine five operating
How about it Kelly? All right to go.

Only let me out of here.

They're gonna pick you up in the soup spoon
So
So
So