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CAN THIS MINE BE SAVED?



 

Enterprising Women of the Western Mojave Mining Camps

Part II: Proprietors, Pedagogues & Property Owners

by Cecile Page Vargo

          Mexican Nell and her girls may have been able to quench the sexual thirst of the early miners that came to Goler and Garlock, but the men still hankered for a respectable woman like the girl they had left back home, to settle down with. A few of those girls from back home actually braved the harsh desert environment to set up camp with their prospector husbands. Those that did quickly learned that they had skills they could provide for the lonesome miner as well, and by providing those skills they were able to help supplement the family income when pickings were lean in the gold fields. 

The Gold Digging Proprietor

          Polly Duke was one of the first decent women to come to the mining camps. She and her husband became known as Aunt Polly and Uncle Tom. As soon as they arrived they set up much needed boarding houses for the miners of Goler. The men often gave Aunt Polly a gold nugget or two, but she also spent some time gold digging on her own. The smaller nuggets that Polly discovered in her spare time were carried home in her mouth. Once there she would find an empty sugar bowl, Vaseline jar, or tobacco can to hide her finds. Polly Duke was known as a good Mormon, so more than likely she tithed one-tenth of her gold finds to her church.

Room & Board For the Miners

          Mrs. Freeman and Mrs. Archie Martin also set up boarding houses in Goler, but were quick to move to Garlock as prospects began looking better there. Mrs. Freeman set up in a long narrow tar paper-covered frame building. After a hard days work, a miner had the choice between the boarding houses as to where he could sit down and have a home cooked meal. Mrs. Freeman was a widow, and her cooking enabled her to support her family. Her 12 year old son, Bob, also helped by driving wagon teams carrying barrels of water from Cow Wells to Goler and Randsburg. He earned a dollar for each 50 gallon barrel.  Mrs. Martin’s sons were friends with Bob. When the boys weren’t busy helping their mothers they found time to play with each other. Mrs. Martin was particularly noted for her good food, and was also always willing to help nurse anyone in camp that was sick. 

          Moving boarding houses from one camp to the other seemed to be the vogue of the day. Mrs. Kerns had a wooden building with a boarding house in Goler, also. When Rand Camp began to boom, she simply pulled up the building and took it up the hill and it became the Miners Hotel which opened for business July of 1896. In 1897 freighter John Cuddeback built a rock house in Randsburg and brought his wife and children to live and work with him. After building a store in Fiddler’s Gulch, he took wooden buildings from Garlock and moved them through the deep sand and up the hill to Randsburg, as Mrs. Kerns had. Mrs. Cuddeback rented the houses as fast as Mr. Cuddeback could build them.

The Lillard Hotel

          Nancy Jane Lillard came with her husband and son to Garlock in 1898. While her husband worked hard in the mines she set up a camp kitchen in their wagon and made doughnuts which the miners quickly bought up from her.  With the money she made from the doughnuts she was soon able to buy a stove and began baking and selling fresh bread and pies. Before long she had enough money for a one room shack, which quickly grew to more rooms, including a kitchen. Nancy soon had enough money  to turn her kitchen into a hotel where she and two daughters, known as “Tom” and “Dick” served home-cooked meals. Her husband ran the front desk and enjoyed talking about mining investments, while he smoked cigars.  Working the kitchen was long hard work in extreme heat, with the fire in the wood cook stoves running all day. Nancy cooked 300 meals a day to at least 100 regular miners and mill hands. Each morning before breakfast, she packed lunches for the men to take to work with them. She filled traditional tin lunch pails with sandwiches and pie in the bottom, and coffee in the double lid. In addition to the meals for the regulars, she also fed the transients who were just passing through. 

          When a pumping station was built at the well east of Garlock at Goler Canyon , and water was sent from there to the new 100 stamp mill at the Yellow Aster Mine in Randsburg, miners went there to work and abandoned Garlock. Business at the Lillard Hotel dropped off and the family discussed closing the hotel. One of the owners of the Yellow Aster Mine felt badly about taking business from the Lillards, and asked them to move to Randsburg to run the company hotel there.

The Prankster Proprietor

          In 1905, the pumping station in Goler provided work for 18-20 people. Scott Seals was hired as overseer, and brought his family to live with him.  Mrs. Seals cooked for the 17 employees that were stationed there.  The boarding house was a block away from the pumping station and sleeping quarters were provided in a bunkhouse on a hill opposite from it. 

          Mrs. Seals was a fun loving person who enjoyed a good joke and was well known for the pranks she played on her boarders. One April Fools day she baked cupcakes, some of them with cotton in them.  She made sure that a big man known as “Doughbelly” got the one loaded with the most cotton. One by one the men discovered the cotton, but never let on that anything was unusual, other than placing an unchewable piece of the cupcake back on their plate. “Doughbelly” couldn’t even get his teeth through his cupcake, and wound up putting the whole thing in his mouth.  He chewed and chewed, but still had a mouthful. When offered another cupcake, he accused Mrs. Seals of trying to kill them all. Since he was always the first to load up his plate and go back for seconds before the other men were served, anything that slowed him down was fine with them. 

          Another boarder of Mrs. Seals, was quick to let her know that she would have to cook something different for him when beans were on the menu, as he claimed beans nearly killed him. Long after the conversation was forgotten, Mrs. Seals baked a vegetable loaf, and the man who had complained about the beans wound up eating as much or more than the other men had. Over the next few days, she realized her mistake, and kept inquiring about the poor man’s health. He finally asked her why she was concerned, and admitted that he had never felt better in his life. Mrs. Seals explained that she had forgotten and fed bean loaf to him, and was worried that he would die from it. Not long after, it was reported he handed in his resignation from the pumping station because ”You can’t trust the food you get here.”

          In addition to her pranks, Mrs. Seals enjoyed a good all night game of poker with the men. However, if the games were on a night before a working day she was known to put a stop to them by turning the table over and scattering the cards and money everywhere. The tongue-lashing she gave them afterwards, always sent the men off to the bunkhouse for the night.

          Mrs. Seals not only cooked, played pranks, and enjoyed a good game of poker, she managed the horses. When she needed groceries she thought nothing of driving any animal to Randsburg, even if she was warned it could run away. She was stern with the teams, but never hurt them nor would she put up with others that would abuse the pump station stock. One day she observed a tenderfoot forcing a team and oil tank the wrong way around the circle drive. The lead animals knew the route and refused to listen to him. As she observed him beating the animals with a hammer, Mrs. Seals ran out of the kitchen and beat the driver with the broom she had in her hand. On his way back to Johannesburg , the man requested a new type of work, claiming there was a crazy woman at the pump station where he hauled oil. Mine owner Charles Burcham drove to Goler himself after he found out what the problem was and made sure the tenderfoot was fired, as he too did not tolerate abuse of animals any more than Mrs. Seals did. 

School Days

          As more women and children arrived in Randsburg a school was needed. The Wolfskill store building that Cuddeback had built upon his arrival was moved from Fiddlers Gulch to the center of town and the head of Butte  Avenue . Many schoolteachers came and went.  Among the first to arrive were a Miss Mite and Miss Williams. They didn’t last long in the classrooms though, which included students the same age as they were.  Some of the boys were as large or larger than the teacher, and took advantage of the fact. When a woman named Miss Witters arrived in town to teach, she had problems with the bigger boys as well. She surprised one large boy by flipping him to the ground and holding him down with one foot while she whipped him.

          There were two classrooms. Mrs. Higgins was remembered as one of the teachers for the younger children, and Mrs. Rader taught the older ones. Redwood desks were lined up for six students in a row. The boys sat on one side of the room and the girls on the other, so the boys could not tease the girls.

          Miss Orsavella Long came to teach in the school in Johannesburg . She was very young, and she was very tiny. Many of the 7th and 8th grade boys were larger than her. She managed to teach all 8 grades of the school, and she enjoyed playing with her students as well. After school she spent her time correcting the children’s papers. During school she made it interesting and her students enjoyed her. At recess she would join in games of tag and baseball. The children used a small miners shack to toss a ball over, and Miss Long was often seen joining in with them. She would kick her tiny slippers over the roof as she kicked the ball. When the children built a homemade wagon without brakes, Orsavella joined them as they rode down the steep mountain road behind the school.

          Miss Long’s students often enjoyed a prank or two, which she quickly handled by helping the girls play a prank on the boys in return. The boys put garlic inside the girls desks, so she to provided the girls a bottle of perfume, which nearly made the original prankster ill. A snake placed in the teacher’s desk drawer didn’t even cause her to blink. She just reached in and pulled the garter snake out, as if were perfectly normal for it to be there. 

          In the middle of Miss Orsavella Long’s school term, she went to LA and eloped. She sent a wire to the school board saying she would come back and finish the school year, if she was given a two week honeymoon. She was such a good teacher, her request was granted, and she happily returned to Johannesburg with her new husband after the honeymoon. The students were equally happy to work extra hard for the two weeks they lost during her honeymoon, because they loved her so much. 

Women Property Owners

          By 1913, an area along Cuddeback dry lake known as Golden Valley , was opened to homesteaders. Families began arriving with dreams of ranches and farms. Locals who knew the area wondered how a dry lake bed out in the middle of the desert could produce anything worthwhile.  They took Sunday drives to observe what the settlers were accomplishing. Within two months a list appeared in the Randsburg Miner telling who owned what and how things were going. Amongst the list were Mrs. Ostrander and Anna Kreidt, both with 160 acres, and land being cared. Anna already boasted a house. Imagine in April when the winds began blowing as they always do. The sands of the dry lake blew the plowed land, barley shoots were twisted off or blown completely out of the dry loose ground. Trees had to be hand watered and more often than not died before wells and irrigation could be set up. Many families left, or went to look for jobs in the mines or elsewhere. One can only wonder if these two women persevered in desert farming or moved on to something else.

Granny Slocum

          A woman named Sarah Slocum came to Garlock in 1914.  The town was dead then, and land was cheap.  Granny, as she became known, came in from San Francisco via New York and had accumulated $14,000 along the way.  She purchased most of Garlock and began leasing out buildings to the lonely miners who were still left. Her boarders jokingly called her place “Hotel de Puke”.  During WWI, Granny saw the opportunity to make money once again. The mills of Garlock no longer had gold to process so she dismantled them and sold the metal for scrap.

          Those who knew Granny Slocum remembered her as a “chatty little lady with pretty strong language.” She talked all the time, but said nothing. She smoked cigarettes which she rolled “neater than most men”, and she was known to put camphor in her liquor so her two sons wouldn’t touch it.  The men that she fed when they were down and out thought of her as the most helpful and understanding person in the desert. Anyone questioning her ownership of Garlock was quickly persuaded otherwise, by her threatening manner.

Railroad Express Agent

          As the automobile became popular in the 1920’s, the desert was more accessible and with it came more crime. Randsburg Railroad Express agent, Sue Reeves realized more shady people were hanging around her office. As an extra precaution she began leaving the light of her office on all night, and the safe door wide open, so people could see inside. When a gold brick arrived too late to go on the train, Sue and her husband decided to take it home and put it under their bed, and slept with a gun at their side that night. Sixteen places in town were robbed that night, but the Railroad Express office remained untouched thanks to the light and the open safe door so everyone could see it was empty.

The  Waitress

          As news got out that Rand Camp had employment opportunities for women workers, one young woman left home to make the vast desert trip all by herself. As soon as she stepped off the stage, a restaurant owner approached her. She would receive not only pay, but a place to live in a boarding house if she accepted his job offer. By day, Kate Pfadenhover waited tables. She enjoyed the bustling noises of the busy mining camp with the sounds of wagon traffic going up and down the street, and the laughter and shouting of children. Night time, however, the laughter and shouting she heard was the voices of the ladies of the evening and the men that patronized them, combined with the occasional sound of gunshots and fighting. A frightened Kate, would cower in her boarding room behind doors and windows barricaded with pieces of furniture. The day she woke up to find metal shutters over all of the windows of the boarding house and every other place in town to protect them from flying bullets, she packed her bags and headed out on the stage.

Ida Kelly

          Ida Kelly showed up at Rand Camp in the early days with her husband John. They were just in from Shasta County and heard about the camps of Mojave while stopping in Bakersfield . Instead of going to Mexico , they decided to try their luck in the mining camps. The barren brown desert was a stark contrast to the green forests of Shasta, and Mrs. Kelly was disheartened when she arrived on Rand Mountain . She was sure the sagebrush wouldn’t support a jackrabbit, let alone she and her husband. They wound up settling at Cow Wells where there was water and a better place for them to set up business. Cow Wells, however, was even starker than Rand Camp, with only the old Borax road to link them to the rest of the world. The only settlers around were men, and the nearest woman was a mile or so away at Goler.

          The Kelly’s set up a tent and opened up a feed and grain business for the miners and teamsters that came through. They had nothing with them, but the belongings they had brought down in the covered wagon from Shasta County . Eventually, Mrs. Kelly wound up cooking for those miners and teamsters who were hungry and tired from their desert travels. She cooked in a large Dutch oven over an open fire outdoors, with creosote for fuel. Sometimes the men would bring in mesquite or other firewood from the Tehachapi Mountains . 

          John Kelly eventually brought a real cook stove in to his wife from Mojave. The couple moved from their tent and covered wagon to a one room cabin with dirt floors. The quilts Ida had worked on during the long trip down from Shasta County were now displayed on the beds inside the cabin. Cupboards and shelves were made of fruit crates.

         As the only woman in the mining camp, Ida became known as Mother Kelly. She looked after the miners, cooked meals, and mended clothes for them. If a miner came in with a firearm that they “might take to usin’ for celebrating”, Ida would hide the gun until their stay was over. 

          April 10, 1896 , Ida Kelly became postmistress of Cow Wells and another room was added to the Kelly cabin to accommodate both their business and the post office. As Cow Wells grew and became known as Garlock, John Kelly became the first constable of the area. They eventually moved to Randsburg where John became constable. In later years they became famous for the Kelly Silver Mine.

Alone in the Mining Camps

        Some women  came to the Western Mojave Mining Camps with their husbands only to find themselves alone after a period of years. Mrs. Johnny Arnold took over her husband’s job as muleskinner when he died from a gunshot wound. Mrs. Arnold donned men’s clothing and drove the freight wagons back and forth from Skidoo to Johannesburg with the help of a young male relative.  Her freight business ran successfully between the two towns for many years.  

          Army nurse Ruth Wadsworth came to live in a dugout with her new husband, Clarence Wadsworth. Life was lonely and harsh, isolated 10 miles from Randsburg. When mining was slow there was nothing to do and little money for supplies. They never struck enough gold to improve upon their life or move on elsewhere. Mr. Wadsworth came down with silicosis and Ruth nursed him until he died. As a widow, she was anxious to move home to her old friends and city life. The outside world was strange however, and she soon came back to the desert she knew and loved.

To be continued…….

Bibliography

Desert Bonanza

by Marcia Rittenhouse Wynn

The Arthur H. Clark Company

Glendale, California

Out of Print  

 

Gold Gamble

by Roberta Martin Starry

Engler Publishing

George N. Engler & Associates

Now available through www.amazon.com 

 

Garlock Ghost Town

by Roberta Martin Starry

Roberta's Desert Shop

Out of Print

Special thanks to Roberta Martin Starry for the artwork and Daphne Worsham, Robin Flinchum, and David A. Wright for helping with research and inspiring me.  


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