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Hi! I’m Maggie
Moore, the new member of Explore Historic California. Haven’t done a
lot of exploring yet as I am way too young to go out much and haven’t
had all of my puppy shots yet.
But that gives me lots of time to read up on who I am named after, and
the place she lived in. Papa Jake (who you guys know better as Poor
Little Jake) is teaching me how to write like he does, so here’s my
first try:
All I ever hear my human Mommy talk about is this place called
Cerro Gordo
. She says
Cerro Gordo
means “Fat Hill”, because the mountain was so rich with silver. Some
important guys like Mortimer Belshaw and Victor Beaudry owned the big
mines up there in the mid to late 1800’s. Another guy named Remi
Nadeau owned real big wagons pulled by a whole lot of mules. These wagons and mules took silver bricks from
Cerro Gordo
to
Los Angeles, then came back to
Cerro Gordo
with supplies for the town. My family just barely lives in Los Angeles
and we’re about 4 hours away from
Cerro Gordo
driving our comfy 4Runner. But in the 1800’s in Mr. Nadeau’s wagons,
it took days! Longest
ride I’ve ever had is 2 hours from my birth home in Apple Valley, to my permanent home here in Tujunga. That trip to
Cerro Gordo
must have really been something back in the really old days!
Cerro Gordo
was mainly a mining town and most of the people living there were men.
There were some families that lived up there, but there was never a real
school or a church, or even a newspaper. Other than the buildings that
were used for mining stuff, there were mainly bunkhouses, little mining
shacks, hotels, saloons, dancehalls, assay offices, general stores for
supplies. The men that lived
up there worked hard in the mines all day then spent their money in the
saloons and dancehalls afterwards. Since
many of them didn’t have any families and were lonely they spent a lot
of time in places like The Waterfall owned by the lady that I am named
after, Madam Maggie Moore. The
Waterfall was at the entrance to town. At the other end of town a lady
named Lola Travis ran a place called Lola’s Palace
of
Pleasure. These places were really
popular with the miners, but I guess decent folks, particularly married
women, didn’t like these places so much.
In a really old newspaper from
the big
Owens
Valley
area below the Fat Hill there’s a story about what a rough
place
Cerro Gordo
was. The reporter said it
was a “man for breakfast” kind of place, where lots of shootings and
trouble happened all of the time. A week in February of 1873 was really
exciting, apparently. Four
men, Mr. Walker, Mr. Clark, Mr. McCarty, and Mr. Stewart came up to the
mountain and got really drunk. They went around bad-mouthing all of the
Mexicans, which was not a nice thing to do. At Hughes Saloon, things got
so bad that barkeeper, Al Briggs, told everybody to get out and closed
the place down. The four
troublemakers didn’t let this stop them from “having fun.”
They took their six-shooters and headed down the hill to Madam
Maggie Moore’s Waterfall Dance House.
Mr. McCarty and Mr. Stewart had already gotten into big trouble
down in Lone Pine a couple
of months before when they shot a Mexican, so they just continued
walking past Maggie’s and headed down to Owens Valley. What a heck of
a long walk that would have been! Mr.
Walker and Mr. Clark decided to enter The Waterfall and announced they
were going to take over things for awhile.
Madam Maggie had informed the Mexicans
in her place that these men were not welcome, and their help was
not wanted. Things got
heated between the Mexicans and all of the Americans who were there. The Americans were helped out the door.
One Mexican came up to Mr. Walker and pointed a pistol to his
head. He fired it as Mr.
Walker was branding his own weapon, but he only wounded Mr. Walker.
More shooting started up, and Mr. Clark was wounded in the groin
and sent to the Camp
Independence
Hospital
way down off the mountain. Even
though the Mexicans had armed themselves with pistols, knives and rocks,
and were definitely out for blood, the old newspaper said that everybody
in town was basically on their side. That same night, more arguments and violence took place at
Lola’s Palace
of
Pleasure. Stuff like this happened
all of the time at Maggie’s and Lola’s. They must have been really tough senora’s!
If you ever get a chance to visit
Cerro Gordo, you can still see Lola’s
Palace
of
Pleasure, but Maggie Moore’s Waterfall is long gone.
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| Maggie (with red
neckerchief) poses with Cecile and Robin outside Lola's Palace
of Pleasure at Cerro Gordo. |
It’s been a few
months since I started writing this story and I’m not just a little
tiny rottador pup any more! I’ve
been on several trips with Mommy & Daddy, and I’ve even been to
Cerro Gordo
! Mom’s friend, Robin went
with us and told us that it’s a good possibility that Maggie Moore
just called herself that. Her
real name may have been Petra Romero.
One of these days, Robin’s going to have to tell me how she
figured that one out! Meantime,
I’m sure glad my Mommy didn’t know about the name Petra
when she was looking for a puppy. She
would have had to pick out a little tiny
Chihuahua
instead of big 6 ½ month old 55 pound me!
Thank you Papa Jake & Mommy for helping me with my first
story – I couldn’t have done this good without you!
By the way,
Cerro Gordo
is just as much fun as everybody said it would be, but it will be more
fun when Mommy can trust me off the leash to run around on my own.
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