Odd Old News: Back to Nature Man in Trinity County

Nuggets of old news served up once a week by David Heller, one of our local historians.

The completion of the construction of the Northwestern Pacific Railroad with the October 14, 1914 pounding of the Golden Spike at Cain Rock south of Alderpoint, heralded a new era of transportation in Humboldt County. Eureka was said to be the last large town in California to be connected to the state’s railways system, though local newspapers had been promoting the idea for decades. Located at the Big Bend of the Eel River, the Island Mountain tunnel, and its southern approach were some of the last sections of the track to be built.

One local enterprise benefited greatly from the new railroad. In 1915 the Island Mountain Copper Mine was started up on the east side of the Eel River, about ¾ of a mile SSE of Island Mountain, and below the edge of the above photo of the Island Mountain tunnel area.

As one Redheaded Blackbelt commenter wrote on an earlier post about gold: “There is a major gold/copper/silver deposit down by Island Mountain… but the valuable metals are mixed with sulfides. A valuable deposit… but needs a refinery to separate it. (Sorry, no gold nuggets)”. The deposit was described as a sulfide ore body with a lenticular ore lens 450 feet long, 120 feet wide, and 139 feet thick.

Having been discovered around 1897, the mine start up didn’t occur until 1915:

… a shift of 23 men is employed at the copper mine at Island Mountain and regular shipments of ore are being made by rail to the smelter at Keswick, Shasta county. The copper company is now installing a cable tramway 1500 feel long which will carry the ore direct from the mine across the river to the railroad and the ore loaded into cars in the one operation. Recent development has shown the company’s holdings to be one of the best copper prospects in California, the ore deposits covering practically the whole mountain, with the output of the mine running as high as 50 per cent in copper”(BLA,11/20/1915).

Mindat.org, a great website for mining locations, tells us that the “Workings include surface and underground openings. The underground workings have a length of 2,721 meters, comprised of 6 adits and 5 shafts with several thousand feet of drifts, crosscuts and raises.”

Wikipedia said: “Between 1915 and 1930, 4,100 tons of copper, 140,000 ounces of silver, and 8,600 ounces of gold were mined”. Information for why production shut down in 1930 was not located.

An estimated 158,000 tons of ore remained in the mine as of 1965. When a company tried to open it up back in the 1970’s and thousands of gallons of sulfide waters poured into the Eel, the tunnels were sealed up again.
The most recent attempt to rebuild the railroad through the Eel River canyon featured a plan to open an Island Mountain quarry and ship rock south for smelting, but that plan was derailed—from the comment section of Ernie Branscomb’s article on the mine.

This week’s Odd Old News feature article describes a lifestyle choice made by one of the mine’s hard-working Irish rock miners. His disenchantment with the conventional life of the working man led him to choose to ‘go back to the land’ in a manner that presaged the fashions of some of ‘Back to the Land’ movement of the 1960’s-‘70’s…. sans clothing.

ADAM OF ISLAND MOUNTAIN
Humboldt Times
October 22, 1916

Wild Man Roamed Trinity County, ’Till Autumn Came and Drove Him to Cover

Living in the fastnesses of Trinity County, there is an Eve-less, 12-ribbed leaf-clad Adam. Decked in little more than an atmosphere of unconscious innocence and a happy smile, this modern Adonis has stalked the woods and hills as he went about his daily tasks, entirely oblivious to the hyper-critical, and (let it be whispered) envious eyes of those who came to behold, and having beheld, departed marveling. This Adam has been leading the primitive life within hearing of the echo of the locomotive whistle, and not far from the abode of the usual breed of tobacco-smoking and chewing, swearing, toiling man, who perforce wears clothes, missing any part of the exhilaration which comes with abiding close to nature, clad in the altogether. Nor is this a fairy story.

Such a being really has existence, and has been seen by a number of men, among whom must be included certain railroad men well known here, and whose very nature forbids falsity, even as the moral and mental makeup of sea-faring men and newspaper writers makes the utterance of a lie an impossibility.

It must be nothing short of celestial happiness to wander about with never a care for the next meal or the morrow, clad in a birthday suit, meeting with unexpected adventure, and with one’s mind given over to the dreamy abandon which comes with sheer idleness. In this respect, our Adam certainly had it over the nearly unanimous majority or slaves of the alarm clock.

To begin with, Adam, for lacking any other name, that is what we must call the hero of this story, was a miner. Further, it may be confessed that he was like other miners, had a penchant for navy chewing and wore pants. He could swing a pick or handle a shovel ten hours a day with any man that ever trundled hydraulic or cradle. In the rare intervals that Adam came to town, he could down a schooner like any one else and swagger out of the swinging doors with just as much sang froid as his fellows.

Adam followed this life for some five years. Then he got tired. A vacation was what he wanted, and he wanted to see the sea. The sea was destined to change his mode of life in the most minute particular. While wandering along the docks of a Pacific Coast port, Adam came upon a diver’s barge. A hand was needed. Adam signed on. Two months later, Adam donned rubber suit and the big globe helmet for the first time and went down into the drink. His work was to dislodge some rock on a sunken scow. He carried a pick for the purpose. Adam surveyed the bottom, and as he turned to work, raised the pick. The Job looked hard, and he tried to spit on his hands.

That was the keynote of his change of life —the very reason he became Adam. He couldn’t spit on his hands because of the rubber gloves. It flashed across Adam’s mind that after all we are very much creatures of habit. It annoyed him exceedingly because he could not go through that particular ceremony so dear the heart of every Irishman who swings a pick.

Adam quit in disgust and in the course of his wanderings passed through Eureka, and found himself employed as a miner at the Island Mountain mines, not much more than a mile from the railroad station of that name. Back in the ground again where he could spit on his hands, Adam still nursed his under-water experience like a bear cub nurses a sore paw. Finally out of a process of mental evolution, he came to the conclusion that life under civilization is not so much after all, and that he for one would not be bound by convention’s manacles. Not in these words, but the trend of thought was similar. Accordingly, Adam quit his job, and, prompted, by some last qualms of modesty, moved some distance from his fellows at the mine, and set up housekeeping on his own.

It seemed mighty queer at first, but Adam was determined to live a truly free life, and tried hard not to mind the goose flesh that played up and down his spinal column in the early mornings as a Hawaiian plays a steel string guitar. He persevered, and perseverance always wins, according to the copy books. Adam tried hard to cut away from all cooked foods. He did very well for a few days, but round that roots and barks were not as nutritious, and he longed for some “side meat” and a couple of eggs. Finally he had to give in to this desire, and so reached a compromise with “Mickey,” a big-hearted Irishman who worked in the mines. Mickey didn’t think much of the artless costume which Adam affected, but he needed some carpentry work done about his cabin and so struck a dicker with the back-to-nature man. Adam sawed and hammered a few hours a day, and in return got his three squares.
Then it dawned on Adam that this was just what he sought to avoid —he was working again—was a slave of convention.

But those three squares tasted mighty good, and so Adam continued working, but he refused to wear anymore clothes than nature had originally provided. It was in this state that Adam was seen by the Eureka railroad men who furnished the clue for this story. They saw him first, and Adam ducked in con- fusion behind the cabin. It was harder to face strangers than Mickey and the rest of the boys. The story got out a little, and more men haunted Adam’s Island Mountain haunts with the hope of seeing man in the primitive. Adam didn’t like their company to any noticeable extent. And then came the autumn, with -–te and chill, and there were no more berries, Adam is an indifferent hunter, and there was no more work to do at the cabin, nor did the mine superintendent, who never had approved of Adam’s hifalutin’ ways, hold out any encouragement of employment. It was up to Adam to move. Simple enough. But he didn’t dare move without clothes. There are spots more populous than Island Mountain.

Buried deep In Adam’s brain when he made the plunge back to nature, there was buried a grain of common sense. He had cached his blue shirt, jeans and brogans. It’s all that saved him, for the boys at the mine were not minded to help him out. They rather liked the experiment, and cold weather made it the more interesting. And so, one day, Adam blew, and where he is not even Mickey knows. Presumably he is back in another mine, swinging a pick, and with a signed contract allowing the lubrication of his hands with saliva at least twenty times a day. Anyhow, he’s gone.

And this is an entirely truthful story, told by a railroad man, who like seafaring men and newspaper writers, cannot lie.

Earlier Odd and Old News:

There are many, but here are the most recent:

• Mrs Mills’ Bonnet
• Beware the Calathumpians
• Sea Lions Eating Cattle and Exploding Mules–The Stories Seem Mighty Tall Around These Parts
• From Cloverdale to Eureka by Stage
• School Ma’am Letters
• The Diary of a Young School Teacher— Part two
• In Which Plans for Ferndale’s Fourth of July Parade Created a Masterpiece of Rage Writing
• Odd Old News: The Tragic Wreck of the Columbia Near Shelter Cove in 1907
• Crusade Against Blind Pigs in Humboldt County