The Other Side of the Mountain

By Alton Pryor

In its early days, The Owens Valley provided a refuge for the Paiute Indians who sought solitude from the white man that was intruding on California. Still, the white man eventually stumbled on the Owens Valley, and like much of California, settled there and laid claim to Indian territory.
Today, the most prominent landmark of the Owens Valley is the towering Mt. Whitney.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Alton Pryor
• Release date: Jun 15, 2011
• ISBN: 9780983754893

Alton Pryor

Alton Pryor has been a writer for magazines, newspapers, and wire services. After retiring, he turned to writing books. He is the author of 18 books, which he has published himself.

Book preview

The Other Side of the Mountain

The Forgotten Pioneers

Alton Pryor

Copyright by Alton Pryor 2011

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Table of Contents

Chapter 1-The Early Days

Chapter 2-The Water Schemers

Chapter 3-Mt. Whitney

Chapter 4-Cerro Gordo

Chapter 5-The Lone Pine Mint

Chapter 6-The Dreaded Panamint

Chapter 7-Manzanar

Chapter 8-The Carson & Colorado Railroad

Chapter 9-Bristlecone Pine Forest

Chapter 10-Badwater to Mt. Whitney

Chapter 11-Mono Lake

Chapter 12-Mule Days In Bishop

Chapter 13-Tales of Giant Men

Chapter 14-Steamships in the Desert

Chapter 15-The 20-Mule Team

Chapter 16-Scotty’s Castle

Chapter 17-The Towns of Inyo

Chapter 18-The Chaguanosos

Chapter 19-Hung Twice for Murder

Chapter 20-Convict Lake

Chapter 21-Formation of the Sierra Nevada

Chapter 22-Mt. Whitney Fish Hatchery

Chapter 23-The Big Horn Sheep

Chapter 24-The Alabama Hills

Chapter 25-The Desert Padre

Chapter 26-Tom Shaw’s Cabin

Chapter 27-The Devil’s Golf Course

Chapter 28-The Jordan Trail

Chapter 29-Editor Walter ‘Bill’ Chalfant

Chapter 30-A Frontiersman’s Life

Chapter 31-A One-Man Tunnel

Chapter 32-Laws Railroad Museum

Chapter 33-Shorty Harris

Chapter 1

The Early Days

The Owens Valley provided a refuge for the Paiute Indians when the white man intruded on their California territory. The Owens Valley stretches from Haiwee Reservoir in the south to Sherwin Summit in the north (just north of the town of Bishop).

Scientists and mountain climbers still discover fossils high in the rocks that wall the narrow valley, signifying the valley was once all under water.

Some three million years ago, the Sierra Nevada and White Mountain fault systems became active with repeated episodes of slip earthquakes. The action gradually produced the impressive Sierra Nevada and White Mountain escarpments that bound the Owens Valley-Mono Basin region.

The Sierra Nevada casts the Owens Valley in a rain shadow. Indians call it the land of little rain.

The barren Owens Valley is seldom more than fifteen miles wide and narrows to only four miles at its head. The Valley is jammed between two mountain ranges, the rugged White Mountains rising 10,000 thousand feet up in the east, and the saw-toothed Sierra Nevada on the west.

It is the Sierra Nevada slope that captures the attention of most travelers through the area. Here is where the majestic Mt. Whitney, the highest peak in the lower forty-eight states, soars to an exhilarating height of 14,496 feet at its summit.

John C. Fremont discovered the tiny valley and its lake on his third expedition in 1845. He named the landmarks, both the lake and the valley, for Richard Owens, one of his guides, although Owens never saw the landmarks that carried his name.

Paiute and Shoshone Indians claimed the Eastern Sierra as home for thousands of years. The Paiutes lived in the northern Sierra, from Owens Valley to southern Oregon. They called themselves Numu meaning the people.

The Shoshone inhabited the southern Owens Valley and lands to the east, and called themselves Kuzedika, which means kutsavi eaters. Kutsavi are brine-fly larva collected in the late summer from the salty waters of Mono Lake. Kutsavi is a protein-rich food staple and a valuable trade commodity for the tribe.

Several Paiute tribes lived together in the peaceful valley. They did migrate, following their food sources from region to region with the varying weather conditions. They were primarily root gatherers and farmers, although they hunted deer, mountain sheep and other small game. They also dined on pine nuts, other seeds, and on some insects.

Pandora moth caterpillars provided an important food source. The caterpillars infested Jeffrey pine forests. The Paiutes collected them in steep trenches dug around the trees, roasted them in pits with hot coals and dried them.

The Paiutes made baskets, pottery, and weapons. They used tule, willow, birch, sage root and bracken fern in their baskets. Other tribes traded shell beads and shells to the Paiutes, which had little, or no access to these products.

The peaceful Indians also devised an extensive ditch irrigation system for irrigating the wild hyacinth and yellow nutgrass.

Paiute Indians believed in a superior being. They sang songs that were like prayers. They also held ceremonies for birth, death, springtime, harvest, hunting and rain. The word Paiute means a dwelling of Great Spirit.

Joseph Reddeford Walker

Joseph Reddeford Walker is the first documented explorer of the Eastern Sierra. He discovered the area while hunting beaver. Three years later, he guided the first expedition of the Eastern Sierra under Captain John C. Fremont. Included in the expedition party were Kit Carson, Richard Owens, for whom Owens Valley was named, and Edward Kern.

Lieutenant Tredwell Moore, a military commander at Fort Miller near Fresno, discovered Mono Lake while chasing a band of Miwok Indians to the area in 1852. The Indians were suspected of killing three white men in Yosemite Valley. Moore’s military mission failed.

Moore did find gold, however. This finding incited gold prospectors to flock to the Owens Valley to seek their fortunes on the eastern side of the Sierra.

The Paiutes were peaceful Indians until white intruders disrupted their food sources. The winter of 1861-1862 was one of the most severe winters in Owens Valley history. Bad weather either killed or drove away almost all of the wild game.

The white prospectors cut the pinion and Jeffrey pine trees for lumber and others brought in livestock that trampled tubers, roots, plants and seeds in the meadows.

It seemed only natural to the Paiutes that the cattle trampling their fields could be killed for their own use. A cowboy named Al Thompson caught an Indian butchering a steer and killed him, infuriating the tribe.

The Paiutes were a formidable foe for the white ranchers in the area for five years or more. In the autumn of 1861, a large party of Indians threatened the San Francis Ranch that is now the site of Bishop.

On April 6, 1861, fifty to sixty settlers headed by John T. Kellogg engaged in a battle with five hundred or more Paiutes lined up from Bishop Creek to the foothills in the south. Eventually, the white intruders were the victors in the battle.

After their defeat many Paiutes soon resorted to seeking work as laborers on the farms and ranches now occupying their ancestral lands.

It was Leroy Vining who led