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The Headless Miner of Deadman Pass

10/31/2015

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                                    “Robert Hume was found quite dead;
                                     It was quickly noted he had no head;
                            Someone lopped it off and it rolled in the creek;
                                   Robert knows who, but he can’t speak.”

Gold, Greed, and Guns are the making of many stories that took place
in the Sierra Nevada Mountains, and if they were the only ingredients
of this tale then it might perhaps be considered just another (yawn)
commonplace tale of the past. But if you throw in a lost gold mine it
begins to tweak one’s interest. And then if you add a headless body
found on a mountainside – well, then it might veer out of the ordinary
and into the Land of the Strange.

In the year 1857 two German immigrants took their leave in Nevada from
a California-bound wagon train and began to trek along the eastern
side of the Sierra Nevada Mountains, their hope being that, if instead
of continuing on to the already crowded gold fields of California they
instead explored a hitherto untapped region of the eastern Sierras,
they might not only find a gold mine but also have it all to
themselves. Their trek took them past Mono Lake and then high up into
the mountains near the streams that fed the Owens River. One day while
stopping for a rest near one of those streams they noticed, virtually
right next to their heads, a rocky outcropping which was reddish in
color and which, upon closer examination, appeared to have large lumps
of gold cemented in place within it.  The gold mine having found them,
the two men set to work chipping gold chunks out of the ledge and soon
had filled their packs with as much gold as they could carry, then
they set out to complete their journey across the mountains to
California. One of the men made it; the other died along the way. When
the surviving but sick miner arrived in the town of Millerton he was
told by the local doctor that he had tuberculosis and was sent to San
Francisco to see a specialist. There he was treated by a Dr. Randall
who was unable to cure him, and this miner, too, soon passed on.
Having no money the miner paid Dr. Randall with gold and even threw in
a map to the general location of the mine for good measure before he
died, which hardly seems justified given that the doctor was unable to
cure him. Perhaps he was just feeling generous as he viewed the
approach of the Reaper.

Following the map, Dr. Randall arrived in the general location of the
lost mine in 1861 with some friends and began his search for the exact
location of the gold. But once you share a secret, even with friends,
then it is no longer a secret, and the area soon became flooded with
men hungry for lost treasure. The Paiute Indians who lived on these
lands and who had been native to the area for centuries resented the
intrusion of the white gold seekers and the “Paiute War” soon began,
in which several prospectors were killed. It was said that two men in
Randall’s party actually found the ledge in question but kept the
location to themselves, intending to return and mine it when the
others had given up and departed. But if that was indeed the case then
it could never be verified, for those two men were among the first
killed when the Paiutes began their campaign to evict the unwanted
intruders. The mine was never found but for decades men kept coming,
braving the harsh climate of the mountains and the deadly retribution
of the Paiutes in the hope of finding that particular rocky ledge next
to a stream in which lumps of gold still waited, cemented together in
the rock  – the Lost Cement Mine.

Two of those men were named Farnsworth and Hume. In the mid-1860’s
Farnsworth met Robert Hume in Carson, Nevada. He cajoled Hume with a
tale of lost wealth waiting to be found up in the Sierras, and when
that didn’t quite convince Hume to accompany him Farnsworth upped the
ante and added that he had actually found the lost mine but needed
somebody to finance an expedition to retrieve its wealth.

Do you, Mr. Hume, by any chance have some money to invest for a half
interest in the treasure?

It turned out that indeed Hume did, and that he was willing to put up
several hundred dollars to go and get the gold and buy the equipment
for a mill to process it. So the two set off into the mountains, never
to be seen again. Well, to be accurate Hume was seen again, but he was
no longer alive nor in one piece. His body was found resting
peacefully high on a mountainside, and his head was later discovered
in a streambed not too far away, eyes still open and looking
surprised. The place where Hume’s body was found came to be called
Deadman Summit, and Deadman Pass nearby soon also adopted the name.
Some blamed the Paiutes for the deed as they had established a
reputation for dispatching miners, but Paiutes were not known for
decapitating their victims. So suspicion soon came to rest upon Hume’s
partner, Farnsworth, but Farnsworth had disappeared and was never seen
again.

Or was he?

A few years later, in 1869, two men named McDougall and Kent arrived
in Stockton and began purchasing supplies and equipment for a mining
expedition up into the mountains. Part way up they abandoned their
wagon and hired a native guide to take them and their pack horses
farther into the wilderness. The guide returned several weeks later
and said that he had left the two men near Mammoth Mountain, and the
men were seen off and on over the next several years repeating this
same expedition, leaving in the Spring and returning in the Fall, but
they were always careful to cover their trail and no one knew exactly
where they went.

Then in 1877 a man fell unconscious to the pavement on a San Francisco
street corner. When he awoke he was paralyzed and near death. A priest
was summoned to hear the man’s last confession and the sick man
revealed that he was McDougall, and that for the past eight years he
and his partner Kent had made regular trips to the Lost Cement Mine
and removed anywhere from $25,000 to $50,000 worth of gold each season
before the snow fell. Kent, who had known where the gold was located
and was the senior partner, took the bulk of the treasure back to
Chicago with him each Autumn and would return again in the Spring for
more gold. But this past year, McDougall wheezed as he lay dying, Kent
had decided would be the last, as the area of the mountains near the
mine was becoming too populated and someone was bound to discover
them. Kent said he would never return again. And McDougall, who had
been getting increasingly sick over the past year, knew that he would
never return to the mine again either.  Then, breathing his last,
McDougall apparently told the priest that Kent was in reality
Farnsworth, who had lopped off the head of his former partner, Robert
Hume. And then McDougall died.

There are many who take this whole tale with a large grain of salt
(instead of a large lump of gold). What begs most attention is that,
for a Lost Mine, a lot of people seemed to find it and then lose it
again. And why didn’t McDougall just make an occasional trip to the
mine by himself while Kent spent months each year in Chicago? And how
did just part of McDougall’s dying confession become public knowledge
– the part about the yearly trips to the mine – while other parts -
such as the exact location of the mine and the definite accusation
that Kent and Farnsworth were the same man – remained within the realm
of speculation and rumor?

Yet key parts of the tale are undeniably true. Gold was found in
abundance in that part of the Sierra Nevada Mountains, as proven when
such mining communities as Bodie and Mammoth City soon after sprang
into existence. The original finder of the gold, the man who stumbled
from the mountains, sick with tuberculosis, and paid his doctor with
gold nuggets was also a fact. McDougall and Kent did make regular
trips into the mountains every year for several years, and they would
hardly have done so had there not been some reward waiting for them.
And the headless body of Robert Hume was indeed a glaring and
undeniable fact. These are all things that are known.

But why did Robert Hume die, and did Farnsworth kill him? Was Kent
really Farnsworth, and had he discovered the location of the lost mine
and become fabulously wealthy? Is the lost mine still out there,
waiting to make someone else rich beyond their dreams with wealth yet
untapped? These are things that are not known, and may never be known.

But when you next hike over that part of the Sierras and suddenly find
yourself enjoying the view from Deadman Summit, may your thoughts now
inevitably turn to the possibility that lost gold may lie just around
the corner of the next granite outcropping, cemented within a rocky
ledge hanging just above a gentle stream. And as you pitch your tent
for the night and the darkness falls around you perhaps the shades of
some of the men who died looking for that gold will pay a visit to
your camp, and their soft laughter may wake you in the night.  And, if
you’re very lucky, then perhaps the ghost of Robert Hume, the Headless
Miner of Deadman Pass, will wake you in the wee small hours of the
morning, looking at you with eyes that stare without ever closing, and
he’ll whisper to you the location of the lost gold mine which he and
Farnsworth found. But you may have to bend low to hear him, for he’ll
be carrying his head in his hands.
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The Man Who Roamed The Stars

10/18/2015

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Torture, imprisonment, and astral projection are not usually subjects
associated with those who have visited this part of the Sierra Nevada
Mountains, yet they played a key role in the life of one man who was
to become very well-known long after his time spent here.

Of the many interesting individuals to visit this area of the Sierra
Nevada Mountains the names of relatively few have survived to populate
the history books, and then almost always due to the fact that they
did something Big (George Hume), or something Bad (Martin Vivian), or
something of Lasting Good (John Muir). Yet one of the most interesting
men who ever spent time in Grant Grove also spent time in Folsom and
San Quentin prisons, and is remembered now for a sequence of events
that began when, at the naïve age of twenty-four years, he included
two loaded revolvers with the contents of a luncheon tray destined for
a notorious prisoner being held in the Fresno County Jail. Those
revolvers, and the escape which they helped to precipitate, led to Ed
Morrell becoming a household name.

Born in Pennsylvania in the year 1868, Morrell’s wanderings brought
him to California around 1890 where he immediately had one minor brush
with the law after another. A larceny conviction landed him in San
Quentin for two years, and after his release a minor infraction in
Fresno allowed him to become briefly incarcerated in the Fresno County
jail and to get acquainted with its occupants. This was a fateful
encounter destined to change Morrell’s life forever, as one of those
prisoners was the notorious accused train robber, Chris Evans, a man
who made such a lasting and positive impression upon Morrell that he
quickly made the decision to risk his own life and freedom in an
effort to help Evans.

While working as a waiter at a Fresno restaurant Morrell, like
everyone else in the Central Valley, had become captivated by the
trial of Chris Evans. Some say Morrell fell under Evans’ spell and
idolized the outlaw, while others took perhaps a more romantic
approach and felt that he fell under the sway of Evans’ oldest
daughter, Eva, and was willing to do anything to please her. Whatever
the influence may have been, it led to Morrell placing two loaded
revolvers onto Evans’ lunch tray one day. As the deputies were used to
seeing Morrell delivering meals to the prisoners they had fallen into
a comfortable routine in his presence, allowing him to hand out the
meals without inspecting what lay underneath each towel on each tray.
So it was easy work for Morrell to set the tray down in Evans’ cell
and, while blocking the view of its contents with his body, remove the
towel to show Evans what lay beneath. Both men then quickly picked up
one of the loaded revolvers and, pointing them at the deputies,
efficiently made their escape from the jail without firing a shot at
the astonished men. There were some who later claimed that Morrell had
started a rumor in town days before detailing when and where a train
robbery was planned to take place near the town of Porterville, some
miles to the south, thereby drawing the sheriff and most of his
deputies away from the Fresno jail on the day of the planned escape.
It is true that such a rumor had been being eagerly whispered about
town, but it’s uncertain as to who may have started it.

After a few altercations on the street with people who recognized
Evans and tried to stop him, the two fugitives managed to steal a
horse and buggy and make their way into the mountains where they
eluded pursuers for four months, ranging across landscape that was
familiar and comfortable to Evans and which offered him the cloak of
security. One day they might be seen wandering through the Grant Grove
area; the next day they might be comfortably giving interviews to
reporters at Sampson’s Flat; and then they might suddenly disappear
for weeks into their more remote hideout near Eschom Valley. They were
captured only after railroad detectives spread a story that Evans’
youngest son was badly sick and near death, thereby luring Evans and
Morrell back to the family farm near Visalia where they were both
captured. Evans was immediately sent off to Folsom Prison to begin
serving the life sentence he’d been handed while Morrell, even though
he’d never participated in a train robbery nor had he ever even shot a
man, was destined to be made an example of by the Southern Pacific
Railroad.

The Southern Pacific assigned Morrell the acronym of  ‘The 25th Man’,
labelling him as yet another member of the Evans and Sontag gang, a
group which now - in the imagination of the Southern Pacific army of
railroad detectives - consisted of over two dozen train robbers under
the direction of the dastardly Evans. During the trial the Sheriff
testified that the rumor luring him out of town on the day of the
escape had beyond doubt originated with Morrell, and that Morrell had
carefully planned the whole thing to free his boss. This testimony was
placed in doubt by the fact that Morrell had actually been in prison
for the past two years on that larceny charge and therefore could not
have participated in most of the purported train robberies. Then the
town constable testified that he was actually standing right outside
the jail when the escape took place and had almost succeeded in
stopping them before he was wounded in the shoulder by a well-placed
shot from Evans. A Texas Ranger was apparently also present to witness
this. It would seem that an objective juror might have mused that such
a careful planner, if one existed, would have most likely been aware
of the presence of these two men in town and included options within
his plan for their neutralization. So it would seem that the ruse, if
indeed there was indeed a planned one, was not as effective as
desired. Or perhaps the ruse simply originated within the minds of the
sheriff and the Southern Pacific for the purpose of swaying the
jurors. Yet the prosecution used the nickname of 'The 25th Man'
frequently and effectively, labelling Morrell as a train robber even
though he had the most solid alibi possible and leading the jury to
believe that some of Evans’ gang was still at large, very dangerous,
and still much out of control. Their lobbying was so effective that
Morrell soon ended up as a resident of the notorious Folsom Prison.

Yet the vengeance of the railroad didn’t end with Morrell’s
conviction, and he almost immediately became the subject of torture at
the hands of the warden and the guards at Folsom. He was assigned the
task of chipping at rock with a pickaxe without being allowed to move
his feet more than a few inches, and when he inadvertently violated
that ultimatum and stumbled slightly he was brought below ground, deep
into the bowels of the prison, and hung by his handcuffed hands with
his feet suspended from the ground for five hours a day for ten days
as punishment for defying the guards. Suffering constant torture over
the next several years Morrell attempted to escape several times and
then, being accused of instigating a prison riot, Morrell was
transferred to San Quentin along with twenty-four other agitators.
Once again, he was 'The 25th Man'.

In San Quentin Morrell again immediately attracted the wrath of the
warden, and within days of his arrival he was thrown into solitary
confinement and given a diet of bread and water while chained to a
wall. After being released from solitary and then forced to work in
the prison’s jute factory making rope and inhaling hemp fibers all
day, Morrell participated in a work shutdown which was quickly
followed by a riot requiring soldiers being brought in for a two week
siege before it was finally  put down. Morrell was then accused of
smuggling arms and ammunition into the prison and placed back in
solitary confinement while the guards attempted to get a confession
out of him. The cell was four feet by eight feet and had a small pile
of straw on the floor on which he could sleep. He was not allowed to
speak but he and the other inmates of Solitary devised a system of
taps to communicate with each other, though they could use the system
only infrequently so as not to rouse the suspicions of the guards.
Despite the pain and the torture being continuously inflicted upon him
Morrell maintained his innocence, saying he knew nothing about guns or
explosives and that the story had been fabricated by the warden as an
excuse to further torture him. When he still refused to confess where
he’d hidden the arms or even that they existed, he was placed in a
straitjacket laced so tightly that he could barely breathe. The lack
of oxygen caused him to collapse on the floor and he likened the
experience to closely approaching death, then hanging tenuously at the
edge of life not knowing which way his fate would go. Suspended in
this state he then began the experiences of having his consciousness
leave his body to travel through the prison, throughout California,
around the world, and out amongst the stars. In doing so he left the
pain and starvation behind and astounded his guards that not only was
he surviving the experience but that he was managing to do so
peacefully, even contentedly.

Following a senate investigation of the prison a new warden was
appointed. He reviewed Morrell’s case and after spending five years in
solitary confinement Morrell was finally returned to the general
prison population, suffering from agoraphobia, light sensitivity, and
weighing less than a hundred pounds. His astral travels tapered off
after he was released from the straitjacket, and as he regained his
strength and health he became a model prisoner, though still denying
that he had plotted to smuggle arms into the prison or even that such
a plot had ever existed. Four years later in 1909 the governor of
California determined that Morrell had suffered enough at the hands of
the railroad and the prison system and granted him a full pardon,
which was personally presented to him by the Lieutenant Governor.
Morrell walked out of prison a free man and spent much of the
remainder of his life travelling, writing, and lecturing on
much-needed prison reform. Interestingly, the specifics of these
reforms had been first viewed by Morrell during his astral travels,
and he had returned from those experiences with visions that the
future of penology would include education and reform rather than
confinement and torture.

In 1911 Chris Evans was also pardoned by the governor, but he was
forced out of California almost immediately upon his release and he
never returned to the mountains which had once sheltered him from the
railroad detectives who hounded him – hounded him, as he swore to the
day he died, for train robberies he had never committed.

In 1914 Ed Morrell wrote a play for the stage based on his
experiences. It was called ‘The Incorrigable’, a nickname he had
earned from the guards in San Quentin. He became close friends with
writer Jack London and spent much time at London’s northern California
ranch discussing his experiences. London based his 1915 book ‘The Star
Rover’ on Morrell’s life, writing the story of a man trapped in a
solitary dungeon whose only escape was to leave his body and roam the
world. Morrell went on to write his own autobiography with his wife,
appropriately titled, ‘The 25th Man’. He passed away in 1946. Morrell
had spent the brief time of barely four months of his life in this
area of the Sierra Nevada Mountains, and though he likely returned
here many times during his astral escapes from solitary confinement in
San Quentin he apparently did not come back in the flesh after his
release.

Ed Morrell suffered much for his action of helping Chris Evans to
escape, but his motive was understandable. The Southern Pacific
Railroad and their hired guns had hounded Evans for months, accusing
him of robbing several of their trains. But when Evans was finally
captured he was never charged with train robbery. Instead he was tried
for the death of two deputies who were shot and killed while trying to
collect the ten thousand dollar reward the railroad had placed on
Evans’ head. If Morrell truly believed in Evans’ innocence then his
motives were not criminal, yet his punishment was. And if Morrell
spent only a few months here in these mountains while on the run from
the law, then at least he got to come back again and again while
roving across the world and through the stars as he left his
imprisoned body behind, visiting these mountains which had once
sheltered him. The Star Rover.
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The Most Popular Man on the Mountain

10/1/2015

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How does a lumberjack entertain himself when he’s finished working his 
twelve hour a day shift, six days a week? And where does he find that
entertainment? Looking back from today’s perspective of a relatively
sedate 40 hour work week it would seem that after 72 hours of doing
the backbreaking labor of cutting, dragging, and milling tons of Giant
Sequoia trees that the men doing the labor would desire nothing more
than a hearty meal and a long nights’ sleep.  And they did want those
things. But for the most part these men were young, and healthy, and
full of energy, and like most young people they generally considered
themselves indestructible. So they also wanted more than just food and
sleep. They wanted fun.

Very few of the loggers were married, and fewer still actually brought
their wives and children to these mountains with them. Women were in a minority in the camps and were seen mostly in the cook houses
preparing meals and cleaning up after them, or in the camp hospitals
tending injuries. Children were also scarce, although the fact that
the base of the Centennial Tree was turned into the School Stump
testifies to their presence here.  But the vast majority of the men
did not go home to a wife and children after the work day was done.
They went instead to one of the numerous portable houses which lodged them, each measuring about ten by twenty feet, containing a wood stove for heat and narrow beds for eight to twelve men. Playing cards and gambling were popular pastimes, for wherever men go they will typically be willing to wager whatever meager possessions they may
have in the hope of winning someone else’s meager possessions.
Drinking was aggressively discouraged by logging company management and they did their best to keep alcohol out of the camps, for the last thing they wanted was hung-over men swinging axes and bandying about cross-cut saws, or walking along the edge of a flume perched hundreds of feet above a deep crevasse. But yet, mostly still in their twenties, these men were just barely more than boys. And boys, as they say, will be boys. So they not only had the energy for recreation, but
they actively sought it.  And conveniently, someone finally came along
to help provide it. That man was Gustav Anderson.

Gustav Anderson was a Swedish immigrant who came to the Sierra Nevada Mountains as a young man in the early 1880’s and filed a claim on 40 acres of land near what is now Redwood Canyon, and for a while he made a meager living there by cutting roofing shakes from Sequoia wood and selling them down in the valley. But he had bigger dreams, and after a few years he moved several miles to the north and filed another claim on 480 acres of land in a beautiful basin known as Long Meadow. The area contained thousands of Giant Sequoia trees, but Anderson had no pretense of having the wherewithal of starting his own lumber company. Instead he sold off the timber rights to 160 acres of prime Sequoia trees to the Kings River Lumber Company, operated by Austin Moore and Hiram Smith. They were at that time busy logging in the Millwood area and sending their wood by flume down to Sanger, and they anticipated expanding their operations to the Long Meadow area.

But that never happened. They soon fell prey to the financial problems
that plagued all of the lumber companies, and in 1894 that contract of
timber rights passed on to the Sanger Lumber Company. When they soon failed as well the timber rights then went to the Hume - Bennett
Lumber Company.

Gustav Anderson, meanwhile, was biding his time. He built a cabin
along the edge of Long Meadow and then added a few smaller buildings
which he rented to visitors to the mountains, and promoted the
enterprise under the somewhat grandiose name of Anderson’s Resort. The parties visiting the area by wagon were containing an increasing
number of ladies who did not wish to camp out and Anderson’s cabins,
although rustic in the extreme, at least offered the promise of four
walls a roof and a pot-bellied stove. In 1906 Anderson obtained a
legal license to sell alcohol and added a building specifically
devoted to that pass-time. This was probably the first official saloon
in the area, if one does not count the Gamlin brothers pouring drinks
for visitors in the more claustrophobic confines of the Fallen
Monarch.

Word of the saloon quickly spread, and even though there were still no
logging operations in the immediate area of Long Meadow many of the
more determined lumbermen from Converse Basin began to make the trek to the meadow and it wasn’t long before a well-beaten path marked the way to Anderson’s saloon door. A regular trade from trappers, hunters, and visitors also made the saloon Anderson’s most profitable
enterprise to date.

The Hume-Bennett Lumber Company, as had all the other logging
enterprises, frowned upon the purveyance of alcohol to their workmen,
but there was little they could do except threaten to discharge anyone
who showed up for work intoxicated. As the Hume-Bennett Company got ready to exercise their timber rights on that 160 acres of Anderson’s
land, Ira Bennett supposedly suggested to George Hume that it might be
a sound business idea to hurriedly buy up Anderson’s outstanding
mortgage and then foreclose, thereby getting rid of a potential
problem next to their camp and also obtaining the rest of Anderson’s
timber at the same time. But Hume vetoed that idea. It may have been a
sound business premise, but to Hume it wouldn’t have been playing
fair. Hume may have later come to reconsider that decision. Hume-Bennett began to move their logging operations to Long meadow in 1908, beginning construction on a dam and millworks, and at this
point, with the arrival of several crews of workmen, Anderson’s
business really took off. He added several wood frame and tent-topped
cabins to rent along with a general store which stocked a wide variety
of food and merchandise necessary to make mountain life more
comfortable. Anderson also let it be known that he would cash the
logger’s paychecks, and this brought a long line to his saloon every
payday, where much of the logger’s newly acquired cash would quickly
be spent at the bar that same day. This brought Anderson even more
business, which Hume and Bennett tried to stop by issuing their men
pay vouchers which could instead be redeemed only at the lumber
company cashier’s office. Yet this didn’t deter anyone, and the
cashier’s office turned out to be just one more stop on the way to the
bar. In 1909 the dam was finished and in June Long Meadow, virtually
overnight, became Hume Lake, covering about 90 acres of the meadow
with water and leaving Gustav Anderson with a lakefront resort, a boon
provided at no cost to him courtesy of Hume-Bennett.

With a store, saloon, and rental cabins now bringing a steady stream
of income and the lumber company providing a steady stream of
customers, Gustav Anderson now began to look around for other ways to add to his cash flow, and it didn’t take long for him to hit upon an
idea. It was an obvious idea, actually. Very obvious. After all, the lumber company was employing hundreds of young men – single, lonely, energetic young men. And these young men were already beating a steady path to his door. So, what else do young energetic men want? What do they need?

It wasn’t long before Anderson added to the variety of the
entertainments he offered, and a group of young ladies moved into his
cabins to tend to the needs of the lonely young men – with Gustav
Anderson providing assistance as their landlord, of course. Not
surprisingly, this proved to be just as popular as his saloon, perhaps
even more so, and for the next several years the cash seemed to flow
from the Hume-Bennett bank account to that of Gustav Anderson with the hard working young men barely touching it along the way, yet having a wonderful time in his establishments nonetheless. Prostitution was
still quite legal in California at the time, and it didn’t even require the basic minimum of a license as had the saloon. One can’t help but wonder if George Hume regretted his decision of not putting Anderson out of business when he’d had the chance.

Hard times hit both Anderson and the lumber company when the United
States entered the fighting of the First World War. By 1917 most of
the young lumberjacks had enlisted in the army, leaving Anderson with
a trickle of customers. That same year the biggest mill at Hume burned
to the ground, and the work force decreased again. A new worker’s
union was giving Hume-Bennett headaches with the employees that still
remained. In 1918 a storehouse containing company explosives was
broken into, and a bartender at Anderson’s Resort named Younger became the prime suspect. Younger had already been a major headache for Hume-Bennett as he was the ‘chef’ who produced homemade whiskey and applejack for the saloon and assisted in managing the other
entertainments on the menu. Hume had him arrested, but there wasn’t
sufficient evidence to hold him and the theft remained unresolved.

For the next several years a smaller mill continued to operate with
fewer men, but it was soon reduced to the sad lot of building drying
trays to sell to grape farmers to turn their grapes into raisins.
Anderson’s Resort continued to operate, but it, too, at a much smaller
and sadder level of activity until 1929 when the mill ceased to
operate. The resort then barely struggled on under the guidance of
Gustav Anderson’s nephew, Art Larsen. In those years the resort did
not offer quite the variety of entertainment which it had during its
heyday, as a significant portion of that entertainment had since been
deemed to be no longer legal. In 1946 the land and buildings which had
once been Anderson’s resort were purchased by the Hume Lake
Conference, an organization devoted to promoting Christian values and
lifestyle.

Gustav Anderson is now remembered by few, although he was once
probably the most popular man in this area of the Sierra Nevada
Mountains for bringing a regular supply of alcohol and women to the
camps, and providing much needed entertainment and relief from hard
work for the thousands of young men who came here to find jobs. It’s
ironic that, on the very same land where thousands of young men once
drank themselves into a stupor and woke up the next morning with a
stranger, now thousands of young people come instead to learn such
wholesome activities as camping, swimming, praying, and absorbing
Christian values.

Boys will be boys, so they say, but it would seem that the definition
of what is desirable and appropriate entertainment for those boys
changes somewhat with the years.
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    Author

    With 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. 

    Tim has worked for Sequoia Parks Conservancy since 2010 in the Kings Canyon Visitor Center and also as a naturalist for the Sequoia Field Institute.  COPYRIGHT 2016 T.E. CHRISTENSEN

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