With all eyes on Confederate symbols it shouldn’t be lost on the residents of Kaweah Country that there are two living monuments within Sequoia and Kings Canyon National Parks dedicated to Confederate General Robert E. Lee

By Sarah Elliott, 25 June 2020, 3RNews

The Robert E. Lee Tree in the Grant Grove area of Kings Canyon National Park. (FamousRedwoods.com photo)

Monuments have come down throughout the nation during a worldwide wave of protests that began May 25, 2020, with the murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis, Minn., by police. Along with the recent murders of Breonna Taylor and Ahmaud Arbery, these actions have sparked demands for sweeping changes and a nationwide uprising for racial justice. There is a re-energized movement that hasn’t been experienced in the U.S. since the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s, and activists are calling for a just and sustainable future where Black Lives Matter.

With all eyes on Confederate symbols, from its flag to statues, it shouldn’t be lost on the residents of Kaweah Country that there are two living monuments within Sequoia and Kings Canyon National Parks dedicated to Confederate General Robert E. Lee (January 19, 1807-October 12, 1870).

Robert Edward Lee, Confederate general and slave owner
Lee, who was born in Virginia, attended the United States Military Academy at West Point, where he graduated second in the class of 1829. Two years later, he married Mary Anna Randolph Custis, a descendant of George Washington’s adopted son, John Parke Custis.

Lee served 17 years as an officer in the Corps of Engineers, supervising and inspecting the construction of the nation’s coastal defenses. He first set foot on a battlefield during the 1846 war with Mexico. He quickly distinguished himself, earning three brevets for gallantry and emerging from the conflict with the rank of colonel.

From 1852 to 1855, Lee served as superintendent of West Point. In 1855, he left the academy to take a position in the Cavalry and in 1859 was called upon to stop abolitionist John Brown’s raid at Harpers Ferry.

In April 1861, as the Civil War began, Abraham Lincoln offered Lee the command of the federal forces. Lee declined and tendered his resignation from the U.S. Army when the state of Virginia seceded on April 17, arguing that he “could not fight against his own people.” Instead, he accepted a general’s commission in the newly formed Confederate Army, fighting for slavery.

In February 1865, Confederate President Jefferson Davis named Lee general-in-chief of all Confederate forces. Two months later, on April 9, 1865, Lee and his army surrendered to the Union’s General Ulysses S. Grant at the Appomattox Courthouse, effectively ending the Civil War.

Lee returned home on parole and eventually became the president of Washington College in Virginia (now known as Washington and Lee University). He remained in this position until his death in Lexington, Virginia, at the age of 63.

During the Civil War, Lee was responsible for the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Americans in defense of the South’s authority to own millions of human beings as property because they were black. And Lee was a slave master himself. In a 2017 article in The Atlantic, Lee was described as cruel and heavy handed. 

Lee was especially vicious because he would separate slave families, which was a fate worse than death. In Reading the Man, the historian Elizabeth Brown Pryor creates a portrait of Lee through his writings, and said, “By 1860, he had broken up every family but one on the estate.”

A well-known story of Lee describes when two of his slaves escaped and were recaptured. Lee either beat them himself or ordered the overseer to “lay it on well.” Wesley Norris, one of the slaves who was whipped, recalled that “not satisfied with simply lacerating our naked flesh, General Lee then ordered the overseer to thoroughly wash our backs with [salt] brine, which was done.”

Lee Trees

Robert E. Lee Tree
The most famous of the two Lee trees in the local parks is the Robert E. Lee Tree in Kings Canyon National Park. Located on the trail to the General Grant Tree and adjacent to the Fallen Monarch, this Lee Tree is, at 254.7 feet in height and 40,102 cubic feet in volume (sans burn scars), the 11th largest tree on the planet. It was reportedly named in 1875 by Richard Field, a former Confederate lieutenant, five years after Lee’s death and 15 years before General Grant National Park was established (Kings Canyon’s predecessor). The Lee trees

Currently, hundreds of people walk past this tree each day without knowing that it’s named for the Confederate general or realizing it’s one of the largest trees they will ever see. The tree is in decay, sort of like its namesake’s reputation, and, in July 2006, a limb came crashing down, narrowly missing three international tourists. A year later, tree-climbing scientists entered the tree and confirmed that it was compromised by fungus and rotted material.

At that time, the National Park Service removed the ROBERT E. LEE TREE sign for the reason of safety. Without a sign designating it as a named tree, the visiting public is less likely to pause and gather under the tree for photos. Because of the recent outcry against Confederate monuments, the tree’s moniker will most likely be allowed to fade into obscurity

General Lee Tree
The other Lee Tree is in Sequoia National Park with no superlatives such as “largest” attached to it. It has a sign identifying it, but is not as noticeable as the other trees in the vicinity: President, Sequoyah, Congress Group.

“The one in Giant Forest, the General Lee Tree, still has its sign in place,” reported Sintia-Kawasaki-Yee, parks information officer. “[The Park Service is] having conversations about what the options are for that sign and what policies are involved as we’re getting asked to both remove the sign and also to leave the sign in place. I think this is going to take some public engagement, and we may not have a decision soon.”

“As far as removal of reference to Robert E. Lee, we’ve looked through our website and other materials and found one document that listed the Robert E. Lee Tree,” Sintia continued. “We’ve modified this document and updated the website. We haven’t found anything else yet, but we’re still looking.”


 

…to possess the whole of the continent which Providence has given us. —Manifest Destiny

By Sarah Elliott, 1 July 2020, 3RNews

What’s in a name?

Let’s meet the man after which the largest, and arguably most visited and revered, tree in the world is named. However, here we are in the 21st century, and no one can say for certain how, why, or when the General Sherman Tree was named.

In the Sequoia National Park historical archives, it is written that the General Sherman Tree was named “August 7, 1879, by James Wolverton, pioneer cattleman and trapper, in honor of General Sherman, under whom he served as First Lieutenant in the 9th Indiana Cavalry.” But historians have discovered that there is no evidence documenting that any of this statement is true.

“As we will see, there are a few issues with this narrative. Foremost among them is that James Wolverton, as such, never existed…” wrote Laile Di Silvestro in a 2019 series for 3R News entitled J. Wolverton and the Ghastly End. “There are no census, voting, or property records for a James Wolverton in Tulare County between 1874 and 1893.” 

“What we know for certain is that the earliest historic reference to the name is from 1897, when the acting superintendent reported his plan to get a new sign for the tree.”

During the period of 1886 to 1892, the tree was dubbed the Karl Marx Tree by the members of the Kaweah Colony. It’s likely this was the first time the tree was given a name by the early white settlers.

General William T. Sherman
General William T. Sherman (Wikimedia Commons photo)

The Sherman legacy

General William Tecumseh Sherman (February 8, 1820-February 14, 1891) did as much as any man to ensure Euro-Americans achieved their manifest destiny. The ideology that became known as Manifest Destiny, coined by newspaper editor John O’Sullivan in 1845, was a belief in the inherent superiority of white Americans, as well as the conviction that they were destined by God to conquer the territories of North America, from sea to shining sea. 

Once white settlers were bestowed with the privilege of Manifest Destiny, the indigenous peoples were a mere impediment to progress. And the doctrine inflamed tensions over slavery, ultimately leading to the Civil War.

In California

Originally from Ohio, William Sherman began his military career as a young soldier in California, where he would spend three years, from 1847 to 1850. While he was here, there was the Mexican-American War (he didn’t see action), the Gold Rush, and California was granted statehood. According to biographer James Lee McDonough, “Sherman threw himself into the civic life of the state. He met almost everyone of note, visited missions, unsuccessfully hunted grizzly bears, patronized the local arts, opened a store in Coloma (to supplement his meager Army wages), and spent as much time with the state’s women as possible.”

And Sherman even explored the mountain range where there is now a beautiful giant sequoia named in his honor, although it’s doubtful he ventured this far south in the range. He helped assemble a surveying party to study the Sierra Nevada and find a railroad route through the high mountains.

Civil War

During the U.S. Civil War, General William Tecumseh Sherman was one of the major architects of Confederate defeat and the final overthrow of American slavery. Yet in his personal attitudes, he was, by his own account, a racist and white supremacist.

Sherman’s attitude toward black people was one of contempt. He was quite comfortable with referring to them in derogatory terms. But he also told Southern slaveholders that they needed to treat their slaves “more near the status of human beings.” Sherman had no issue with keeping black people enslaved, he just thought they should be treated humanely.

This painting entitled “The Peacemakers” depicts a March 1865 meeting with (from left to right) William T. Sherman, Ulysses S. Grant, President Abraham Lincoln, and David Dixon Porter. (Wikimedia Commons image)

After the Emancipation Proclamation, many former slaves sought to join the Union army. Sherman ordered that any recruiter who enlisted black soldiers would be arrested and possibly imprisoned. President Abraham Lincoln reminded Sherman that there was a law in effect regarding black recruitment into the Union Army, and that because it was a law, all must follow it. Sherman refused to change his mind.

For the Great Warrior Sherman, it was easier to unmake laws than it was for the courts of the land to interpret them. (Dee Brown, Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee)

March to the Sea

The Civil War military campaign known as Sherman’s March to the Sea occurred from November 15 until December 21, 1864. It began after the burning of Atlanta with forces traveling from there to the port of Savannah on the Atlantic coast. Everything in the Union troops’ path was destroyed — Sherman’s own controversial “scorched-earth” policy — which left nothing but ruin behind.

An unintended consequence of Sherman’s scorched-earth campaign was that all manner of freed slaves —men, women, children, and the elderly — abandoned the now-demolished plantations and fell in behind him. More than 10,000 black refugees followed Sherman’s March to the Sea. And the Confederate cavalry was closing in from the rear.

A defining moment was when a pontoon bridge had to be quickly erected to cross Ebenezer Creek. Telling the refugees that the troops needed to cross the swollen creek first because of fighting in the front, the soldiers crossed and quickly dismantled the bridge, cutting off the refugees’ only route to freedom.

The Confederates arrived at water’s edge, causing hundreds of stranded liberated slaves to jump into the icy water in an attempt to cross. Many drowned. Those who didn’t were shot on sight or captured and re-enslaved. Any Union troops attempting to help the victims were ordered to continue the march. It was a barbaric slaughter of thousands and thousands of newly freed slaves.

To avoid reprimand, Sherman had to make amends for the Ebenezer Creek massacre. Secretary of War Edwin McMasters Stanton requested that Sherman convene a group of black leaders. Of the 20 men summoned, all were church leaders and 16 were former slaves.

The question was asked: What should the government do for black people?

The answer was land; give them land to work and live on with an opportunity to purchase it.

Four days after the meeting, Sherman issued Field Order No. 15: the “40 acres and a mule” rule, which set aside islands along the Georgia, Florida, and Carolina coasts — nearly 400,000 acres — for black resettlement. Within months, more than 40,000 black Americans had flocked to the Sea Islands area, dubbed “Sherman Land.”

The future looked bright until… soon after the inception of Sherman Land, President Lincoln was assassinated. His successor, Andrew Johnson, a Southern sympathizer, overturned Field Order No. 15 in the fall of 1865.

By the end of the Civil War, Sherman recognized that the South had severely mistreated its black population. But he never denounced the institution or morality of slavery.

American Indian Wars

All we ask is to be allowed to live, and to live in peace. I seek no war with anyone. (Cheyenne chief)

Sherman, now the most senior member of the U.S. Army, was the man for the job of eradicating the natives. The same tactic was used as with the slaves: the government made promises that it did not keep. By 1880, most of the tribes, along with the buffalo that fed and clothed them, were eliminated.

Great Warrior Sherman, as the natives called him, was to secure land for the transcontinental railroad and mining interests in territory inhabited by the indigenous peoples. The plan was to move them onto reservations, where they would no longer be free to move about the country. They were instead confined while the the white man was able to freely settle, explore, build, mine, hunt, and exploit.

The end of the Civil War did not, however, mark the end of General Sherman’s military career. Off he went to cleanse the frontier of the indigenous people who lived on ancestral lands that were now being exploited by white settlers to be dug up, dammed up, and deforested in search a grand fortunes.

Whether on the ground leading troops or from behind a desk in Washington, D.C., Sherman ordered many trials and punishments for native captives. At times, the indigenous peoples were treated as prisoners of war even though the war had been unilaterally initiated by the United States.;

The whites told only one side. Told it to please themselves. Told much that is not true. Only his own best deeds, only the worst deeds of the Indians, has the white man told. (Yellow Wolf of the Nez Perce)

General Sherman (third from right facing camera) and “Indian commissioners” in council with native chiefs at Fort Laramie, Wyoming (1868). (Wikimedia Commons photo)

Sherman was also responsible for the near extinction of the American bison. He knew that the way to subdue the indigenous tribes was to annihilate the buffalo of the Great Plains. Since buffalo were a critical part of the natives’ existence, both physically and spiritually, Sherman went straight for the herds. What’s in a name

“I think it would be wise to invite all the sportsmen of England and America… this fall for a Grand Buffalo hunt and make one grand sweep of them all,” Sherman wrote.

The U.S. Army offered protection for the hunters while allowing them to kill hundreds of thousands of the animals. While buffalo lay dead and rotting on the plains, Sherman continued to promote the killing of the once vast herds to vanquish the native people. (By the early 20th century, only 325 buffalo were left in America.)

By Sherman’s retirement in 1884, he had succeeded in forcing all the Plains Indians who had survived the many conflicts onto regional reservations.

My opinion is, if fifty Indians are allowed to remain between the Arkansas and the Platte we will have to guard every stage station, every train, and all railroad working parties. In other words, fifty hostile Indians will checkmate three thousand soldiers. Rather get them out as soon as possible, and it makes little difference whether they be coaxed out by Indian commissioners or killed. (General William T. Sherman)

Ironically, Sherman’s middle name, Tecumseh, is after a Shawnee chief and warrior whom his father admired. And while Sherman was most definitely a warrior, the second act in his military career was dedicated to decimating the indigenous culture and life of his namesake.

American hegemony was victorious over the tribal resistance. And this is the “hero” who was foremost in the forced, violent, and deadly removal of the indigenous people off the lands where they and their ancestors were born and for whom the General Sherman Tree is named.

What would Sherman think of having the world’s grandest natural monument named after him? Perhaps he would feel subjugated because that monument is located within the boundaries of a national park that is named in honor of a descendant of the country’s indigenous inhabitants.

To the Kiowas and Comanches the white men seemed to hate everything in nature. (Dee Brown, Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee)


Much appreciation to Laile Di Silvestro of Three Rivers, historical archaeologist and researcher extraordinaire, for providing information for this article and answering a lot of questions. Additional sources include Memoirs of William T. Sherman (1875), The 1619 Project (The New York Times Magazine, 2019), and Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee: An Indian History of the American West (Dee Brown, 1970).

Sometimes a tale’s ending is so ghastly, we might be tempted to change it in the retelling. And, in the process we might introduce a few improvements to the rest of the tale. Our written history is replete with such improvements, and the story of Sequoia and Kings Canyon National Parks hasn’t escaped embellishment. This is a four-part series that explores a small portion of the embellished lore associated with the creation of Sequoia National Park, exposing little-known aspects perhaps suitable only for the Halloween season and those with sturdy digestive systems. In this first part of the series, we meet a ghastly end and reminisce about a legendary man whose life concluded just as the Park’s began.

(Sequoia and Kings Canyon National Parks photo from the Digital Archive Gallery)

By Laile Di Silvestro, 1 October 2019, 3RNews

It was pitch black the night of May 23, 1903, and William Trauger was falling down a forty-foot mine shaft.

Will was properly drunk. Nevertheless, he was also forty-two years old and had a full life to flash before his eyes, assuming he sobered enough on the way down:

Bleary visions of the preceding hours at Phillip’s Place, a fine drinking establishment that he and his partner Will Kenna frequented when they weren’t seeking their fortunes in gold.  A decade of mining in Mineral King for his friend Arthur Crowley. The time they caught some trout and carried them in coffee cans up to the lowest Mineral Lake. His home and apple orchard by the old wooden bridge at the base of the Mineral King Road.

And Wolverton.

James Wolverton, 1884. Or is it? (Sequoia and Kings Canyon National Parks photo from the Digital Archive Gallery)

The name Wolverton is indelibly associated with Sequoia National Park. There is Wolverton Meadow, of course, a favorite snow play area in the winter and a popular trailhead in all seasons. Visitors can also find Wolverton’s name while exploring the history of General Sherman, the world’s largest tree, and Hospital Rock, a granite shelter featuring Potwisha Monache pictographs. Although there are variations, Wolverton’s story appears well known.

Popular accounts inform us that James Wolverton was a cowboy, fur trapper, and naturalist who arrived in the Sequoia area in 1874. He developed a close friendship with the area’s first Euro-American settler Hale Dixon Tharp and built a small cabin in what is now known as Wolverton Meadow. He discovered the largest sequoia and named it the General Sherman on August 7, 1879. Wolverton had earned that honor by serving as lieutenant in the 9th Indiana Cavalry under General William Tecumseh Sherman in the Civil War.

A man in front of a lean-to
James Wolverton (purportedly) and his lean-to cabin. (Sequoia and Kings Canyon National Parks photo from the Digital Archive Gallery)

According to local lore, Wolverton eventually homesteaded 160 acres on the Mineral King Road. There he raised stock and built a home at Wolverton Point, where the helipad is now located. In 1893, however, he was working for his friend Hale Tharp as a lookout near Hospital Rock when he fell ill. Members of the local Potwisha Monache tribe took care of him until Tharp found him. Tharp first transported Wolverton twenty-five miles downriver to his home near Horse Creek, and then back upriver to the Last Chance Ranch halfway up the Mineral King Road. There, Will Trauger’s father and adoptive mother, Mary, lived. Mary, who was known as the angel of Mineral King, tended Wolverton until his death.

For unknown reasons, Wolverton had asked to be laid to rest by the wooden bridge that crossed the river near the base of the Mineral King Road. Captain “Galloping Jim” James Parker of the 4th Cavalry was acting superintendent of newly formed Sequoia and General Grant national parks. He attended the service and gave Wolverton the military burial honors befitting a lieutenant in General Sherman’s army.

A wooden marker was placed at the head of Wolverton’s grave. At some point over the next few decades it was consumed by a brush fire, and the location of his final resting place was forgotten. Only his name and his story remained.

As we will see, however, there are a few issues with this narrative. Foremost among them is that James Wolverton, as such, never existed.

As for Will Trauger, he hit the bottom of the forty-foot shaft after only 1.577 seconds. At the time of impact, he was moving at about 34.59 miles per hour.

And the saga continues: James Wolverton and the Ghastly End pt. 2

James Parker
Captain James Parker of the 4th Cavalry, acting superintendent of Sequoia and General Grant national parks in 1893. (Sequoia and Kings Canyon National Parks photo from the Digital Archive Gallery)
Grave of J. Wolverton

This is the second installment of a four-part series that explores a small portion of the embellished lore associated with the creation of Sequoia National Park, exposing little-known aspects perhaps suitable only for the Halloween season and those with sturdy digestive systems. In Part 1, we met Will Trauger, who was plummeting down a mineshaft, and James Wolverton, a legendary man whose life concluded just as the Park’s began. This week, we join some Boy Scouts on a search for James Wolverton’s grave.

East Fork Kaweah Bridge
Three Boy Scouts from the Three Rivers troop on the old wooden bridge that spanned the East Fork of the Kaweah River. In 1936, this bridge had been out of use for 24 years after the Mineral King Road was realigned to stay on the south side of the East Fork canyon . (National Park Service photo from the Digital Archive Gallery)

By Laile Di Silvestro, 7 October 2019, 3RNews

The rattlesnakes were still dormant on the first day of March in 1936. Seven boys were walking on the hillside above the East Fork of the Kaweah River. They rustled through the stalks of last year’s grasses still towering above new green growth, and they inhaled the overpowering smell of buckthorn blossoms. The boys were seeking a spot on the ground under which the bones of a hero lay.

Grave of J. Wolverton
The head and foot markers of the grave. (National Park Service photo from the Digital Archive Gallery)

They were seeking the grave of Lieutenant James Wolverton. With the Second World War looming overseas, honoring the resting place of the local Civil War icon made for a meaningful outing. The boys were members of Troop 23 led by Lloyd Fletcher, a local landscape architect whose work is now on the National Register of Historic Places.

The nature and timing of the boys’ adventure was no accident. The troop was sponsored by the Big Tree American Legion Post – the same big tree purportedly named General Sherman by James Wolverton. Frank Been, Sequoia National Park’s first full-time ranger-naturalist led the outing. At the same time, Sequoia National Park was preparing to host a Boy Scout camp at Wolverton Meadow. Well-publicized resurrection of Wolverton as a symbolic hero made sense.

The story of James Wolverton and his naming of the General Sherman tree emerged as early as 1914 in newspaper articles promoting Sequoia and General Grant National Parks. By 1935, Wolverton’s tale had fully evolved, and numerous newspapers published large front-page articles featuring the hero. With his journalistic exhumation, Wolverton’s reputation grew. Wolverton had now become an acquaintance of John Muir, and he was patrolling the Park at the time of his death. Most articles ended by wondering why James Wolverton chose to be buried in an isolated grave.

According to local lore, Wolverton’s grave was near a wooden bridge built in 1879 to carry miners and supplies to the Mineral King mines and silver ore back down. There, in in October 1893, Wolverton supposedly received a dignified burial with the military honors suitable for a Civil War lieutenant who had served under General Sherman. In 1936, the bridge was still standing, but the road was no longer in use. Fire had swept through, consuming any grave markers in its path, and new vegetation had obscured any telltale mound or depression. James Wolverton’s gravesite needed rediscovery.

Jim Barton, 95, of Three Rivers was eleven years old on that day. He remembers walking the abandoned Mineral King Road down to the East Fork of the Kaweah River and the rickety wooden bridge that crossed it. According to contemporary newspaper reports, the boys found a site distinguished by a large moss-covered bolder. Two weeks later, they returned with new wooden head and foot markers and built a trail to the site.

Scouts at Wolverton grave
Boy Scout Troop 23 of Three Rivers at the grave markers they placed in March 1936 near the East Fork of the Kaweah River. In this photo is Jim Barton (immediately to the left of the upper grave marker), who was 11 at the time, but today is 95 and continues to reside in Three Rivers. At far left in the photo is Jim’s dad, Bob Barton (1899-1977). (National Park Service photo from the Digital Archive Gallery)

Given the passage of more than four decades and at least one brush fire, however, is it certain the boys found the exact location of the grave? How would the troop definitively recognize the gravesite? When reminiscing in 2002, Jim Barton expressed some uncertainty.

“I don’t think we found it,” he noted before reminding his listeners of the effect time wields on memories.

Compounding the doubt is another mystery. There are no census, voting, or property records for a James Wolverton in Tulare County between 1874 and 1893.

Regardless, two things are now nearly certain. Forty-three years before young Jim Barton sought the grave, and a decade before plummeting down a forty-foot shaft, Will Trauger’s boots compressed the soil under the Boy Scouts’ feet. And somewhere in the vicinity lies a six-foot skeleton exhibiting the ravages of what could well have been venereal disease.

In the next installment, we follow the path of a man named Joel Rivers Woolverton to his ghastly end.

This the third installment of a four-part series that explores a small portion of the embellished lore associated with the creation of Sequoia National Park, exposing little-known aspects perhaps suitable only for the Halloween season and those with sturdy digestive systems. In previous segments, we met Will Trauger who was tumbling down a mineshaft (Part 1), the legend that’s James Wolverton, and a group of Three Rivers Boy Scouts searching for Wolverton’s grave (Part 2). In this third part of the series, we meet Joel Rivers Woolverton at his ghastly end.

The aptly named Hospital Rock in Sequoia National Park has provided refuge for sick and injured Euro-Americans since the 1860s. (Sequoia and Kings Canyon National Parks photo from the Digital Archive Gallery)

By Laile Di Silvestro, 14 October 2019, 3RNews

Before we return to Will Trauger at the bottom of a forty-foot mine shaft, let’s step back to a time when Will owned the property where Three Rivers Boy Scouts were to seek James Wolverton’s gravesite in 1936. It’s the last week in March 1893, and Joel Rivers Woolverton is lying helpless on the ground at Hospital Rock, about five miles northeast of Will’s place.

Hospital Rock adjacent to an unpaved Generals Highway and before it was improved for national park visitors. (Sequoia and Kings Canyon National Parks photo from the Digital Archive Gallery)

Joel wasn’t the first Euro-American to lie there, according to Walter Fry, the first civilian superintendent of Sequoia and General Grant National Parks. In 1860, John Swanson and Hale Tharp, who claimed to be the first Euro-American in the area, were exploring when Swanson injured his leg. They sheltered under Hospital Rock for three days while the Potwisha Monache tended Swanson’s wounds with a poultice of jimsonweed leaves and bear fat. 

Joel also wasn’t the first to suffer there alone. In 1873, a hunter and trapper named Alfred Everton was shot in the thigh by one of his own guns. He had stretched a string across a bear trail and attached the string to the gun’s trigger. He meant to shoot a bear with it, but accidentally brushed the line himself. His hunting partner carried him to Hospital Rock where Everton waited alone until his partner returned with help three days later. 

Now Joel was there, alone, immobile, dying of an illness that prominently featured an abscessed groin. In other words, it is quite possible he was suffering the final stages of a sexually transmitted disease.

How did he end up at this point?                                      

Joel was born in about 1832 in the farming country of Ossian, New York. His father, Joel Woolverton III, had started producing children at the age of fifteen. Not all survived, but when our Joel was born seventeen years later, he had at least five older siblings at home.

His parents didn’t stop with Joel. By 1840, he had four more siblings, with a fifth on the way.                                         

Perhaps weary of farming, disgruntled with a crowded home, or simply yearning for wealth and adventure, Joel left New York by 1850 to join his older brother Alva and assumed brother Chancy in Ohio. From there, Joel and Chancy traveled overland to the California gold fields. They were mining somewhere in Placer County, California, when they registered to vote in the 1852 presidential election.

Four years later, Chancy was back in Ohio. Joel, however, kept following his dreams of wealth from gold camp to gold camp.

Gold Hill Nevada
An 1867 image of the Gold Hill, Nevada, mining camp. (National Archives at College Park collection)

The Civil War found Joel in Gold Hill, Nevada, a district that hosted numerous brothels and saloons. There, Joel joined the Nevada 1st Battalion Cavalry, Company D, on September 3, 1863.

His battalion was formed not to fight the Confederate forces, but to control the remnants of the Southern Paiute tribes in the Nevada Territory. Joel had fair skin, light blond hair, and steel blue eyes. At about six feet in height, he towered over most men of his time. He was consistently present at roll call, and quickly moved up the ranks from private to 2nd lieutenant.

Fort Churchill
An 1862 lithograph by Grafton Tyler Brown of the Fort Churchill, Nevada, military camp.

He spent the first year at Camp Nye, where he saw no action but impressed his superiors. The next year, he went to Fort Churchill to attend a court martial and then went to San Francisco to be mustered as a 2nd lieutenant.

After that, he and his company went on some scouting expeditions, but did not detect any hostiles. He was acting post adjutant for a short time. His Civil War service was decidedly uneventful, perhaps even boring.

Company D mustered out November 18, 1865. Joel had quit showing up consistently for roll call in September, however, and didn’t show up at all the last week of his service.

As a result, he was the only officer in the 1st Battalion who was declared a deserter. As a deserter, Joel commenced his post-war life without his $50 bounty and land warrant. 

The 1867 Official Registry of the Volunteer Force of the United States Army.

After his untimely departure from the Army, Joel seems to have disappeared. He didn’t participate in a census or register to vote, at least not under his given name.

A decade after his desertion, however, Joel resurfaced in the Hueneme District of Ventura County. Named after the Chumash word for “resting place,” the Hueneme District produced an abundance of lima beans and sugar beets. Here, in 1875, Joel registered to vote as a farmer. He had returned to his agricultural roots.

Port Hueneme street scene, 1890. (Los Angeles Public Library)

It is uncertain how long Joel resided in Ventura County. A street named Wolverton suggests he may have stayed long enough to make a mark on the land.

Meanwhile, the Nevada government seems to have reconsidered Joel’s record, and officials began to search for him as early as 1869. In 1886, they succeeded in finding him. A certification of service was filed, and on December 8 Joel finally received his $50 bounty.

On October 11, 1890, Joel registered to vote in Tulare County as a landless laborer. He was residing in the Kaweah District and may have already taken up residence at Hospital Rock or one of the other abodes that were associated with his name, including Tharp’s Log, Wolverton’s Lean-To, and a cabin in Wolverton Meadow, which was owned by his employer Hale Tharp.

Joel had been troubled by an abscess for some time when he collapsed at Hospital Rock. He could have been lying unable to move for days before Hale Tharp began to miss him.

When Tharp found him, it was clear that Joel’s condition was more than he could handle. Tharp went to the nearby homesteads and recruited Will Trauger and two other men to carry Joel 25 miles downriver to his homestead along Horse Creek (present-day Lake Kaweah).

The two-day trip was hazardous due to the heavy spring runoff. The men had to cross the Marble Fork of the Kaweah River holding Joel’s litter above their heads so that the rapids wouldn’t carry him away.

Mary Trauger
Mary Trauger attended to Joel Woolverton during his final days. (Sequoia and Kings Canyon National Parks photo from the Digital Archive Gallery)

Joel didn’t stay at Tharp’s for long before the men transported him back upriver to Will Trauger’s home, where Will’s adoptive mother Mary Trauger was willing to tend him. Assuming Joel was suffering the final stages of syphilis, he would have had oozing abscesses, dementia, and paralysis. It would have been unpleasant to tend him. Mary had earned her reputation as the “Angel of Mineral King,” however. Additionally, the Tulare County Board of Supervisors voted to pay her an allowance for the six months that Joel remained alive.

Joel died on October 8, 1893. His 61-year life differed substantively from the legend. His name was Joel, not James. Rather than serving under General Sherman, he was a deserter from the 1st Nevada Cavalry.

Wolverton death notice
Death notice in the Visalia Daily Times on page 4 of the October 25, 1893, issue. (Note: Joel was 61, not 51 as stated, when he died).

He was not in Tulare County from 1874 until his death, and there is no evidence that he owned any land in the county. He was a miner and farmer not a cowboy, fur trapper, and naturalist.

He lived his final months in Will Trauger’s house rather than Harry and Mary Trauger’s Last Chance Ranch fourteen miles farther up the Mineral King Road. And, finally, there is no evidence that he named the General Sherman Tree. Indeed, the name was not associated with the tree until 1897.

Joel was buried on Will Trauger’s land, however, as that was where he died. Will’s home was about a mile from the confluence of the East and Main forks of the Kaweah River near where the 1879 Mineral King Road crossed the river on a wooden bridge. Will was almost certainly among those who helped lay Joel to rest under the graying grasses, shrubs, and oaks. There is no evidence that the 4th Cavalry attended, so we will have to provide the sound of Taps ourselves and imagine Will walking away from the grave to find a whiskey bottle. In ten years he was going to collide with the bottom of a deep mineshaft.

Are you “dying” of curiosity about what happened to Will Trauger after he hit the bottom of the shaft? Read the final installment!

Acknowledgments:

This installment drew on the talents and support of multiple people. I am grateful to Savannah Boiano, research partner, naturalist, and adventurer extraordinaire; Bill Tweed, esteemed naturalist and historian, who has been researching the origin of the General Sherman Tree’s moniker; and the staff and volunteers at the Tulare County Library’s Annie Mitchell Room. 

The Trauger family

Sometimes a tale’s ending is so ghastly, we might be tempted to change it in the retelling. This is the final installment of a four-part series that explores little-known samples of local lore perhaps suitable only for the Halloween season and those with sturdy digestive systems. The first installment introduced us to the legend of James Wolverton and to Will Trauger, who was tumbling down a mineshaft. In the second installment we  met a group of Three Rivers Boy Scouts searching for Wolverton’s grave. And, in the third installment we followed Joel Rivers Woolverton to his final resting place. In this final part of the series, we face Will’s ghastly end.

The Trauger family
Harry, Mary, and Will Trauger (back, left to right) and friends, ca. 1900. (Sequoia and Kings Canyon National Parks photo from the Digital Archive Gallery)

By Laile Di Silvestro, 21 October 2019, 3RNews

When we last left Will Trauger, it was the dark night of May 23, 1903, and he had just reached the bottom of a forty-foot mineshaft. 

He wasn’t alone. Will Kenna had landed beside him, which wasn’t surprising as the men were seemingly inseparable. They lived together in a small cabin. They mined together when they weren’t drinking, and they drank together when they weren’t mining. They were about to become notorious.

Infamy wasn’t new to Will Trauger. Indeed, he had been born into it.

He started out life in 1859 as William McCoy. His mother, Margaret McCoy, was living with her husband, James, in Congress, Ohio, at the time, as was the presumably ardent Harry Trauger. It didn’t take James long to conclude that Will was not his son, and he filed for divorce from Margaret in 1860 on the grounds of her adulterous relationship with Harry. 

Divorce noticce

Margaret was cast out of her home and denied custody of her two older children. Harry Trauger was no help. He left Ohio for California, abandoning his mercantile and farming businesses for a relatively unsuccessful career as a miner.

Margaret and Will boarded with other families for a time while she developed a career as a women’s hat-maker. By the age of twenty, Will had abandoned her too. He took on the name of Trauger and headed west to find his father.

Harry Trauger was at this time living with his indomitable wife Mary on the Last Chance Ranch. He had found a job as supervisor for the duplicitous New England Tunnel and Smelting Company in Mineral King, and was now mining, tending the books as the mining district recorder, and earning a reputation as a drinking man.

The Smith House
The Crowley Resort, ca. 1890, at road’s end in Mineral King, now a part of Sequoia National Park. (Sequoia and Kings Canyon National Parks photo from the Digital Archive Gallery)

When Will arrived, the silver rush in Mineral King was all but over, but he was able to find work as a mining laborer for Arthur Crowley and helped him set up a summer resort in the Mineral King valley. For several years he and Harry also received a contract from the County of Tulare to maintain the Mineral King Road after the road was declared “a disgrace to an enlightened community” in 1893.

Will made a home on the land near the bridge over the East Fork of the Kaweah River, the home where he brought Joel Rivers Woolverton to be tended by his stepmother, and the land where he helped lay Woolverton to rest in 1893.

Will was a tall man at 5 feet, 10½ inches, with blue eyes, fair skin, and hair that had turned prematurely grey. Like his father, Will developed a profound relationship with the bottle.

He partook in intoxicated fistfights and even ended up in jail on one occasion with several of his friends. He was a favorite with the local newspapers, however, due to his exuberance for life.

Will enjoyed taking friends to Mineral King, where they hunted and ate roasted bear head, built and launched a boat in Eagle Lake, and carried trout to Mineral Lake in a coffee can. 

Will Trauger and friends at Eagle Lake. Will is in the back of the boat–the first to be launched on Eagle Lake. (Courtesy of Joe Hubbell)

In 1897 Will Trauger left Tulare County for the mines of El Dorado. There he, Will Kenna, and their small dog set up house in a little cabin in Volcanoville. It was only a half-mile distance from Phillip’s Place, a drinking establishment that they frequented when they weren’t seeking their fortunes in gold.

On the eve of May 23, 1903, the men stumbled together out of the establishment with their dog. The spent Rubicon Mine was in the vicinity, but in the dark only the dog saw its forty-foot shaft.

The impact broke both of Will Trauger’s thighs and one of Kenna’s legs.

They had one pistol between them. They fired all their bullets up the shaft and shouted, to no avail. Eventually their voices gave way.

Their absence was not noted because they were known to go missing on account of being drinking men. Kenna purportedly kept track of the passing days on a slip of paper.

According to Kenna, after several days, our Will realized he would die. He wrote a note to Harry and Mary and provided verbal instructions on the eventual disposition of his possessions.

An example of a mine shaft that was in the vicinity of the shaft that the two Wills fell victim to in 1903. (Photo courtesy California State Library)

He then became delirious and attempted to eat Kenna, who suffered numerous bites and clawing. According to Kenna, Will died after nine days in the shaft.

On the eleventh day, the little dog was able to attract the attention of George Morrow of the Gregory Mine. Morrow followed the dog to the abandoned shaft. There he found Will dead and Kenna extremely weak. Kenna’s leg was rotting, and it was deemed unlikely that he would live long.

How could Kenna have survived almost eleven days without food and water? We can easily imagine. The state of Will’s body prompted an inquest, which mercifully resulted in a verdict of accidental death.

Will’s ending was too ghastly for Mary and Harry Trauger. They told their friends and neighbors that Will had died honorably in a mining accident in Alaska.

Over time, Will became the “angel” Mary’s son, best known for his contribution to the new resort at Mineral King. And as we have seen, Joel River Woolverton’s story was improved as well. History renamed him James Wolverton and created a hero worthy of the biggest tree in the world. A hero who fought with General Sherman to preserve the Union; a hero who met John Muir and helped preserve the giant sequoias; a hero who stood lookout to protect the new Sequoia National Park from the ravages of livestock. A hero who stayed at his post even while facing his death.                                                                                                     …

What do we gain and lose from resurrection of the real stories? Certainly we lose the legend, but perhaps we gain an essential human connection through the less heroic and sometimes macabre truths. Regardless, we retain the story of a community that tends and celebrates even the least mighty among us.

Thus ends this series. The search for our roots goes on, however. One of the most rewarding aspects of historical research is the joy of discoveries that augment or refute what we thought we knew. If you have perspectives, stories, or evidence that would enhance or alter the tale that has been laid out in this space, please contact us. 

Acknowledgments:

I am grateful to Sarah and John Elliott for hosting this series, and for their ongoing support, encouragement, and editorial expertise. 

About the Author:

Laile Di Silvestro is a historical archaeologist who resides in Three Rivers, California, just outside Sequoia National Park. Her current project is researching and documenting the 19th-century mining activities in the Mineral King area of Sequoia National Park.

Sequoia National Park was created in 1890, named for the tree that it was created to preserve. The end.Or is it?

By Sarah Elliott, 20 July 2020, 3RNews

Sequoia National Park’s namesake is the Sequoiadendron giganteum, known to us laypeople as the giant sequoia, the most massive tree on the planet. But history may not be correct in how the “sequoia” received its name.

The sequence of Sequoia

The species of redwood that today bears the botanical name Sequoiadendron giganteum was identified by Stephan Endlicher (1804-1849), an Austrian botanist who died by suicide at the age of 44. It has been widely written, even by Sequoia National Park representatives, that Endlicher named the largest tree on the planet for Sequoyah (1770-1843) of the Cherokee Nation who created a syllabary of 86 characters that provided thousands of Cherokees the opportunity to read and write.

There is research that debunks this theory, stating that the European scientist never wrote down that he was honoring Sequoyah with the name Sequoia and there is no record of him speaking of this. In the words of one scientist who has written extensively on giant sequoias, it is contended that:

Sequoyah Sillabary
Sequoyah’s syllabary in the order that he arranged the characters. (Wikimedia Commons)

The Latin word that Endlicher chose to derive the prefix of the name for the coast redwood that established what Lowe (2012) called Endlicher’s sequence of five genera in his Suborder Cunninghamieae is indeed appropriate: ‘I follow, i.e. sequor.’ Since in the verb ‘sequor’ the ‘passive r … was added immediately to the root of the verb,’ then dropping the added ‘r,’ leaves the root verb ‘sequo’ to which is added the Latin suffix ‘ia’ used in the naming of plants, yielding the new word Sequoia as the name for the plant. The Latin suffix ‘ia’ means something derived from, relating to, or belonging to what is conveyed in the prefix. The question then arises: Was Endlicher aware of this specific Latin grammatical nuance in order to derive his prefix? Yes. …” (from the book DEBUNKING THE SEQUOIA honoring SEQUOYAH MYTH, by Gary D. Lowe, 2018).

Sequoyah is remembered kindly by history, and his accomplishments have been honored. Oklahoma gave a statue of Sequoyah to the National Statuary Hall Collection in 1917. Sequoyah’s cabin in Oklahoma, where he lived from 1829 to 1844, is a National Historic Landmark. The United States Postal Service issued a stamp in his honor in 1980. However, as scholars and scientists delve deeper, it’s unlikely that Sequoyah is the namesake of the giant sequoia and, thus, Sequoia National Park.

Here is another citation:

In 1847 Endlicher, a German [sic] botanist, believing that [the tree] was a distinct genus, published it under the name of Sequoia. [Endlicher], contrary to custom, omitted to give the origin of his name, and botanists have conjectured that it was intended to commemorate ‘Sequoyah,’ a … Cherokee Indian, who, all by himself, invented an alphabet and taught it to his tribe by writing it upon leaves. … It seemed fitting that the redwood should be named for the red man, yet Prof. J. G. Lemmon and others consider it to have been derived from sequor (to follow) alluding to the fact that our redwoods are the followers of a vanishing prodigious race, which Prof. Lemmon considers a much more appropriate and pleasing origin for the botanical name of our monster tree.” —George Morris Homans, California State Forester, 1910-1921 (italic added to highlight the cultural racism)

And finally:

… No one has ever found mention in [Endlicher’s] writings of Sequoyah’s name or of his unique Cherokee syllabary. It was apparently assumed that Endlicher, a known philologist, admired the Indian for his linguistic accomplishments. The assumption became widespread, and some botanists, such as Asa Gray, searched the Endlicher papers for confirmation, but in vain. French botanist de Candole agreed with Gray that ‘the supposed origin of Sequoia from Sequoyah is entirely fanciful.’ —The Giant Sequoia of the Sierra Nevada, by R.J. Hartesveldt, H.T. Harvey, H.S. Shellhammer, and R.E. Stecker (1975)

[Article continues below. Click on the images for a slideshow.]

All that’s left today are their markings of millennia in stone…

Native people and Sequoia’s place names

Sequoia National Park set aside wilderness to preserve in perpetuity. This sounds good in theory (if you’re a white person), but the legislation took away yet more ancestral lands from the Native peoples. At that time, a scattering of Indigenous tribes was still living in the region that would become United States’s second national park before the end of the 19th century.

The irony of the national parks, and Sequoia in particular, is that these lands didn’t need protection until the white settlers arrived. They mined the mountains, their stock grazed the meadows, they cut the sequoias, and they displaced the Indigenous caretakers who coexisted with the land and respected the natural world.

By the end of the 19th century, the Native peoples who didn’t assimilate into white society were soon extinct. All that’s left today are their markings of millennia in stone: bedrock mortars scattered along the waterways, the mysterious bathtub-like basins in the sequoia groves, and some pictographs telling an undecipherable story of human occupation.

Contemporary tributes are few to the Native population that called the Sequoia region home for so many generations. There’s the carved “Indian head” sign at the entrance to the park. There are two place names along the highway named for tribes: Potwisha Campground (a Native village site) and Wuksachi Village (named in the 1990s).

Of the ancient Big Trees, dozens of which have commemorative names, only one tree in Sequoia National Park was named for an Indigenous person: Chief Sequoyah Tree. In contrast, there are twice as many trees — two — named for Black Americans: Colonel Charles Young and Booker T. Washington. The rest of the named trees mostly pay tribute to colonizers.

The ‘Indian Head’ sign at the entrance to Sequoia National Park.
Chief Sequoyah Tree
The Chief Sequoyah Tree in the Giant Forest Grove, Sequoia National Park.

The Chief Sequoyah Tree is a deserving tribute to an accomplished man who was greatly admired by the Cherokee people and others, but (1) Sequoyah is most likely not the namesake for the giant sequoia or Sequoia National Park, and (2) Sequoyah was not a chief. His maternal grandfather was a chief, but Sequoyah never held that distinction.

There is the Suwanee Grove of giant sequoias, which is a name derived from a native language. “Suwanee” is a projectile tool made by Native inhabitants of the eastern part of the country but the grove could also be named for a town in Georgia. Or Kentucky.

The trail to the pictographs at Hospital Rock, Sequoia National Park.

Hospital Rock provides visitors with the most visual replica of Indigenous occupation. There was a Native village here and there are prehistoric pictographs and bedrock mortars in the vicinity.

The Kaweah River is derived from the Native language. According to James Barton (1819-1912) of Three Rivers (the author’s great-great-grandfather): “Kaweah is formed from two words… Kawa is the Wutchumna word for crow. Aweah means ‘water’ in the same language. The combination of the two means crow-water and people got to pronouncing it wrong and it now has the name Kaweah.”

Grace Alles spent many summers at the family cabin at Atwell Mill. From her cabin, Grace could signal with lights to her sister Rose, who for some years was stationed at the Cahoon Rock Fire Lookout near Hockett Meadow, about 10 air miles away.

By Sarah Elliott, 3 September 1999, Kaweah Commonwealth

The Alles cabin is one of many historic remnants in the magical Mineral King area of Sequoia National Park that gives visitors a glimpse of late 19th and early 20th century life, a time that is so different, so far removed from today. The board-and-batten cabin, built in 1901, has been open to the public on Sunday during the past two summers.

The cabin is located 19 miles up the Mineral King Road from Hwy. 198 in Three Rivers (just before the Atwell Mill Campground) and 4.5 miles before the Mineral King Ranger Station. This Sunday of the Labor Day weekend marks the last time the cabin will be open to the public during the 1999 season.

Although there’s not much to see in the 600-square-foot dwelling, those with imagination and a love of history and the Sierra are transported to a time when the summer residence was a cozy, comfortable home for Philip Alles (pronounced Alice), his wife, Grace Mullenix Alles, and their two children, Rena and Oscar.

Docents, including Milton and Carol Savage and Jim and Jeanette Barton of Three Rivers, have worked tirelessly this summer to contribute to the upkeep of the cabin and restore the living quarters back to how the cabin by the Mineral King Road looked when Grace was in residence. The only thing that could keep Grace from the cabin every the summer was her death in 1981.

This summer (1999), with the help of National Park Service staff at Ash Mountain, a wood stove was delivered to the Alles cabin, a near-replica of the one Grace prepared meals on for her family, many guests, and sawmill workers for so many years.

Family ties

Philip and Grace Alles‘s daughter, Rena, was born at the family cabin in 1907. Rena married Fred Ogilvie and lived at the junction of South Fork and Old Three Rivers drives, near her parents’ home.

After living her entire life in Three Rivers, Rena moved a few years ago to the Bay Area to be near her daughter, Alice Noreen Ogilvie Schwartz. Bud and Dorothy Stuart of Three Rivers were visitors in the Alles cabin on a recent Sunday. Shirley Devol, who has a cabin in Mineral King, was the hostess that day and had a wonderful time listening to the couple’s reminiscences and taking notes.

Bud and Dorothy were married June 3, 1944, and honeymooned at the Alles cabin. The Stuarts became part of the family when Bud’s sister married Phil and Grace’s son, Oscar.

Hal Boley was another recent visitor. He passed by on his way to Hockett Meadow with his son, Tanner (a fifth-generation Alles), and Tom and Isaac Warner for a Boy Scout outing. Hal, too, has many memories of “Aunt Grace’s” cabin, and remembered the White wood stove and the cooler, accessible from inside the cabin but with the back side extending over the deck, covered with wet burlap bags for insulation, in place of the window that is now there.

Hal is the grandson of John Alles (1876-1957) and Rebecca Epperson Alles. John was Conrad and Christina Alles’s seventh child of 10 and brother to Phil Alles. He and Rebecca had three daughters — Thelma, Dorothy, and Lois.

Dorothy is Hal’s mother and Thelma, who has lived in Three Rivers much of her life, is matriarch of the Crain clan.

Hal’s new granddaughter, Savannah, is the sixth generation of the Alles family to reside in Three Rivers. Thelma’s granddaughter, Holly Crain- Peltzer, who also lives in Three Rivers, is a fifth-generation Alles.

Mullenix and his mill

Grace Alles has ties to the Atwell Mill area of Mineral King that began when her father, lsham “Doc” Mullenix, a Three Rivers pioneer, built the mill, which opened in 1873. It is no coincidence that this is the same year of the silver rush in Mineral King, and three mills were built in the vicinity to provide lumber to brace the mines and build dwellings.

The mill never proved profitable due to the same reasons mining in Mineral King could never pay. The location was too remote and the method of obtaining the product — in the mill’s case, giant sequoias — proved too difficult to cut. But Grace spent her childhood summers in this high mountain industrial environment, even receiving some of her schooling there.

In 1886, lsham sold his mill to A.J. Atwell, a retired judge from Visalia. Atwell also built cabins and a camp to help make his investment more profitable.

In 1891, Atwell leased the mill to the Kaweah Cooperative Colony, the utopian group headquartered on the upper North Fork in Three Rivers that had previously set their sights on the Giant Forest for its promise of timber. They were thwarted in those efforts in 1890 by the creation of Sequoia National Park.

In 1897, Mount Whitney Power Company leased Atwell’s Mill. The company felled giant sequoias to create more than one million board feet of lumber, which was used to build the flume from Oak Grove to Hammond near Three Rivers, over 30,000 feet in length (5.7 miles).

Most of the sequoia stumps at Atwell Mill that line the Mineral King Road and encompass the present-day campground are a result of this massive effort that, in less than one year, built the flume and the first hydroelectric station in Three Rivers.

In 1902, Judge Atwell sold the mill to Henry Alles, the eldest son of Conrad and Christina Alles and Grace Mullenix Alles’s brother-in-law. Henry was the first of the Alles family to emigrate to Three Rivers, convincing his parents and nine siblings to follow. They homesteaded land in 1885 on the South Fork of the Kaweah River.

Henry was born in 1866 and died in Three Rivers in 1940. Prior to owning the mill, he was the Mineral King stage driver, hauling guests, freight, and mail to and from the alpine valley.

Alles Cabin
The Alles cabin on the Mineral King Road at Atwell Mill. The rug on the porch was handmade by Grace Alles.

A small village had grown up around the mill site. Phil and Grace Alles moved into their Atwell Mill summer cabin in 1901, directly up the slope from the operating sawmill.

addition to working with his brothers at the mill, Phil Alles began another business in 1917. He operated an “auto stage,” which left Visalia every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday at 1 p.m., stopped for the night at Lake Canyon, built by the Grunigen family in the 1890s, and arrived in Mineral King at 11 a.m. the following day.

He would spend part of Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Saturdays, and all day Sunday with his family at the cabin before his return trip to the sweltering San Joaquin Valley for his next fares.

In 1920, the final sale of the mill occurred. It was purchased by a Seattle resident, a representative of the National Geographic Society, who donated the property to the National Park Service.

The mill still operated for a decade more, off and on, to process some of the timber that was felled during its heyday. The Civilian Conservation Corps dismantled and removed the mill about 1939, leaving a part of the iron steam engine, which now commemorates the former site of the mill, located at the edge of the meadow about 500 yards below the Alles cabin.

The Alles name is no longer heard much around Three Rivers. Of the 10 children of Conrad and Christina Alles, all raised and educated in Three Rivers, there were six boys and four girls.

Three of the sons — Henry, Conrad, and Adam — never married. Phil and Grace Alles had one son, Oscar, the only male to carry on the Alles name. Oscar and his wife (Bud Stuart’s sister) had one daughter together.

The Mineral King Road was realigned later from where it used to pass by the mill to its present location within a few feet of the front door of the Alles cabin. Upon Grace’s death, the cabin reverted full ownership to the Park Service, and the little cabin in the middle of the road is what’s left of a fledgling town and business venture in the Mineral King wonderland of 100 years ago.

Historic cabin gets a facelift with National Park Service restoration

By John Elliott, 3 September 2020, 3RNews

During the last few weeks, the historic Alles Cabin, built in 1901, is getting a badly needed facelift and restoration. For nearly three decades, that specialized preservation of the park’s historic resources would be undertaken by Thor Riksheim and his hand picked preservation crew. But Thor, who had long been recruited to work in other national parks, retired from the NPS last year and the search is on from within to find a replacement to fill some iconic work boots.

Riksheim was the last of a vanishing breed with a vast knowledge of historic materials — where they could be procured or how they could be reproduced. Add to his 25 years experience in Sequoia and Kings Canyon National Parks, an uncanny ability to solve problems. And what made Thor indispensable was that was equally adept in the front country or the wilderness.   

With each passing year, the back log of historic resources in need of restoration grows in number.  Several in the maintenance department, at Sequoia and Kings Canyon National Parks, have given the restoration work a try. It’s not the kind of work, long days in remote places, often in the backcountry, that’s for everyone. But meet Mike Varela, a local guy who grew up in Woodlake, lives in Three Rivers, and for the past 12 years has worked in the maintenance department at Sequoia and Kings Canyon National Parks.

Varela is the work lead on the Alles Cabin restoration, his first historic preservation project.  He would be the first to admit that he’s no Thor.  But with a reverence for historic resources and willingness to learn, Varela said, he would be all in on doing more of this type of specialized work.

For the Alles Cabin restoration, Varela was quick to point out all the help he got in learning some of what is involved in historic restoration. Brook Stiltz, who worked with Thor, taught Varela how to mill and make the cedar shingles. Maintenance staff from Lodgepole and Grant Grove shared their expertise too.

Varela hopes there are more many projects like the Alles Cabin in his future.  And maybe, Sequoia and Kings Canyon National Parks just might have found their next Thor and his magic hammer. 

Thor Riksheim and Jim Barton
CABIN TALK: Thor Riksheim, (left) work leader of the Cabin Creek restoration project in 2009 in Sequoia National Park, hears tales of ranger days from Jim Barton of Three Rivers, who was stationed there as a seasonal ranger from 1959 to 1961.