August 2006

California's Shangri-La

Weaverville, nestled deep in California’s Trinity County, looks like time simply passed it by. You won’t find a traffic light here. The Weaverville Drug Store has been in business at the same location since 1854, and as you walk through the historic downtown, you will note building after building from the 1850s and 1860s.

Some downtown buildings have outdoor circular staircases from the sidewalk to the second floor. I thought they were just ornamental, but one storeowner told me that when the buildings were new, the first and second stories were often owned by different owners, which meant that interior stairs were out of the question. Over the years, interior staircases have been added, but the wonderful outdoor stairs remain as a symbol of the past.

The town looks much like it did when the primary means of transportation was the horse. Author James Hilton, who wrote about the mythical city of Shangri-La in Lost Horizon, once compared Weaverville to Shangri-La, and it certainly has a mystical ambiance.

Varied Attractions
You could be justified in putting Weaverville on your travel itinerary simply because it is picturesque, and lies in a land of deep canyons, stunning lakes, rushing rivers, and towering mountains. Fish don’t fear me, but if they fear you, this is a good place for a rod and reel. If you like history, Weaverville has lots of that.

When James Marshall picked up a small nugget of gold in the millrace of John Sutter’s Coloma sawmill in 1848, he set off a rush that soon had frantic men searching every nook and cranny of California for the elusive metal. Even the remote area known as the Trinity Alps was no exception and by 1850, two short years after Marshall’s discovery, there were enough miners in the Weaverville area for a town to be built. One version of the town’s history says John Weaver won a game of chance for the honor of naming the new community. He reportedly left the town shortly thereafter and was never seen there again. Another version holds that the founder was William Weaver, a miner from the South. Either way, the name stuck.

The location was so remote that stagecoaches were the primary means of transportation to and from Weaverville until the 1930s. The isolation meant that in times of trouble, there was no one else to depend upon. In the winter of 1852-53, the town was completely marooned by snow, and residents were reduced to eating barley, the only foodstuff left. Fortunately, a thaw came before the townsfolk starved.

Rough Town
A miner’s commentary in the fall of 1852 reported that Weaverville was a wild place, short on such civilizing influences as women and churches. One man wrote his family that “society is decidedly bad; gambling, drinking and fighting being the amusement of the miners in their leisure hours. Saturday nights are usually celebrated by such hideous yells and occasionally a volley from their revolvers, which makes it rather dangerous to be standing around.” A few months later, he wrote, “Nothing fatal has taken place since my last letter, but there have been some awfully close shaves. One man was shot through the cravat, and one through the hat, and one in the arm. The Weaverville hotel has been sacked and fistfights without number have come off. But as nobody has been killed, nothing has been done.”

During the Gold Rush, a large Chinese population lived in Weaverville, apparently with little of the persecution that minorities often experienced in other California Gold Rush towns. Many Chinese left to work on the transcontinental railroad in the 1860s, but others remained until a fire in 1905 destroyed the community’s Chinatown. There is no evidence the blaze was purposely set, but most Chinese residents then chose to relocate elsewhere.

Their presence is remembered in Weaverville’s Joss House, the center of Taoist worship for the Chinese community. Built in 1874, the Joss House continues to be used occasionally for its original purpose, making it the oldest Joss House in continuous use in the United States. Although the original furnishings were stolen in the 1930s, authentic replacements have been made so that what you see is very similar to what the Chinese community would have experienced in the late 1800s.

The Joss House is now the centerpiece of the Joss House State Park and can be visited Wednesday through Sunday, from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m., with tours on the hour. The cost is $2. The signs at the visitor center note cryptically that there may be sudden changes to that schedule. The reason is that Taoist ceremonies, although infrequent, are held there, and they take precedence.

Treasured Relics
Weaverville has also preserved its history in two intriguing museums. The J. J. (Jake) Jackson Museum is a repository for treasures from the early days, including some wonderful photos of early settlers. The eclectic mix of artifacts includes Jake Jackson’s extensive gun collection, many items from the Chinese community, a number of items from the Native American tribes who once lived in the area, and exhibits from the mining era. Outdoors are more exhibits, including a working steam-powered stamp mill, a ditch tender’s cabin (which actually straddled the ditch), and several monitors used in hydraulic mining. To use them, water was brought, sometimes for miles, through ditches and flumes to the mine. The monitors were used like a hose nozzle, restricting and intensifying the water flow so that it could be sprayed at high pressure against hillsides to wash loose the gold-bearing gravel. Also on site are fully equipped blacksmith and tinsmith shops and a barn containing a number of wagons, including one of the stagecoaches that once served as the primary means of getting in and out of town.

A second museum is located in Weaverville’s downtown firehouse at 100 Bremer Street. The Weaverville Firefighter’s Museum contains a magnificent Agnew hand pumper built in 1855 and lovingly restored by volunteers. This alone makes a visit to this small museum worthwhile, but there is more of interest, including a hose cart dating from 1906-07 and an interesting chemical fire cart. When the tank is turned over, chemicals are mixed with the water, making it the equivalent of a soda bottle that has been shaken. The water could then be sprayed on the fire.

Although it is only 46 miles west of Redding, Weaverville, with a population of 3,554 in the 2000 Census, is still remote. From Interstate 5 in Redding, you travel west on Highway 299, which is a good road except for an eight-mile twisting climb that fortunately has several turnouts. There are RV parks in and around Weaverville, providing the opportunity to explore Trinity County as well as the town. The route to Weaverville from Eureka on the coast is 104 miles of curves and mountain grades, and I wouldn’t recommend it in an RV.

Gerald C. Hammon is a writer who lives in Silver City, New Mexico.