Gold Country
Downtown Murphys. Waiting for his master.
The Gold Country is a fair drive away from San Jose, so we left at 5.20 in the morning. Planned to make it to Copperopolis for breakfast. After an hour, we were driving over the Altamount Pass towards Tracy. Half an hour later we had Stockton in our rear view mirror, heading east on Highway 4.
We came up to a railroad just as the barriers came down and we sat and waited for five minutes. To our right we saw the train – a long freight train, coming towards us at a snails pace. Oh no, we thought, this is going to take some time. The the train stopped. Two minutes later the barriers opened and we were able to cross. Maybe the train was waiting for another to pass but we were just grateful not to be held up for half an hour.
Highway 4 dissects the Central Valley so, for the first part, we drove past corn waving in the breeze and orchards. After Farmington, the scene changed to vineyards and cattle grazing. The the road started to climb towards the foothills of the Sierra Nevada mountains.
At 7.20 we arrived in Copperopolis, only to be hugely disappointed because we could not find anywhere to eat breakfast. We drove on to Angels Camp, where it was almost the same story. We did find one cafe but it was not open.
Angels Camp, otherwise known as Frogtown, is an interesting town though. Why Frog Town? - I hear you say. In the 1860′s a young journalist named Samuel Clemens stayed overnight in Angels Camp on his way to Nevada. While there, he heard of a frog which locals claimed could jump higher and further than any other frog. Samuel Clemens write a short story entitled ‘Jim Smiley and His Jumping Frog’ and it was published in the New York Saturday Press. Two years later the short story was turned into a book entitled ”The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County’ but this time under the pen name of Clemens, which was Mark Twain.
To this day they hold an annual contest to find the frog which can jump the furthest. Every third week in May this contest is held during the Calaveras County Fair and Jumping Frog Jubilee. Installed in the sidewalks on Main Street in Angels Camp are bronze plaques shaped like frogs. Each plaque has the year, the name of the winning frog and the distance it jumped. The record stands at just over 21 feet.
Hunger and the need for coffee motivated us to move on. The nearest town of reasonable size was Murphys and here we were successful.
After breakfast at the Foothills Restaurant – see previous post – we moved the car to the main street where we found a nice shady tree to park under. We noticed quite a few empty shops on the way in, which is a sign of the times. On the other hand, there were more wine tasting rooms than on our previous visit.
We did our usual wander up one side and down the other to see what we could see. Murphys is an old gold mining town and a lot of the buildings have been here for over 150 years, with covered sidewalks – just like in the old westerns you see on TV. It is very pleasant to saunter up and down and there are many convenient benches to sit on in the shade.
A sign pointing to a ‘Point of Historic Interest’ caught my attention. Following the sign, I came of a wall which was called the E C V Wall of
E C V Wall of Comparative Ovations in Murphys
Comparative Ovations and was covered in plaques commemorating an unusual array of men and women who have left their mark on California. One of the plaques explains about the society of E Clampus Vitus – ‘sort of parody of the solemn and mysterious fraternal orders then so popular in the states’; ‘helped widows and orphans – especially widows’. It was very much tongue in cheek and very amusing. There was, of course, one for John Murphy, 1824-1892, who was the founder of Murphys. In December 1949 at the age of 25, he returned to San Jose with one and a half million dollars in gold. He married Virginia Reed of the Donner party and served as mayor and sheriff of Santa Clara County. There were just two women honored among the 50 or so plaques. One was Julia C Bulette, born London 1832 – ‘gentle companion to the miner……..strangled (in her bed maybe) in 1867′ and the other was Emma Nevada (Wixom) who was known as the Nightingale of the Comstock and sang for the Clampers and even for Queen Victoria.
Murphys Hotel in downtown Murphys
Further down the street was the historic Murphys Hotel – lovely old building with an upstairs balcony swathed in red, white and blue bunting. On a plaque outside it told the history of the building. Originally it was the Old Speery Hotel or the Speery and Perry Hotel. It has been a hotel since 1856 and is one of the oldest operating hotels in California. Over the years it has had its share of famous guests – Mark Twin, The Rothchilds, General U S Grant, Thomas Lipton and Black Bart (an infamous highwayman of the late 1880s in the area). Today the hotel is still very active. In fact, we wished we had waited just a little longer because they serve breakfast on the patio at the side of the hotel in a very nice shady garden. We must remember that next time we visit here.
Another old building ,which was originally called Jones Apothecary and Cash Store, still has the old painted sign on the side of the building. It is quite faded but the words can still be made out. Now it is an art gallery.
Along the way I saw a couple of interesting posters. Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young will be performing at the Ironstone Winery on September 19. They would be interesting to see in concert but probably to far to come. The other post was advertising the Calaveras Grape Stomping in Murphys Communal Park on October 3. That sounds like fun.
There are lots more interesting buildings in Murphys and I hope the above has given you a flavor.
At the end of shops and the beginning of the residential part of the town, there is a bridge over a fast running stream. This is Murphys Creek. On one side of the bridge are two houses with the creek running between them. One of the houses has a small, ornamental water wheel with a crank shaft leading to model windmill. The sails of the windmill were not turning though. It all looked very pretty.
July 22 2009 | Special Places | 4 Comments »
