Nine Miles In: Living 25 Years at Webber Lake

By Doug A. Garton

Nine Miles In recounts the incredible adventures of Doug Garton, the first caretaker to ever live year round at beautiful and historic Webber Lake Ranch in the northern Sierra Nevada Mountains of California. Doug and his first and second wife endured fierce, isolating, yet stunningly beautiful winters. The property contains numerous historic buildings and sites, the most notable being the 1860s Webber Lake Hotel, an original stage stop and resort on the famed Henness Pass Road. This self-made man narrates his nail-biting life and death rescues and close calls while taking the reader through twenty-five years of what times were like managing incredible Webber Lake Ranch.

• Language: English
• Publisher: iUniverse
• Release date: Jul 31, 2017
• ISBN: 9781532025891

Doug A. Garton

Doug Garton was born in 1928 in Corona, California, when part of the town’s circular race track went around the family’s home. Doug worked for California Fish and Game for 11 years. While there, he developed studies and instituted a big game guzzler; an idea that is still in use by the organization today. After another successful career of 17 years in the roofing business, Doug was able to put his inventor nature, problem solving, and outdoorsman skills to work as the first ever year-round manager of Webber Lake Ranch.

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Copyright © 2017 Doug A. Garton.

Cover art and Illustrations by Judy Laughlin.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the author except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

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ISBN: 978-1-5320-2588-4 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-5320-2589-1 (e)

iUniverse rev. date: 08/09/2017

Contents

Dedication

Foreword

Acknowledgments

1 The Henness Pass Road

2 Dr. David Gould Webber

3 Webber Lake’s Homesteaders – The Johnson’s

4 The Making Of A Mountain Man

5 Finding My High Sierra Challenge

6 Our Wonderful Campers And Cabins

7 The Webber Lake Sheep – The Heart Of The Ranch

8 It’s All About The Fish

9 Vern’s Cabin – Clif’s House – My Home

10 The Historic Buildings Of Webber Lake

11 Dangerous Moments

12 One Of My Favorite Pastimes

13 Visitors From The Skies

14 Our Furry Friends

15 Sad Days. Happy Days.

16 Particulars

17 The Cows

18 Wildlife

19 Burrrrrrrrrrrr!

20 High Mountain Peril

21 Motors That Moved Us

22 Our Famous Visitors

23 Leaving My Beloved Lake

NMI%20Doug%27s%20Map%20001.jpg

Dedication

To Webber Lake’s legendary Clif Johnson, and to Pearlene Munson for suggesting the book to keep me busy after the loss of my second wife. Without Pearlene’s spark and offer to help, this book would never have come to be. For the many hours we spent compiling, correcting, the many challenges, frustrations, happy and funny moments, your help Pearlene, was my encouragement and inspiration.

Foreword

I met Doug Garton and his friend Pearlene Munson at their camp site at Webber Lake in the summer of 2015. It was a lovely camping spot; right on the lake shore and just below the point where Clif and Barbara Johnson, the properties’ long-time owners, had built their summer house around 1960. I was working at the Truckee Donner Land Trust (Land Trust) when I heard about a former Webber Lake manager who had lived year-round at the ranch for 25 years. The Webber Lake property contains many historic buildings, including a 1860s hotel. Historic Henness Pass Road leads to the hotel, a former stage stop and resort. History buff that I am, the historic importance of the region greatly excited me. I begged my boss to be the project manager for the hotel’s restoration. (This he did, but I am no longer at the Land Trust and do not know the fate of this significant building – nor the many others on the property). When I learned about Doug, I was eager to locate historic artifacts to display in a restored hotel parlor and to get my hands on relics from the 1800s and later.

The Land Trust had purchased 3,000 acres at Webber Lake – including Lacey Meadows – in 2012 from Clif and Barbara Johnson, second generation homesteaders of the ranch. While the Johnson’s could have asked a fortune for this incredible property, they sold it to the Land Trust for a bargain price to ensure the lands would always be cared for and never developed. Conserving acreage this size and of such beauty is a boon for any land trust. Clif passed away not long after the sale, and I never got to meet this legendary man, nor his wife Barbara. I did get to speak with Barbara on the phone several times, as the Land Trust staff communicated with her at her assisted living home in the Sacramento region regarding land matters that still required discussion. Whenever our Executive Director and Stewardship Director were in the area, they always took Barbara to lunch or at least brought her flowers. Fortunately, we get to know the Johnson’s further through Doug’s recounting of his 25 years at Webber Lake.

I knew it was extremely important to document the location and history of the old sites on the property. Therefore, some of my visits with Doug and Pearlene were expeditions to photograph and mark the location of historic sites: Ridigner’s Dairy; the Teacher’s Cabins with a functional, capped natural spring; Vern and Betty Johnson’s Cabin erected next to a lateral creek feeding into Lacey Creek; Old Man Johnson’s home that he built on a knoll overlooking Lacey Meadows; the 1860s Webber Lake Hotel; the original Webber’s Station stage stop now called The Office; the Bohemian Fly Caster’s Club Apartments; the Fish House; the Ice House, now a cabin rental; the site of the Glass House; the old well that revealed a timeworn pistol now in a museum; the original fire rings from the ranches’ first, modern campsites; Basque tree carvings; the old bear trap; and the actual route of Henness Pass Road into Webber Lake leading to the front door of the Webber Lake Hotel.

Between Pearlene’s many years scavenging an old dump at the ranch, Old Man Johnson’s (William) burned down home, areas around the lake, and with Doug’s long tenancy, the two had collected an astounding amount of artifacts. We wanted these precious remnants from the past to go into the old hotel to be permanently displayed. Among the highlights: a corner porcelain sink and iron twin bed frame from the hotel. Doug found a milk can in the Apartment House wall, which we assume to be from Ridigner’s Dairy and which may have been used to store kerosene. Other artifacts include: a heavy cream separator, a handmade torch, two man logging saws, an ice tong, old Webber Lake post cards, and many horse shoes, square nails, and bottles, to name a few. There were also some fabric items I was very excited about: bed spreads, riding britches, and hand sewn dresses. Pearlene discovered these in a trunk among the ruins of Old Man Johnson’s home on the Lacey Meadows knoll. Could these be the items of original homesteader Cynthia Johnson, William’s wife? Very intriguing. I carefully packed the items and wrote down their source in my notebook, the intellectual property of the Land Trust. There are only three people alive on the planet that can provide provenance to these artifacts: myself, Doug, and Pearlene. I asked Doug to draw a map of the property in relation to the greater region and note the location of the property’s buildings and historic sites. Doug gave me a large, rolled up map on grid paper that he had used. He was meticulous, as he is, and the map is fantastic. This too remains safely filed at the Land Trust office. During my visits to Doug and Pearlene’s Webber Lake camp, at 87 years old, Doug was out pacing me and my photographers on our ventures. He is spry, witty…funny. His personality has been described as a combination of Andy Griffith and John Wayne.

During a visit Doug mentioned he was writing a book, and being a published writer, I immediately offered to help. He and Pearlene needed an editor and someone who could research the many self-publishing companies. Doug hand wrote his book on lined, yellow tablets, and I told them I needed it in Microsoft Word so I could edit and digitally send it and the photographs to the publisher I later dialed in. Pearlene obtained the needed software and also ended up dictating Doug’s handwritten pages into a computer. I was emailed over 100 chapters, some short, some long. It was a significant task to copy and paste the material as well as organize it into a readable flow. There were a number of delays in producing the book with events in my life, and I was rather stressed to get the project done. I was keenly aware of the time sensitivity of the book, because Doug is now 88 years old. He deserves to have this book in hand, to give to the many people he knows, and to see his incredible adventures in print! I called him after I had to relocate, and there was a long delay of work on the book and said, Doug, everybody just stay alive! I am back on it! Therefore, I ask the grammar police and historians to forgive my errors. I just couldn’t spend an enormous amount of time in reviewing the manuscript over and over nor send it on to others for review. I had to get it to press.

Doug is of the Greatest Generation and a survivor of the Great Depression. And in learning of his life story and his time at Webber Lake, I can say they certainly don’t make them like they used to. He’s an inventor; problem solver; researcher; thinker; builder; mechanic; investigator; a survivor; a biologist; former President of the State Roofing Contractors Association, California; a Fish and Game Commissioner in Riverside and Sierra Counties; a mountain man; an outdoorsman; an adventurer; a rescuer; a helper of those in need; and above all; a great friend to many – then and now. Pearlene calls him sweet man – and for good cause. In fact, he is indeed so sweet that I can forgive him for popping the Webber Lake bats that got into his upstairs bedroom before the window was screened, instead of catching and releasing them! I decided it was important to include chapters where Doug provides information on his early life in Corona and his time working for California Fish and Game. These experiences are integral parts in the development of this rare and interesting man. In addition, I include chapters that provide the reader with historic background on how Webber Lake came to be. Readers will find the region to be of deep historical importance, beauty, mystery, joy, and danger.

Doug kept meticulous diaries of his years at Webber Lake, so the reader and the historical record can appreciate dates, times, temperatures, wildlife activity, discoveries, births, deaths, misadventures, and close calls. I left a fair amount of names in the text so families, friends, agencies, etc., can find themselves, each other, their loved ones, and have a record of their time and activities at the ranch. This special place in the northern Sierra Nevada Mountains provided countless, wonderful memories to many – and it will continue to do so in the future.

I have endeavored to organize the material by subject matter. In this format, there is narrative that includes Doug’s first wife Jodie and his second wife MaryAnn in a non-chronological manner. This format allowed me to manage the flow.

My thanks to the Sierra County Historical Society and their members for their excellent research and articles published in their member newsletter, The Sierran. A big thank you to the Truckee Donner Land Trust for letting me appropriate from their Historic Structures Report to provide some crucial background to the reader. I borrow directly from the report and include citations in the text. I note in the text where the report is used, and most of these sections have been slightly edited to condense the material. There are many fascinating details in the report, but it specifically gave me information on Dr. Webber, the Webber Lake Hotel, the celebrated Henness Pass Road, and the original Johnson ranchers. Dennis E. Zirbel, Architect, was commissioned by the Land Trust to create the Historic Structures Report in preparation of the hotel’s restoration. Thank you to my two in-kind photographers Jane Hunt and Forest Townsend; Forest also scanned Pearlene and Doug’s photos for the book. Thanks as well to Gail Paulin for ferrying us to the lake to fill her SUV with artifacts to haul them back to Truckee. These folks were very excited to meet Doug and Pearlene, see the historic buildings, the beautiful acreage, and document the property, so I don’t think it was a big ask to have them join me! Many thanks to Pearlene Munson, who was diligent in editing Doug’s handwritten pages, for getting chapters to me, for her superb edits to our final drafts, and for providing gems of information from her many years of research in this region.

Doug and his first and second wife were the only people to ever have lived year-round at Webber Lake, through daunting, isolating winters. He recorded their deepest snow at 22 standing feet with snowdrifts at 50 feet! Thank you to all three of you. What pioneers! What adventurers and risk takers!

Doug’s recounting is a testament to his extraordinary time at Webber Lake and to the people, things, and events that touched him, his loved ones, and countless others. It is a tribute to the spirit of the pioneers, to California and generational Californians, an accolade to the mighty Sierra Nevada, to the landscape, the wildlife, and the footsteps of humanity upon the land. It is a survival manual, adventure story, a love story. It is also part of the historical record, and I submit it as such.

I have grown to deeply care about Doug and Pearlene, and they me. Meeting these two and working with them on the book is one of the highlights of my life. Doug, you are an amazing man and a great inspiration, and we thank you for sharing with us 25 years of living nine miles in.

Keaven Van Lom

Auburn, California

April, 2017

Acknowledgments

I am thankful for Bud Smith, a friend during my early school years. He got me into football and baseball that helped to make my body strong, after having scarlet fever and rheumatic fever when I was 12 years old. I must give credit to my two wives: both Jodie and MaryAnn were tough and giving of themselves considering the unknown challenge of being isolated during winters and not knowing how severe each winter would be. We depended on each other to handle whatever Mother Nature brought to our front door: extreme cold temperatures, heavy winds, and deep snows. It was fun at times, and there were tragedies, but most of all desires and challenges were being fulfilled in thrilling ways. Jodie was a trooper putting up with so many pioneer days with no power, running water, phones, and no inside toilets – and so was my second wife, MaryAnn. They were both very athletic, enduring the long winters, and loving the mountains and the howling snowstorms.

I am indebted to many people and longtime campers who loved Webber Lake and its beauty. They filled me in on events, what they knew about the lake, and its surrounding area rich with history. My oldest known Webber Lake contact was Larry Bullivant. Bullivant became a special friend, passing on everything he had learned about the area and was a tremendous help with our many projects. Lee Fey, Bob Wise, and Bob Jack were summer managers before my time, and their knowledge provided great help. The Wise’s were able to give me even more fascinating history about the ranch. The Dolley family kindly let us use their heavy equipment. Thanks as well to Merle Pastore, Marvin Baker, and Ed Hall who helped with all things mechanical, the entire Isola family, Ken and Pearlene Munson, and Bill Sonneman, who wrote books for the Agriculture Department at the University of Nevada, Reno. John Firpo was from an old family in Truckee, worked as an anchorman at Channel 4 in Reno, Nevada, and he put us on TV! Thanks also for two articles about life at the ranch published by the Reno Gazette Journal.

Thank you to some of the older families from Truckee, Sierraville, Calpine, and Loyalton: Bob Tonini, Gino Giavanonie, Hal Wright, Dan Russell, Jerry McCaffery, and the Russell and Filippini Families.

Several Fish and Game employees gave me a chance to better myself while working with the department: John Laughlin, Sr., Gene Gerdes, Bob Fordice, and Dick Weaver. I am grateful for the excellent cooperation of the United States Forest Service (USFS) in Sierraville, Sierra County, and Tim Beales, Planning Director in Sierra County. Hats off to Lee Adams, Sierra County Sheriff; Mel Ponta, Sierra County Deputy; and to Keaven Van Lom for helping to make this book a reality.

It was July, 2011 when I was notified that Clif Johnson had died, just a few days after my wife MaryAnn’s death. I attended his funeral in the town of Roseville, California, at the church he helped build. There were several Webber Lake members in attendance. I got up and talked about Clif and also his wife Barbara who were good, honest, and giving people. They allowed me to live at Webber Lake Ranch, and with their approval, let me develop improvements I thought would make the step back in time camping as comfortable as possible without taking away from the natural beauty.

Ken and Pearlene Munson, who had camped at Webber Lake since ’59, were among the guests at our table after Clif’s service. During conversation Pearlene asked if I had given thought about writing a book about all my experiences living in at Webber Lake. I hesitated because English wasn’t my strongest subject in school. I answered, if I really do write a book will you help me with my spelling? She said she would try and she would buy the first copy! I had just lost my wife a short time before and after I went back home, I thought about what Pearlene had said to me at the service. The workers at Hospice were checking on me by telephone, and I told them about writing a book. They thought this was a great idea that would help to keep me busy.

I hope many people will enjoy this book. I love the mountains with the peacefulness and challenges it offers. I’m the Mountain Man as Pearlene calls me.

Interior_Doug%20%26%20Pearlene_20170603010235.jpg

Doug and Pearlene enjoy a laugh together.

Finally, my utmost thanks go to Clif and Barbara Johnson, who hired me to look after their property and let us live for 25 years at such a heavenly place. There truly isn’t another place I have ever been to that could compare to Webber Lake.

Doug A. Garton

3749 Meadow Court

Lincoln, CA 95648

1

The Henness Pass Road

(Editor’s Note: Webber Lake Ranch is located on the historic Henness Pass Road. The below is taken from the Historic Structures Report. It has been slightly edited to condense the material and with some additional narrative from the editor at the end):

After the disaster of the Donner Party, emigrant routes were directed north in avoiding Donner Pass, known as the Truckee River Route as a primary Emigrant Wagon Trail, which is set on segments of the Henness Pass Road near Webber Lake. During the early 1850s into the 1860s, there was rapid development of mining/logging towns popping up randomly across the Sierra Nevada Mountains, and many of these early transportation routes connecting these towns were harrowing. Blazed by Patrick Henness in 1849, Henness Pass Road is believed to have been either set on a Native American trail or to have been blazed by Downieville founder Joseph Zumwalt (Barrett 1975b, Sierra College 2015). The Daily Alta on August 4, 1854, records:

‘There were three routes from the Truckee Meadows to the Sacramento Valley—Beckwith [sic] route, by way of the American Valley and the City of ’76; the Truckee route by way of Nevada, and the Downieville, or Hennis [sic] route, coming in at Galloway’s Ranch, on the divide between the South and Middle Yubas. Webber’s Ranch, Webber Lake, the source of the Little Truckee, is the only stopping place on the route.’

This excerpt is one of the earliest reports of Dr. D.G. Webber and his establishment on Henness Pass, publicized as the only stopping place, witnessed in a prevalent San Francisco newspaper. By 1855, the road was certified as a California State Wagon Road and a favored pass over other routes in the Sierra Nevada Mountains (Sierra College 2015).

On an 1873 U.S. Survey Map of Webber Lake the map notes: Henness Pass Road, as Henness Pass Wagon Road, follows in and out an Old Emigrant Road, which is believed to be the Truckee River Route and one of the earliest emigrant routes.

Henness Pass Road connected the commerce travel from Marysville and Downieville through Sierra County north along Dog Valley Road, which paralleled the Little Truckee River to the current town of Verdi, Nevada, on route to the Comstock Mining District in Virginia City, Nevada (Barrett 1975b, Hinkle and Hinkle 1949:222). Other express companies such as Wells Fargo also began to take use of the pass (Barrett 1975b). Overall, thousands of individuals and freight is known to have traveled along the pass, which led back and forth to the mining fields of Nevada and California.

Before the construction of the railroad, freight typically was hauled up the Sacramento, Feather, and lower Yuba Rivers to be unloaded at Marysville in Yuba County or Knights

Landing in Yolo County. From there, stagecoaches and freight wagons led by 8-mule wagon teams traversed the pass to the gold mines and towns of Northern California and Nevada. Passengers could catch a stagecoach at 6:30 a.m. every morning in Sacramento, which would take them on a 30-hour ride to Virginia City. Hotels and stage stops were set up on the passes in accommodating the travelers on these long journeys. During its heyday in the 1860s, traffic was so heavy that passenger-filled stagecoaches ran at night while freight wagons ran during the day, and it was recorded approximately 100 wagons per day traveled the pass (Pauly 2012). It has been speculated there were 30 public houses, or Hotels, located along this road, and the Webber Lake Hotel is considered the earliest surviving Hotel on Henness Pass Road (Countis n.d., Fimrite 2012). In 1869 the Central Pacific Railroad met the Union Pacific Railroad, which put an end to heavy travel on Henness Pass Road (Sierra College 2015).

In 1941, the Native Sons and Daughters of the Golden West placed a plaque on the road in Alleghany in Sierra County. The landmark plaque reads: THE MAIN EMIGRANT TRAIL BETWEEN VIRGINIA CITY, NEVADA AND MARYSVILLE, CALIFORNIA, THE HENNESS PASS ROAD WAS IN USE AS EARLY AS 1849. AT THAT TIME, THIS WAS THE ONLY ROAD THROUGH THE HENNESS PASS.

While working at the Truckee Donner Land Trust, I got a call from a gentleman representing the historic Bridgeport covered bridge at the South Yuba River State Park, California. Bridgeport was an important back and forth route from San Francisco to the mines of Virginia City. The gentleman explained that the park’s tour guides took an annual trek from Bridgeport to Verdi, Nevada, traveling on the old Hennes Pass Road. They stopped at some nearly 30 stage stops where only markers note where the stage stops