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The year is 1854, and the once sleepy Spanish province of California
has been booming for the past five years with men pouring in from around the world to find quick and easy wealth. The place is Nevada City – a gold mining town in the Sierra Nevada Mountains which is at the peak of its boom with high grade ore seemingly flowing in rivers from the ground, pausing only briefly to spend a few hours in a leather pouch hanging from a man’s belt, and then moving on to be measured out in grains and nuggets to purchase whiskey, or female companionship, or something else just as ephemeral and just as quickly forgotten. Men crowd the streets of Nevada City seeking that alcoholic haze of the night which will briefly separate them from the mindless shovelfuls of endless dirt which fill their days, and perhaps they might seek a woman as well who will share a few moments of her time for a few flakes of gold. But women are few, and the wait for them is always long. The day is the fourteenth of February, a day which is vaguely familiar to you from memories of the home you left behind; a day as one on which a man and a woman are supposed to share intimations of affection. But the miners walking the rough streets of Nevada City have no one with whom to share affection. And the miner who is walking these streets? He is you, and you are looking for . . . well, some kind of distraction. You’ve had a few drinks but that pleasant floating sensation has disappeared too soon from your brain while the acid remains too long in your throat. The lines at the brothels are much too long and the gold in your pouch has shrunk to a few small nuggets, so you’re wandering aimlessly with the thin hope in your heart of finding an inexpensive laugh, or at least a smile. Letting your feet guide your way you turn on to Broad Street and, looking up, you find yourself standing in front of a saloon you don’t remember ever seeing before. Looking at the elegant gold script on the front window you see that the place is called Dumont’s, and then you remember seeing the handbills posted around town for the past week which announced its opening. Dumont’s. A Gambling Establishment For Gentlemen Only Peeking around the gold lettering and in through the window you see a fairly large gathering, all men, clustered around two dozen or more gaming tables, most of them holding a glass in their hand and all behaving calmly, civilized; much more sedate than in any other establishment in town. So you straighten your spine, tuck your shirt into your belt, brush the loose dirt off your pants, take a deep breath, and push open the door. You have just entered Dumont’s, the newest and most elegant gambling hall in Nevada City. The proprietor is Eleanor Dumont, more famously known as Madame Moustache. There is a haze of cigar smoke in the air and the staccato sound of clattering chips mixed with the hum of men’s voices. Against the far wall at a long bar men are lined up, drinking mostly whiskey although an occasional beer mug glitters in the filtered light. Each of the tables in the room holds a small crowd of men, mostly playing faro or poker. Off to the left there is a table around which is gathered by far the largest crowd in the room, so you walk through the smoke and edge your way through the men until you’re standing at the table’s edge. And there, directly across from you, sits one of the most mesmerizing women you have ever seen. With her hair pulled back from a round face of olive skin her dark eyes suddenly look up at you. She catches your eye and gives you a slight smile, then raises her glass in a slight, personal toast and drains it. “Madame drinks only champagne,” the man next to you whispers softly, almost reverently. And as she holds your gaze your hand goes to the leather pouch on your belt, fingering the few small nuggets within and wondering just how much champagne they will purchase. But it doesn’t really matter, because you know you will spend them all anyway. You sigh as you open it and order a drink for the lady; the most famous lady in the California gold fields, the beautiful lady with the thin line of dark hair on her upper lip; the lady with the moustache. Eleanor Dumont was born in either France or in New Orleans, depending upon which tale you believe, and is consequently either French or Creole. She left home in her late teens and made her way to San Francisco, where at the age of twenty one she took a job as a card dealer playing the French game of vingt et un, the precursor to the modern game of twenty-one. It was a game which was almost completely unknown in California at the time, and therefore worthy of interest to all of the men who sought any kind of new and exciting entertainment in saloons. That, combined with the unheard of novelty of it being dealt by a woman, made her table the most popular one at the Bella Union, if not in all of San Francisco. Although she held the advantage of being the dealer as well as that of knowing the game well, she immediately gained a reputation of being a fair and honest card player, which further increased her popularity. She would greet each new player who approached her table with a slight smile and ask, “You will play, monsieur?” Few men could refuse. The expected reply was always, “Yes, I will play.” Or, “Oui,” if you wished to try to impress her with your limited knowledge of French. If a player happened to lose every last cent at her table she always offered to buy him a drink or give him a few dollars to get home, never expecting to be paid back. She would also help total strangers she would meet on the street and offer them money or a hot meal. She became so well liked around San Francisco that other dealers grew jealous and accused her of being a clever card sharp; a cheater who skinned her victims as she smiled at them, but this was seen as a ruse to discredit her and lure men away from her table so that others might profit. No one believed those stories because they were all enamored with the elegant French lady with the thin line of dark hair on her upper lip, Madame Moustache. By 1854 Eleanor had moved on to the mining camps and was in Nevada City, where she opened Dumont’s. It became an immediate success. Her partner managed the other tables in the establishment and left it to Eleanor draw the men in, which she did in droves. Her table was by far the most popular in the place, and she continued her habit of treating her patrons fairly and never hesitating to loan or give them money if they needed it. If a man wished to buy her a drink she would smile and always say “Oui”, as long as it was champagne. She would roll her own cigarettes and occasionally accept a cigar. And she asked that men refrain from cursing when with her and from telling ribald stories in her presence. She kept her private life private, was never known to take a lover, and her ever-present luck at the blackjack table never ceased. By 1857 the gold was playing out in Nevada City so Eleanor moved on to the mining town of Columbia, where she had similar success. When the gold played out there as well she went across the Sierra and by the early 1860’s had settled in Carson City, Nevada, where she decided to invest her substantial savings and retire from gambling. She settled down, bought a ranch, and the woman who had never before taken a lover suddenly fell in love. The man’s name was Jack McKnight, and he told Eleanor that he was in the cattle business and gave every impression of being a wealthy and successful man. He was in fact an accomplished con man, and it took him less than a month to fleece Eleanor of every cent she had, including her ranch. He disappeared with all of her money and left her financially destitute as well as broken hearted. But Eleanor wasn’t one to take this kind of treatment lying down. Her time of feeling sorry for herself quickly passed and she soon set off on McKnight’s trail. When she found him she rekindled their acquaintance with the aid of a double barreled shotgun, and gave him the contents of both barrels straight in the chest at close range as she said a final goodbye to the man who had broken her heart. She didn’t get her money back, but it certainly made her feel better. Alone again and broke, Eleanor was forced to return to the only profession she knew – dealing cards. She reestablished her trade in the gambling halls of Nevada, and from there moved on to several different towns in Montana. Then came Idaho, Utah, and again back to Nevada. Such famous Old West towns as Deadwood, South Dakota and Tombstone, Arizona were also graced with her presence, and wherever she went Madame Moustache was always the most famous lady in town as well as the most gracious, continuing her lifelong habit of generously standing the losers to a stake as she collected her winnings. But not all men behaved in quite the gentlemanly fashion which was expected of them. One evening in Bannack, Montana as Eleanor walked home, two men suddenly jumped out of the shadows and demanded her money – or else. Eleanor calmly replied that she would not give them her purse. Then, smiling, she added that they could have something else instead. Slowly and enticingly she lifted her skirt, and the men’s attention became riveted as Eleanor’s under garments were gradually exposed. Still smiling, she reached one hand beneath her skirt and quickly pulled out a Derringer and fired it point blank at one of the would-be robbers, who dropped where he stood with a hole in his chest and never moved again. The other man quickly disappeared back into the shadows from where he’d come and never bothered her again. As the 1860’s flowed into the 1870’s many of the mining towns of the West faded into ghost towns, and the communities that survived grew into more well-rounded places where a woman was no longer a novelty. Although still famous and still quite good at playing cards, Eleanor, too, changed with the times. The thin, pretty girl of San Francisco of 1849 grew into a more heavy character who now sat in the chair at the blackjack table. She now also had a darker and heavier moustache, and her taste in liquor expanded to include whiskey. As the towns grew more civilized and money spent at the gambling tables decreased, Madame Moustache was forced to expand her repertoire and become an actual Madame as well as a card dealer. In Deadwood, South Dakota, Eleanor struck up a friendship with Calamity Jane and taught the famous cowgirl the finer points of playing poker, although Jane apparently never developed the talent for cards as had Madame Moustache. When Eleanor next moved on to Tombstone, Arizona, she quickly saw that more income was to be made from prostitution that from playing cards. So, despite the fact that Tombstone already had a very popular brothel known as Blond Marie’s, Eleanor opened up a rival house just down the street, hiring a variety of girls to fill the beds. On Sundays she would have the ladies put on their best dresses, load them into an open wagon, and then drive up and down the streets of Tombstone so the men could get a good look. Eleanor would often smoke a cigar as she drove and wave it as the finer ladies in town stared at her in horror. By the middle of 1878 things had gone full circle for Madame Moustache and she was back in California; back in a mining camp; back to dealing twenty-one. In May of that year she arrived in the town of Bodie on the eastern side of the Sierra, and a Bodie newspaper acknowledged the arrival of the famous gambler in town and welcomed her, commenting that she still looked as young and as pretty as she ever had. For a little over a year Eleanor continued to deal cards in Bodie and made a quiet living, but was never able to replace the fortune taken from her by Jack McKnight. On September seventh of 1879 the luck of Madame Moustache finally ran out. The previous several nights had not seen her usual run of money at the card table, and her personal card-playing bank had slowly diminished as the week went by. On the seventh it ran out completely and Eleanor had to beg a few hundred dollars from a friend to continue playing. When that, too, was soon lost and all her friends refused to lend Eleanor a stake, she rose and said a quiet goodnight to the men in the Magnolia Saloon where her table had been for the past year and headed out the door. She went to her room and scribbled a short note. Then, taking a bottle off the table, she went down the street and out of town, walking into the desert. There, all alone, Madame Moustache ended her life. The next morning a sheep herder found her body, laying on the ground with a rock for a pillow beneath her head, the hastily scribbled note still clutched in her hand and the now empty bottle by her side. Broke and all alone, Eleanor had committed suicide. People in Bodie had noticed that she had been spiraling emotionally downward for months and no one was there for her on that final evening when she so desperately needed someone; someone to help her as she had helped so many others. The note in her hand indicated her wishes for the disposition of her few possessions, and the autopsy showed that her last drink had been of red wine heavily laced with morphine – a most uncharacteristic drink for the famous champagne-loving Madame Moustache. Word of her death spread like wildfire throughout the towns of the West. The citizens of Bodie passed the hat around to collect money to send her off properly, and men travelled hundreds of miles to attend her funeral – the largest funeral ever held in the town of Bodie and one of the largest funerals anywhere in California up to that time. So many carriages were needed for the funeral procession that they had to be brought in from Carson City, over a hundred miles away. Men from all over the West joined the procession and then retired to the saloons to raise a glass in her honor. The news stories from the Bodie newspapers were wired all across the country, and Madame Moustache’s fame in death now eclipsed the considerable fame she had enjoyed in life. Eleanor Dumont was laid to rest in the Bodie cemetery where she resides to this day, although the marker on her grave has long since disappeared and now no one is quite sure of exactly where rests. But if you visit the mining town of Bodie, which is now a state park, and if you walk its streets and peer in the windows of its saloons, then perhaps you just might hear the echoes of the shouts of the boisterous crowds who once jostled around the table of Madame Moustache. And if you are in Bodie in the late evening when the cards were once falling and the piles of chips were being pushed across the tables as men drank whiskey; won and lost small fortunes; and bought glasses of champagne for the elegant Madame Moustache, then perhaps you will want to take a few minutes to say goodbye to the famous lady yourself and walk across the road to the Bodie Cemetery. Bring a bottle of champagne with you, and a couple of glasses. And as the stars shine bright above the quiet desert, from somewhere amidst the headstones you just may hear her whisper, “You will play, monsieur?” Fill the glasses with cold champagne and lift yours in a toast, a salute to a full life; a life well-lived. “Oui, madame. I will play.”
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The Sierra Nevada Mountains are always beautiful, but often deadly.
Those who do not give due consideration to even the most casual of walks can quickly end up being themselves a casualty; those who are unaware of the body of historical tragedies in this area sometimes add their own body to the historical count; those who don’t believe there is even a ghost of a chance that they will be injured may well end up walking the mountains as ghosts themselves. And one of the Sierra Nevada high mountain peaks with a larger than average population of those entities who might check the box on the Census Form labeled Ghost is the aptly named Shuteye Peak. Shuteye Peak is an imposing edifice reaching to a height of 8,358 feet in the Sierra National Forest just to the north of Kings Canyon National Park. If you manage to reach the top of this impressive peak, then from its summit you will have a commanding view of the surrounding mountains for miles in every direction. That’s why the U.S. Forest Service established a fire lookout here in 1907, and the comforting presence of its watchful eyes stands careful guard over not only the woods below but also over the town of North Fork nearby as its staff constantly searches the forest for approaching fires. That same view is what has brought hikers to this area for more than a century. Perhaps that breathtaking view is why the ghosts of some are said to linger in the area as well; spirits of those who came only to briefly play, but whom Shuteye Peak decided to claim. When you get to the top of Shuteye Peak you will meet a few of the ghosts almost immediately, and it will be a welcome relief from the trip if you pause to pay your respects. If you’ve hiked here then you’re probably hot, tired, and thirsty. If you’ve driven here, then those last few miles on the deeply rutted dirt road will probably have broken your derriere if not your vehicle’s axles. So as you limp toward the lookout you will notice a large rock with some metallic plates which are asking for your attention as they reflect shards of sunlight into your eyes, and you’ll be glad to pause before that boulder and see that the plaques all have names and dates; that they commemorate the hard work and dedicated lives of several Forest Service employees who devoted large portions of their lives and energy to this forest and the lookout near Shuteye Peak. They all loved this mountain and wanted to remain a part of it, and these plaques in their memory are their way of remaining. Then, off to one side, you will see that cemented into this boulder is an urn containing the ashes of Sam MacFarland, one of the pioneer lookouts at Shuteye Peak. He, too wished to remain, and his is a kind and friendly spirit. These are the ghosts of those who watch over Shuteye Peak from the Other Side. These are the Benevolent Ghosts of those who spent happy times here and wished for a portion of themselves to remain as part of the mountain they loved. But not all of Shuteye’s ghosts are quite so happy. James Arthur was an avid photographer. It was a hobby which brought him much satisfaction, and he often trekked in the Sierra Nevada Mountains to capture unique photographs of rough rocky slopes and high alpine lakes. He was a retired military man in excellent physical condition and with far above average survival skills. He was sixty-seven years old when he climbed into his pickup truck early in the morning of July 28th, 2008, telling his family that he was off to take some pictures near Shuteye Peak and that he’d return that same day. James was quite wrong about that. He never returned. When James Arthur’s family reported him as missing the Madera County Sheriff’s Department immediately initiated a search and dozens of volunteers went into the mountains to look for him. They split into groups and focused on different areas where he might have gone to take his photos. The next afternoon one of those search groups found Arthur’s pickup truck at an elevation of about seven thousand feet. James was not in the vehicle. There was no evidence of either an accident or of foul play. The weather was sunny, warm, and mild, and the three search groups converged near the truck to canvass the area. They were convinced that they would soon find him as Arthur’s family had said that he was wearing a bright orange shirt or vest when he left home. But the searchers never caught a glimpse of orange; they never found a trace of anything – no trail; no clothing, camera, or equipment; no James Arthur. He was a man in excellent physical condition, with an intelligent mind used to solving problems, and with skills that could easily see him through spending a summer night or two in the forest. But he had disappeared, leaving his truck parked on a frequently used road, never to be seen again. He was only a few miles from Shuteye Peak. Strangely, someone else had disappeared in just about exactly that same area only a few years before. In April of 2005 a Mariposa resident by the name of Doug Pearce decided to go camping in the Shuteye Peak area. Doug was a retired nuclear engineer and, at the age of eighty-six, was in excellent physical shape. He was also still mentally sharp and was an active volunteer in his community, particularly at schools where he worked with young students. Doug had an abundance of mental and physical energy and a keen interest in life, so when he decided to go camping by himself it didn’t strike anyone whom he knew as being strange. But when he took off on April 21st of that year it was the last time anyone would ever see him. Shortly thereafter Douglas’s truck was found on a road near Summit Campground, at an elevation of just under six thousand feet, stuck in mud and largely burned by a fire of unknown cause. The truck contained no body, and nearby Summit Campground, which had apparently been his destination, contained no trace of Pearce. Friends knew of no reason why Pearce would want to disappear; nor did they know of any enemies who may have stalked him. A bear or mountain lion attack would have left evidence. Logic dictated that Pearce, being both an intelligent person and a man with wilderness experience, would have simply walked along the road after his vehicle failed him until he either reached the campground or came across another vehicle on the road. But no other people in the area ever saw him. Search parties organized by the county sheriff combed the area around both the campground as well as the road on which the truck had been found, and then fanned out for several miles from those points. No trace of Doug Pearce was ever found – not a body; not a fragment of clothing; not even a footprint. Pearce had disappeared into thin air, never to be seen again. He was less than five miles from Shuteye Peak, and his disappearance remains both strange and unsettling. One of the strange things is that he vanished very close to the spot where James Arthur was to disappear just three years later. Theresa Bier went missing in 1987. She was a young girl from Fresno; only sixteen years of age. She went to Shuteye Peak one day and simply disappeared, never to be seen or heard from ever again. And there are several odd circumstances regarding her disappearance - odd, perhaps even creepy. One day in June of 1987 Theresa’s neighbor, an older man who lived nearby and knew her family well, asked her parents for their permission to take Theresa on a camping trip into the Sierras to look for that elusive creature known as Bigfoot. The neighbor, it seemed, was a self-proclaimed leading expert on Bigfoot. That was the first oddity about this case. The second strange thing about this is that Theresa’s parents immediately said ‘Yes, you can take her’, and sent their sixteen year old daughter off to the mountains alone to go camping with an older man on the pretext of contacting a creature never proven to exist. Although, to be fair, there were rumors of Bigfoot sightings in many areas of the Sierra Nevada Mountains. So off the two went to find and contact Bigfoot, but when the neighbor returned to Fresno, he returned without Theresa. The man had taken the teenager to Shuteye Peak. Theresa was reported as a Missing Person, and the reason that she was missing, as sworn by the neighbor, was that she had been abducted by a tribe of Bigfoots on a rocky lope near Shuteye. This, too, should have seemed slightly odd to Theresa’s parents, and it did not escape the detection of law enforcement officials who asked the man to guide them to the scene of the kidnapping and the guilty tribe of elusive primates. He dutifully did so and the area was thoroughly searched. Theresa was not found; neither were any of her belongings; her clothing; her blood. Nor was any evidence of large mammals found. Nothing. The neighbor was arrested but the charges soon had to be dropped for lack of evidence, as several subsequent searches of the area around Shuteye Peak turned up nothing. Theresa Bier disappeared into thin air on June first of 1987 and to this day not the slightest scrap of evidence has been found to resolve the mystery of her vanishing. If the disappearance of Doug Pearce was Odd, this case oozed over the line into the Creepy Zone. Theresa Bier was a happy girl; a trusting girl, and though her body has never been found her memory, her spirit, still hang restlessly around Shuteye Peak. And there with her, keeping her company, is the shade of another child who disappeared back in 1934, a boy by the name of Richard McPherson. Richard was only ten years old when he disappeared near Shuteye Peak on May 26th of 1934. He and his brother Robert were the children of a Forest Service Ranger named Chester McPherson, a man who worked in the Shuteye Peak area, and the children were apparently comfortable with often entertaining themselves on the mountain while their father was occupied with his ranger duties. One day in May the two boys, along with their cousin Howard, decided to go fishing in a nearby stream known as Rock Creek. It is a small stream at an elevation of about 5,500 feet, neither wide nor deep. While they were thus occupied trying to catch dinner the boys were unaware of a fast moving storm blowing into the area – an event which is not unusual in May in the Sierra Nevada Mountains. The temperature fell along with the snow and the three boys decided to wait it out and camp for the night next to the creek. The next morning Robert set out to get assistance, leaving Richard and Cousin Howard at the fishing site. When Robert returned with help, Howard told them that ten year old Richard McPherson had wandered off and never returned. Dozens of Forest Service Rangers, the father’s friends and co-workers, immediately descended on the area and began the search. They were soon supplemented with volunteers from the Civilian Conservation Corps who had been working on projects in the region. The search soon spread outward from the creek and the men searched for miles in all directions. What was most odd about this disappearance was that Richard should have left a clear trail of footprints in the freshly fallen snow, a trail which would have been still visible to the searchers and easy to follow. But there was no such trail. It was as if Richard had simply been lifted into the air. But despite this mystery the men kept up their search and two days later their efforts were rewarded – if the finding of a body can be interpreted as a reward. Richard McPherson was dead. He had apparently died of exposure. But the other odd thing which the searchers noted when they found the body was that half of Richard’s clothing had been removed, and the officials concluded that Richard himself must have done so because the clothing may have become wet and uncomfortable. Yet such a conclusion simply did not make sense. Even at his young age Richard had spent much of his time in the forest with his father the forest service ranger. If he was cold and suffering from exposure he would have known enough to instead seek additional insulation and definitely not remove what clothing he already had on. But official explanations are often intended to simply close a case; not necessarily make sense of it. And perhaps those leading the search did not want to raise questions they couldn’t answer. Eerily, the disappearance of young Richard McPherson in 1934 proved to be an uncanny premonition of the disappearance of Theresa Bier in 1987. They both disappeared in the same area near Shuteye Peak, literally within a stone’s throw of each other, and just a few miles from where Doug Pearce’s truck was found; just a few miles from where James Arthur walked off onto the mountain and disappeared forever. None of these individuals who disappeared near Shuteye Peak was physically infirm or mentally unstable. None had any known enemies. And none of them had any reason to want to intentionally disappear. Yet they all did disappear, and they all did so within the same closely defined geographic area; all very close to roads, campgrounds, and other people. All of them were reported as Missing Persons within a very short time of their last being seen and searches for all of them then began immediately, so all four of them should have still been within a short distance of where they’d last been seen. Yet none were. One died quickly; three were never seen again. Shuteye Peak took them, and did so in ways which defy logic and reason. It took them in numbers which stretch the laws of probability for such a relatively small and remote area; a mountain with not nearly the high volume of visitors as Yosemite to the north and Kings Canyon to the south. And it took them in ways which make one wonder if some unknown component of their disappearances still lies waiting to be discovered. It took them in ways which are unsettling, and leave many of those who walk the trails of Shuteye Peak with a feeling of restless uneasiness. And it has likely taken others, for the challenge of the peak and the beauty of its vistas would have beckoned countless others throughout the centuries before people thought of recording such stories with paper and ink. Shuteye Peak has its ghosts - the Good Ones, who watched over the mountain when it was part of their lives and wished a part of themselves to stay after their deaths; the Restless Ones, who came innocently to the mountain and suddenly lost their lives, their souls; leaving their memories and spirits wandering the forest paths. When you visit the lookout and walk these mountain trails you can feel the presence of all of them around you; the happy and the sad; the Restless Spirits of Shuteye Peak whispering to you through the trees; their shades just visible to you; flitting through the forest just on the edge of your vision; beckoning you. Listen; look; but keep walking. |
AuthorWith a degree in Anthropology and an avid interest in history, Tim Christensen has lived in the Sierra Nevada Mountains for many years. He has no cell phone or television, but manages, when not chopping firewood or shoveling snow, to keep himself entertained with a library of several thousand books. Archives
July 2017
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Sequoia Parks Conservancy, the official 501(c)(3) nonprofit partner of Sequoia and Kings Canyon National Parks (National Park Service) and Lake Kaweah (U.S. Army Corps of Engineers), uses tax-deductible contributions to support these parks.
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Sequoia Parks Conservancy
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