Odd, Old News: Early Stagecoach Travel in Southern Humboldt
Stagecoach at Dyerville. [Photo from the HSU Humboldt Room Palmquist Collection]
With the completion of the Humboldt and Mendocino stage road in 1877, travel options for the average citizen between regions to the south and Humboldt County were no longer limited to turbulent, and sometimes dangerous, ocean travel. Following the course of a well used Native American trail, the trail on the ridge dividing the South Fork of the Eel River from the Main Eel River had been in use by Euro-American explorers, expeditions, and travelers on horseback since 1850. Early California maps show that the trail was first named after the military commander Brevet Major W. H. Wessel who led the 2nd U.S. Infantry detachment that accompanied the 1851 Reddick McKee Indian treaty expedition.
Since then the trail has been named by many names: the Cahto to Camp Grant Trail, the Overland Mail Trail, Sonoma Trail, the Government Trail, the Mail Ridge Trail, the Humboldt Trail, the Cloverdale to Eureka trail, and today it is called Bell Springs road. Chinese provided the labor for this road as well as for the first road to be constructed from Garberville to this side of Shelter Cove, and the Wildcat road leading from Ferndale. Once the hard work was done the Chinese labor force was taken from the county by wagon and ship. As well as providing an alternative to ocean travel, the new stage and wagon route had spectacular views, and enthusiastic travelogues started appearing in newspapers. Here is a shortened version of an account of travel on the section between Blue Rock in Mendocino County to Alderpoint in Humboldt County, with a giant vegetable farm report from Kittenpaum (Kettenpom) Valley.
WEST COAST SIGNAL, December 28, 1877
(From THURSDAY’S Daily.)
SOUTHERN HUMBOLDT.—We find the following mention of a distant portion of our county in one of WM. HORACE WRIGHT’S letters to the San Francisco Morning Call: “From Blue Rock the new Humboldt and Mendocino road continues along the mountain ridges, traverses the Big and Little Chinese ranges, and enters Humboldt county about 10 miles from Blue Rock. From the summit of the range, about 4,500 feet above the sea, can be seen the north and south Yolla- Balla peaks, covered with snow; the south fork of Trinity range, Hyampum, Island Mountain, Hettenshaw, Kittenpaum, and the Kickawauket range.As a sample of the mountain valleys that of Kittenpaum may be mentioned. It comprises about 4,000 acres, the property of Dr. Spencer, an old pioneer of Hydesville. It is principally used as a Summer range for sheep, and in this respect is one of the finest in the section. A small portion is used for agricultural purposes, and the size of the vegetables raised speaks loudly in praise of the fertility of the soil and the character of the climate. As a specimen of the productiveness in this line may be given—a turnip that measured three feet in circumference, five inches in depth, and of a weight of twenty pounds; a Belgian carrot two feet in length and sixteen inches in circumference; a beet two feet four inches in length and fourteen inches in circumference; potatoes over a pound in weight, and oats four and a half feet in length with rich yield. There is an abundance of fine timber and an ample supply of water.
The road passes along the ridge, and after leaving Bell Springs descends by an easy grade and wide track with a succession of sharp curves overhanging deep ravines, to the next changing station, Spruce Grove. Traveling through to this station one obtains an insight into the roils and hardships of the pioneer mountaineer’s life, and can appreciate the indomitable energy and unremitting perseverance of labor necessary to reclaim from this wilderness of wild forests and brushwood the few acres which will in the future repay the self-denial and courage of years.
From the log cabin of roughly split timber, barely wind and water tight, to the substantial farm house, with its capacious barns well stocked with hay, the tide of development flows steadily forward, guided by frugality and industry. The mountain game furnishes one-half of the subsistence for years, and the streams a healthy beverage. From Spruce Grove to the halting place for the night, Alder Point, a steep descent is traveled over, and as night falls the forest-darkened road is enshrouded in gloom so intense that the marvel is that the stage driver can guide his team. Finally, however, the banks of Eel River are reached. The stream runs fast and wide, and has a dangerous appearance, swollen with the heavy rains, but it is forded at last, the water barely penetrating the wagon, and rest comes for the night, after a 50 mile drive, at Allan Look’s hotel.”
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I like the Kittenpaum spelling and pronunciation.
Can we go back to that?
I agree. Let’s start now.
The original name for the valley was Xetin-pom in Wintu: Camas place.
Thanks
The road on Bell Springs ridge was known as “Grant’s Trail” To us local yokels. Named after General Grant, ( later the become President Grant) when he was begrudgingly stationed in Fort Humboldt.
And, I have said a million times that the early settlers had a penchant toward exaggeration and hyperbole. My wife says that some of that blood line has trickled down to me. (Don’t believe it)
There seemed to be some humor to telling a tall-tale, just tall enough to be believable, but just enough of an exaggeration to be fun for people who knew better. It was kind of like an inside joke.
When I was a kid we used to look forward to family from the city coming to the county for the fresh air, hunting, fishing and reestablishing acquaintances. We kids would play together and pull endless pranks on the very naive city kids. Fun with tales of Buckeye Balls, shedded deer horns, and we loved pointing out the beautiful poison oak brush. Kids from Laytonville had either grown an immunity to poison oak or they died. Fun, fun, fun!
Thanks David, for bringing back the sound of “History” to my ears. But, I have to admit, I never liked Turnips anyway.
I agree. I only like my turnips if they are under two feet in diameter
Thanks for the comment Ernie. Always appreciate them
About the exaggerations. My grandfather’s great-grandfather came to Humboldt County in the 1850s from Illinois/Missouri. He kept a diary so we know some of the adventures he had. Came out for the Gold Rush, wound up logging redwoods on Ryan’s Slough. Got lost walking between Bucksport and what is now Arcata (Uniontown) near the bay because the forest was so thick.
Anyway, he returned back east and told the folks there about California. How big the trees were and about the mountains and valleys he had seen in the Sierra. No one believed him.
Then decades later some of the family came out to California and they found out that Grandpa hadn’t been lying. Over the decades some of his family made their way out to live in California, which is how I came to live in Humboldt, which I consider home…though I live elsewhere now. 🙁
I had thought my grandfather had donated a copy of that diary to the library (back when it was still in the basement of the courthouse), but they haven’t located it. Keep meaning to contact some distant cousins down in Orange Cove, they still have the original, hopefully.
Wow, what a treasure to have a diary like that in your family. I would love to read it to have a glimpse of what this area used to be.
There wasnt Hardley a soul in Alderpoint in 1877, whey would they go there? and spend the night? This story iss alot of B.s. and kettenpom and hetten shaw are the same original word as David said.Keekawaka is the sound a frog makes…
As a stop on the way between two places. Because doing the trip without such stops was too hard and dangerous. Alder Point was just a convenient place to rest.
Geoff– Before the stageline started running, the route from Cahto, to Dark Canyon, to Spruce Grove, to Alderpoint, to Blocksburg, to Bridgeville, to Hydesville and Rohnerville, and on to Eureka, was first a mail route, and there had to be stops every 15-20 miles or so for the riders and horses. During the Civil War period when people were eager to get news from back East, and troubles with Native Americans along the Mail Ridge would occasionally delay the mail, editors would get irate at having to fall back on the twice a month mail-packets coming up the coast by boat. “Sailmail” was the equivalent of today’s ‘snailmail’.
I agree with the West Coast Signal that it is easy be unaware just how hard labor was at the time. No one with a back hoe to come do some digging for you, travelling 10 miles could take all day and no one to call if you got in trouble. Few people work as hard these days as was common in those. We forget, don’t know , carp and cavel over the much lower demands on ourselves that are the gifts from the efforts of our ancestors. It’s good to be exposed to It in articles like this although I suspect that only those who have experienced some measure of the same effort for one reason or another will understand just how hard it was.
It seems nobody had maps in the olden days.
Mail Ridge used to be in my view shed.
Looked like the easiest way to go north and south.
Unless it snowed which it often does up there.
In those days the winter valleys where not traversable.
Does anyone know what the road would have been called during the fall of 1906? I am writing a novel that takes place in Harris 1906-1913 and have several scenes as they traveled up Bell Springs rd. Also any suggestions as to where I could find more information about what the road was like and stories about it during this time period. My grandfather lived in Harris during this time period. thanks
Deborah, please feel free to email me, via Kym if she would be so kind. I have a large archive, and many newspaper articles about the area for that year. I am also in the phone book for G’ville, and have my message phone on during the day if you want to leave a phone number. I would be most glad to share anything that I have for your book writing. The two maps on either side of that date, the 1898 Lentell, and the 1911 Denny, do not have a name for the road. The 1921 Belcher map shows the road as Harris Road… we’ll see if we can’t dial that in closer to your year of interest. As someone above commented the road was often closed in winter due to snow and January of 1906 was very stormy.
How do I contact Kym? I would love to get in touch with you.
Deborah, I am sorry it took so long … in the upper right hand corner of the blog is an “email us” to click on. Hopefully Kym doesn’t mind forwarding along your email address.
Deborah- Ethel Tracy was a schoolteacher at Harris in 1906 and left a ‘diary’. The Humboldt Historical Society has a Tracy family archive.She was related to Judge Joseph Tracy, who interestingly, was partly responsible for the path of the Mail Ridge road. In the fall of 1859 he and Robert White of Cahto were named road viewers to scout and determine the best path for a connecting road from Mendocino county to Humboldt county. He wrote from Trinity County that they had dropped down off the ridgeline and found only one man, Thomas Armstrong, living on the flat below future Garberville with a large herd of horses. Tracy was impressed enough to claim some land and placed a man on it, but the man left in fear of the local Natives.
Tracy went on to become a partner with a man named Swift in the first mail delivery company that rode the Mail Ridge route.
For the Bell Springs folks, Tracy left the first written account of the naming of Bell Springs, stating that in 1859 when he passed by the springs a bell was found in the mud. He would place it upright and the next time they passed by it would be back in the mud. This 1859 version precedes the Asbill account of finding a bell there, following events in early 1861. And comes from a reputable source.
correction: Tracy went on to form his company with Seth Chism, not Swift, and covered the north end of the mail route.
I keep waiting for someone to say “I knew Andy Genzoli, and you are no Andy Genzoli” 🙂
Perhaps you can use this information