Before you say I do, and other tales from the Mother Lode

Living in California’s Gold Country provides fresh perspective on the past and occasional lessons from history.

Earlier this spring I spent a morning at the Tuolumne County Museum and Historical Society. The museum is housed in a former jail where another former jail stood until it burned down, taking the arsonist with it. The new structure was used as a jail until 1960.

During the 1800s and early 1900s, the sheriff and his family lived in adjacent quarters in the same building. Some wives grew vegetables in the jail yard and children played on the sidewalk out front.

Before a young woman agreed to be courted by a would-be sheriff, the question begs asking, “If we get married, where will we live?”

The last sheriff to live at the jail was John Henry “Jack” Dambacher. He was elected to serve six consecutive terms, 24 years total, from 1923 to 1947. Most of the criminals were local residents, but once or twice an inmate was from the FBI’s Most Wanted list.

The wife handled booking the criminals when her husband was out. In addition to caring for her family, she kept the cell block keys with her when necessary, cooked meals and oversaw the female prisoners.

More than 65 gold camps were established in Tuolumne County between 1849 and 1860, with dozens of nationalities represented. Columbia was once a town of 40,000.

Besides gold mining, other industries in the area included logging, livestock, orchards, copper mining and marble quarrying. After the 1906 earthquake in San Francisco, marble was shipped from Tuolumne County to rebuild the city.

In the mid to late 1800s, when the Washington Monument was being constructed on the East Coast, memorial stones were sent from cities, states, foreign countries and organizations to be included in the structure’s interior. California sent Columbia marble by ship, but the ship sank. After recovering the rock, it disappeared again and never arrived at its destination. (Source: “Marble: Historic Columbia’s Gray Gold,” a book by Carlo M. De Ferrari.)

Gold Fever lured immigrants from all over the world to the Sierra Nevada foothills. Many encampments and towns sprang up near mines as a result, with names like Campo Seco, Yorktown, Poverty Hill, Darrah, Princeton and French Camp. These settlements have disappeared, leaving only a street name to remind us of their existence.

Nancy Kelsey was the first white woman to cross Utah, Nevada and into California in 1841. She and her husband, Benjamin, traveled with the Bartleson-Bidwell party from Missouri. Kelsey helped design the original Bear Flag, and is remembered as California’s Betsy Ross. The town of Kelseyville is named after one of their relatives.

While driving along these country roads through out-of-the-way places, I’ll notice remnants from history: a small grove of olive trees where a house once stood, and concrete piers on either side of a creek, revealing the existence of a bridge in decades past.

And after spending a day in the Central Valley, while driving home toward the mountains, I can’t help but think how the 40 or 50 miles one way takes me less than an hour to cross. But it took days for travelers in an earlier century.

I usually don’t have time for wandering around museums, but when I do, it’s easy to get lost. I want to examine almost every artifact and read every word of the stories, from pioneers who forged their way west, amid hardship, disease, poverty and even death.

Major museums offer free admission at various times of the year. For details see http://savvycities.com/museum-free-days/. And some credit card companies offer free entrance to museums for cardholders on the first weekend of every month.

Tuolumne County Museum and Historical Society is located at 158 Bradford St. in Sonora, and is open weekdays from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. and Saturdays from 10 a.m. to 3:30 p.m. Exhibits range from the railroad and the Panama-Pacific International Exposition of 1915 to Tuolumne County’s movie industry.

Call 209-532-1317 or visit www.tchistory.org for more information. Admission is free, but donations are welcome.

Next time you’re in Gold Country, stop in Oakhurst, Mariposa, La Grange, Sonora, Columbia or one of our other towns and visit the local museum. Don’t be surprised to discover more than you expected.

This story was originally published May 13, 2016 at 2:21 PM with the headline "Before you say I do, and other tales from the Mother Lode."