Sony Girl: Columbia and Murphy California

Warning - long post. Go get your glass of tea or wine and get comfortable because you will be here for awhile. Relax and enjoy!

While Dad went to school on Saturday, Mom and Linnaea went to visit a couple of small towns in the foothills of California. They enjoyed the beautiful Fall weather, with the cooler temperatures and the various colors of the leaves.

Their first stop was the Columbia State Historic Park, the best preserved of California gold rush towns. They enjoyed walking the streets with the horses pulling a stagecoach and listening to the music played by various people dressed as if they were living in the mid 1800s.

Here's just a little history of this historic town, summarized from what Mom has told me. In 1850, someone found gold. By 1852, the town was booming with all of the miners coming to strike it rich, consisting of about 150 buildings including stores, saloons, a bowling alley, theater, etc. Multiple fires destroyed most Columbia's business district. When the buildings were rebuilt, they primarily used brick instead of wood to protect the buildings from fires. In 1860, the gold ran out, decreasing the town's population of 6,000 to approximately 500 - hence the term ghost town.

History lesson is over!

Here is the stagecoach parked outside of the Wells Fargo building. This building served as today's version of a post office/bank.

Pictured above is the actual scale the miners used to measure the gold they found. Don't you know that there were a lot of prayers said in front of these scales as everyone was hoping to get rich QUICK.

A family lived in the second story of the Wells Fargo building. Due to various illnesses, this family experienced the tragedy of losing 3 children in one week and their fourth child years later. Mom and Linnaea were able to go upstairs into their living quarters and this picture below was taken from the balcony of the children's room.

Here is where Columbia's newspaper was printed. I, personally, found this process fascinating as Mom was telling me about it.

To make a long story short, they would organize these little nails (pictured below) with raised letters on the end into words forming sentences and then paragraphs onto a metal slate. Then they would press it into this big contraption, pictured in the middle of the picture above, onto paper, hanging the paper up to dry.

If that does not make you appreciate your computer (and the delete button), I do not know what will.

Linnaea and Mom also got the opportunity to enter this lovely home. Well, at least the outside was nice. The main objective of the miners' was to make money and go back home to their families. So, they spent little to no time or money on their homes at the mining camps. They usually built a house in a week, using whatever pieces of scraps they could find. Needless to say, there was no insulation.

Also, they usually just added onto the house over time. The picture above was one of the first rooms built and the picture below was the last room built.

What a difference! I think that I would just move my bed into the kitchen and hang out there all of the time.

This is what a store would have looked like in a mining town in the mid 1800's. Notice the lanterns, their only source of lighting. No wonder the town burned down multiple times. Also, the most of the miners were illiterate. Instead of labeling the boxes, they would tie a few of the items on the outside so that people would know what a particular box contains. Maybe Mom and Dad should use this method as they have been packing up and moving so frequently lately.

Mom and Linnaea went to the museum, where they learned about panning for gold. Also, parts of several movies and television shows, such as Little House on the Prairie, where filmed in Columbia.

They also were given the opportunity to climb down a ladder into the cellar beneath the museum. This is where the miners stored their canned vegatables.