One night, a group known as Graham's dragoons made up of discharged United States Army cavalry soldiers were laying down, drunk for a night's sleep on the banks of Woods Creek. One soldier, asleep in the mud, reached to move a rock that was under his back. The rock was a gold nugget.

Emma Nevada “the Comstock Nightingale” died in Liverpool, England on June 20, 1940, at the age of 81. She is buried there at St Peter and St Paul Churchyard. Her father, mother and brother are buried at mountain view cemetery in Oakland at the Chapel of the Chimes.

Today, the Emma Nevada House in Nevada City is a bed-and breakfast that recalls a long ago era and a legend. While visiting, you can walk down the street to pass the Eagle Theatre, where she once performed, as well as here at The National Hotel.

Flora boarded the Transcontinental Express on an icy Monday morning that December, and was led to her private room where she sat at the window, quietly watching New York City roll by. That evening Flora was sipping her tea in the dining cart, she was unable to sleep. A man joined her at the table, uninvited. The shy woman looked up to shoo him away, but once locking eyes with the young man, she could not bring herself to do it. Undoubtedly, this was the man she had waited her whole life for.

The spirit of a woman now locally referred to, lovingly, as Flo, has never left the National Hotel in Jamestown Ca.

Until February of 1850, Sonora was known as the Sonorain camp, then named Stewart, then to Sonora. It was a wild and rough country in the gold rush days, and like its residents, the local history was not squeaky clean. Sonora was incredibly diverse, filled to the brim with merchants, miners, gamblers, drunkards and women of leisure. It was fun discovering that many times in the towns origins, Sonorians would come together to push back against discrimination .

During America’s largest migration, the gold rush, indentured servitude was just one of the ways a person could secure their passage. By their own choice, they would barter their own labor for a specific amount of time as collateral with their chosen Master. The Master paid their fare to California and boarded them while they were working for them. Today I will share two stories of indentured servitude from Sonora, California in the 1850’s. I found these stories in an old book called Justice in Sonora from my grandpa’s collection. I am not sure if I have ever mentioned it, but my grandfather was the Tuolumne County Sheriff circa 1980s.

Angels Camp, where the Frog Jumps are held, was incorporated as a city 16 years prior, and the population at the time was around 900. To some, Angels camp is known as the “real” City of Angels, named after Henry Angell of Rhode Island. Angell had set up a tent store on the banks of the creek there in 1848, eventually opening up a trading post for the miners that produced more than $20 million worth of gold. The gold was processed by stamp mills in town in the next few decades. It was said that when the last mill finally ceased operations, the townspeople couldn't sleep, the silence was so loud.

Vera Gayle Reynolds was managing hotels in the bay area, a widow with an 8th grade education before she moved to Angels Camp in 1928. She found a property in an area near Albany Flat and fell in love with it. South of Angels Camp down a road across from Frogtown, the house boasted a small barn, well and pump house. As you approached the home, a large banana tree standing in a yard surrounded by a stone wall would have welcomed you. Vera Reynolds bought the property and opened the doors of her new establishment naming it, The Banana Ranch.

On a ranch on Blanket creek, near the current Kress Ranch Road, lived Carroll and his parents Stephen Rablen and Corrine Brown. They were a well known family in Sonora who were pioneers there during the gold rush. Corrine was the daughter of the late C.C. Brown, a prominent lawyer of Sonora. Carroll had been married twice, first to Martha Copeland and second to Eva Young. Neither marriage lasted. While serving during WW 1 in France, a German shell exploded in Carroll’s dugout, causing him to lose his hearing. The thirty-four year old veteran returned to Tuttletown to live with his widower father. The hearing impairment made Carroll too shy to meet a local girl. Yet he was lonely. So lonely that, in June of 1928, Carroll placed an ad in a San Francisco matrimonial paper in search of a bride. Bad idea!