The Age of Gold Read online

  Marshall assumed a certain knowledge in his listener in this account. For one thing, the mill had to be on or very near the river. Marshall and Sutter relied on falling water to drive the blade that would saw the wood, and lacking much money and many men they had to take the water where they found it. Minor modification of stream flow was feasible; major diversion was not.

  For another thing, not just any timber would do. Cottonwoods grew along the lower reaches of the river, but cottonwood, being neither strong nor durable, made poor lumber. Spreading oaks were scattered in parklike stands across the hillsides of the Sacramento Valley, including the lower American River valley; close-grained from slow growth, the oak wood was both durable and strong. But it was also hard and heavy. For certain uses— fine furniture, the keels and ribs of ships—oak was ideal, but for the mundane barns and fence rails, houses and storefronts Sutter had in mind, oak was more trouble than it was worth. It would break the axes of the fallers, the backs of the haulers, the blades of the sawyers.

  The best wood for lumber was pine. Light, straight-grained, comparatively knot-free, soft enough to work but sturdy enough to last, available in straight lengths as long as any builder could desire, pine was the wood of choice for commercial lumbermen. Yet for pine trees Marshall had to go many miles upriver from Sutter’s Fort, to the higher elevations where the air was cooler, the rainfall greater, and the soil better-drained. If he went clear to the Sierras themselves, he could find whole forests of pine (which gave way to fir at still higher elevations); in the foothills he could discover stands of pines mixed with oaks, madrones, and other trees.

  Marshall knew not to go farther upstream than necessary, for accessibility by wagon had to be combined with reasonable proximity to Sutter’s Fort. Each mile from the fort was a mile the lumber would have to be hauled. Needless to say, it was cheaper to haul cut lumber than raw logs, as the bark and other wastage was a dead loss. But hauling even the finished product—by wagon, pulled by oxen—was expensive.

  It was Marshall’s job to discover a site that balanced availability of wood and water with accessibility and proximity. He found a likely spot about forty miles upstream from the fort, in a valley the local Indians called Coloma. The American River entered the valley from a defile at the southeast; it exited through a gap at the northwest. The ridge above the east bank separated this branch of the American River—the south fork—from the middle fork beyond. Access to the valley was from the south, via an Indian trail that crossed a pass leading west to the fort.

  The bottom of the valley was essentially flat, with sandy soil covered by grass, low shrubs, and some late-spring flowers. The sides of the valley were dissected by ravines that ran full in rainy weather but soon drained dry. Oaks were scattered about the lower slopes, with madrones and cypresses interspersed. Higher up the ridges, pines predominated.

  The gradient—that is, steepness—of the riverbed in the valley was such that the stream tripped along at a brisk pace. Though less than fifty yards wide in most spots, it made an insistent sound that unobtrusively filled the valley. In some wider places it was shallow enough for men and horses to wade across. Elsewhere it ran deeper and slower, but more powerfully.

  A peculiarity of the riverbed in this valley made it especially appealing to Marshall. While the river ran generally from southeast to northwest across the valley, about midway it made a bend of nearly ninety degrees to the left, over a distance of several hundred yards. At the head of the bend was one of the shallow stretches, and in the middle of this shallow stretch was a low gravel island, which bisected the stream. Along the bend, the left bank consisted of a low line of gravel. Marshall had seen enough of the work of rivers to realize that they tended to exaggerate their curvature over time, as the faster flow along the outside of a bend ate away the outer bank and deposited the scourings in the calmer water along the inner shore, until some catastrophic flood breached the neck of the bend and straightened the stream overnight.

  Marshall decided to anticipate nature, to create his own catastrophe. He would breach the line of gravel on the left bank of the river and allow the stream, or a substantial portion of it, to flow straight from the head of the bend to the foot. By shortening the horizontal distance traversed by the water, this diversion would increase the gradient of the stream and hence the velocity of the water: from a man’s swift walk to a run. More to the point, it would increase the applicable force of the current, from that which in normal, nonflood times carried sand and other light particles gently along the stream bottom, to a force that would drive the waterwheel that would power the reciprocating saw blade that would tear the pine trees into boards. Marshall envisioned a dam at the head of the bend, which would compel the river to seek a new outlet, the millrace. Nature had done part of the damming work by depositing the gravel island, but much remained.

  There was nothing elaborate or complicated about this. It required only digging and lifting: moving dirt and gravel and rocks from where Marshall didn’t want them (the millrace) to where he did (the dam). Unskilled labor would certainly suffice.

  MARSHALL REPORTED BACK to Sutter, described Coloma, and explained his plan. At the time, he probably intended to rely on Indian labor, although he—and Sutter too—must have had some reservations. The indigenous Nisenan and their neighbors were not especially warlike, but neither were they notably friendly to interlopers. When the interlopers stuck together—as near Sutter’s Fort, which was a fort for a reason—the Indians left them alone. But Coloma was two days from the fort, and, at the least, the livestock and other provisions brought from the fort to the construction site would be prey to pilfering. Marshall and Sutter might ask Indians in their employ to guard and defend Sutter’s property, but the partners would be foolish to count on the Indians to endanger themselves for the white men.

  Luckily, not long after Sutter satisfied himself that Marshall’s plan was feasible, and the two exchanged signatures on a contract, the labor problem solved itself, temporarily at any rate. Four months after Marshall was mustered out of the military, the army released the members of the Mormon Battalion, one of the more remarkable contingents in the long history of American military voluntarism. The war with Mexico began at just the moment when the Mormons, having been driven sequentially from Ohio, Missouri, and Illinois, were planning their hegira to the wilderness beyond the boundaries of the United States. Precisely where the hegira would end hadn’t been established, but Mormon leader Brigham Young and his fellow elders could tell that the trek would be difficult and expensive. Any assistance, from almost any source, would be appreciated. When the call came from Washington for volunteers against Mexico, Young recognized the possibilities it presented. Uncle Sam was offering to transport west as many men as the Mormons could supply, and pay them for the journey. Of course, their time, and their lives, would not be their own for the duration of the fighting, but at war’s end they would be closer to the Mormons’ new home, wherever that proved to be, and would have pockets full of cash, which would help build the new colony. So the Mormon Council of Twelve issued its own call for volunteers on Washington’s behalf, and the Mormon Battalion was born.

  Like Marshall’s, the Mormons’ war included far more marching—in their case, across some of the most forbidding stretches of the Great Basin—than shooting, as well as the soldier’s usual share of sitting around. Consequently it was a tough, bored, but otherwise healthy crew that left the employ of the U.S. Army in July 1847 at the quiet town of Los Angeles, eager to rejoin the families and friends from whom they had parted the previous year.

  Confusingly, however, they didn’t know where to go. They had last heard from the church leaders almost a year earlier and had only the vaguest idea where their fellow Saints’ flight into the wilderness had ended. All the same, with no means of supporting themselves at Los Angeles, they headed north, toward the more populated regions of California. There they hoped to encounter word from the new Mormon colony and receive further marching orders, thi
s time from their own people.

  Some 150 set out from Los Angeles in late July, and after a hot, wearing journey along the same route Marshall had followed the previous spring, they reached the Sacramento. There they learned that the Council of Twelve had planted the church in the valley of the Great Salt Lake. With rising hearts they marched on to Sutter’s Fort, where they purchased provisions for the last leg of their journey, east over the mountains and desert to their new home.

  They ascended the western slope of the Sierras, crossing the divide by the same pass—although in the opposite direction—as the ill-fated Donner party, which several months earlier had succumbed to starvation and cannibalism amid the snows of winter. Evidence of the disaster was still visible. “Their bones were lying scattered over the ground,” recorded one of the Mormons. Many of the Saints were family men, and couldn’t help feeling pity for the children who died. But all were veterans of the wilderness, and like many of similar experience after such disasters, they couldn’t help thinking that the tragedy was at least as much the result of bad decisions as bad luck—which made it all the more tragic. Sutter, below at his fort, shared this view, and added to it a certain annoyance. He had gone to some pains and no little expense to send a relief party to rescue the Donner group, and was miffed at the way things turned out. “The provisions not satisfying the starving sufferers,” he afterward complained, “they killed and ate, first, the mules, then the horses, and, finally, they killed and ate my good Indians.”

  The Mormons saw snow themselves, although September had barely started. Azariah Smith, traveling with his father, Albert, wrote on September 7, “We crossed the divide, which was very high and snow in places on top.” That evening brought no new snow, but rather messengers with fresh word from home. “There was a letter read from the Twelve to the Battalion, which gave us much joy. I and Father received a letter from Mother, which gave us much more.”

  The joy was greater for some than for others. The message from the Twelve directed those veterans without dependent wives and children in Utah to return to the Sacramento. As things were, the colony at Salt Lake was already hungry; it needed no new mouths to feed, especially with winter coming on. The veterans without dependents should spend the winter in California, earning such wages as they could, saving their money, and preparing to join the rest of the Saints in the spring.

  So Azariah Smith, with a heavy but obedient heart, said good-bye to his father, who had younger children in Utah, and joined about half the company in retracing their steps west across the Donner Pass. On September 15 they arrived again at Sutter’s Fort and applied for work.

  Sutter was delighted to see them. With the two mill projects under way, he needed all the strong arms and backs he could get. He offered to pay the newcomers either by the month ($25) or by the cubic yard of earth and rock displaced (121/2 cents). Hale, confident, and zealous in their desire to help the church, they opted for the piece rate.

  Sutter was impressed with their energy and ambition, and shortly he sent them to Coloma, where Marshall had just begun work. “We was three days a going there, as we had an ox team, which was very slow,” wrote Azariah Smith. The Mormons discovered an unanticipated perquisite of the Coloma job, or what they initially took to be a perquisite. Referring to Jennie Wimmer, Smith noted, “We have a woman cook, which is something we have not had for a long time.”

  Digging ditches and piling rocks was harder than the newcomers had anticipated. “Three days this week I have worked,” Smith wrote at the end of the first week, “but my back was so lame yesterday that I did not work.” Although his back recovered, he fell ill. His malady seemed mild at first, but it kept recurring, so that from early October through mid-November he worked hardly at all. “By Thursday I thought I had got well,” he wrote on Monday, October 11, “and, anxious to procure means to take me back home [to Utah], in the morning I went to work, and worked lightly till noon, when after dinner I had a chill, and have had one every day since.” At the end of that week he wrote, “Through the goodness of the Lord my chills have left me, but I have been very weak. One night before the chills left I was very sick, and I felt bad, the thought running in my mind that likely I never should see home again, which was a perfect torment to my mind.” Three weeks later he managed to resume some light work, but as late as December 12, he wrote, “Last Thursday I had a chill and fever.”

  Smith wasn’t the only one who got sick. Others became so ill they had to be sent to Sutter’s Fort to recuperate. Marshall fretted at the delay. He knew the Mormons would depart in the spring, leaving him to finish the sawmill with the Indians. He could probably do so if he had to, but it wasn’t a prospect he relished.

  AS WORRISOME AS the health of the men was the state of the weather. Autumn always came sooner to the mountains than to the foothills around Coloma, and sooner to the foothills than to the valley near the fort. The clouds off the Pacific typically overflew the valley before colliding with the mountains and releasing their load of moisture. In the autumn this fell as rain, which ran off the steep slopes and raised the rivers in the lower elevations weeks before those lower elevations themselves received much precipitation. As the season progressed, the moisture in the mountains fell as snow, which stuck to the slopes; by then, though, rain was falling in the foothills and the valley, greening the hillsides but making the roads difficult for men and horses, and nearly impassable for wheeled vehicles. Any provisions and equipment that didn’t get to Coloma by about the first of December probably wouldn’t get there till spring.

  In 1847 the initial autumn rains reached Coloma in early November. “We have had a good deal of rain,” Azariah Smith wrote, summarizing the week preceding November 10. Sutter accordingly accelerated his supply schedule. “Started 5 wagons with provisions,” he jotted in his journal at the fort on Tuesday, November 16. The following Sunday, Smith at Coloma noted, “Yesterday there came five wagon loads of provisions, as the provision for the winter has to be brought before the rainy season commences.” December saw showers, succeeded, after the first of the year, by a drenching Pacific storm. “Sunday it began raining, and rained all day and night, and has rained off and on ever since,” Smith wrote on Tuesday, January 11.

  The rains did more than disrupt transport; they threatened the construction of the sawmill, now at a critical stage. Most of the dam was completed, and the millrace had been etched across the peninsula on the inside of the river’s bend. The foundation of the mill had been laid, and the timbers of the lower portion were in place. But the dam hadn’t withstood winter’s high water, and Marshall wasn’t sure it could. As things happened, the storm caught him at the fort, where he was supervising Sutter’s blacksmiths in the fabrication of the machinery for the mill. In Marshall’s absence, the men at Coloma watched the water rise and wondered if the flood would undo all their work of the previous months. Smith wrote of the storm’s effect on a crucial part of the construction: “It raised the river very high, and we expected to see the water go around the abutment almost every minute.”

  Marshall and Sutter worried about the danger upstream, but, realizing there was nothing they could do till the water fell, they decided Marshall should stay by the forge to see the ironwork finished. On January 14 he loaded the irons into a wagon, hitched up three yoke of oxen and, with the assistance of two Indian boys, set out for Coloma. The journey went slowly along the muddy road. After forty-eight hours they were only halfway there. But en route they encountered a party returning from a previous delivery; these men brought the welcome news that the dam had held. At Coloma, Henry Bigler recorded, “Clear as a bell and the water is a-falling and the mill safe.”

  BUT WINTER WAS JUST starting, and more storms would follow. Marshall was impatient to complete the work. His impatience increased, on reaching Coloma, at learning of the revolt against Jennie Wimmer and at having to grant the rebels’ demand of time to build their separate quarters. Meanwhile he examined what the crew had accomplished in his absence. The headrac
e—the portion of the race above the mill—met his approval, but the tailrace—below the mill—was too shallow and narrow to accommodate the volume of water necessary to drive the saw. It must be enlarged.

  Marshall decided to enlist the force that had nearly destroyed the project. The excavation of the headrace had had to be done more or less precisely; if the water overflowed the banks of the headrace it would erode the foundations of the mill. But once past the mill, the water’s specific course mattered little. The only essential was that the water return to the river without backing up under the mill. Marshall decided to let the water cut its own course beyond the mill.

  The mill’s design included an undershot wheel, with the water rushing beneath the loading platform. Until the construction was complete, Marshall couldn’t let the water flow while the men were at work, crawling around and underneath the mill. But at night, when the work was suspended, he could open the gates at the head of the race and let the water pour through. While the men slept, the water would carve out the tailrace. The process shouldn’t take long; within a few weeks, barring an act of God or other disruption, the mill would be ready for its first logs.