One of the Seeds: ------

By Joseph Scanavino

While the former gold rush town Bodie was becoming a ghost town, the early Scanavino family was busy earning their American dream on a farm they called the Goat Ranch. The adult Scanavino children worked to keep the roads open and the lights on for the Bodie watchman. Eventually, Bodie was abandoned, including the Goat Ranch, except for a caretaker to preserve and protect the property.

This is a grandson's memoir and story about the early Scanavino family who sold potatoes and hay to the declining mining town of Bodie during the early 1900s. The Scanavino family lived on a farm they called the Goat Ranch, located on the Bodie-Lundy road, eight miles north of Mono Lake, California. My grandparents, Giuseppe and Maria Scanavino, were pioneers in Mono County farming and pathfinders of education in northern Mono Lake basin and within the eastern district of historic ghost town Bodie near Bridgeport and Lee Vining, California. The grandson's story reveals how the Scanavino family lived in relation to the history of Bodie and Mono County during the late 1890s and early 1900s.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Christian Faith Publishing, Inc.
• Release date: Mar 2, 2022
• ISBN: 9781639610303

Book preview

cover.jpg

One of the Seeds

------

Joseph Scanavino

ISBN 978-1-63961-029-7 (paperback)

ISBN 978-1-63961-031-0 (hardcover)

ISBN 978-1-63961-030-3 (digital)

Copyright © 2021 by Joseph Scanavino

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods without the prior written permission of the publisher. For permission requests, solicit the publisher via the address below.

Christian Faith Publishing, Inc.

832 Park Avenue

Meadville, PA 16335

www.christianfaithpublishing.com

Printed in the United States of America

Table of Contents

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

A grandson’s story about his life and the life of his grandparents and their twelve children who lived on a farm near ghost town Bodie and Mono Lake, California, in the 1900s.

Joseph Joe or Jo-Boy Scanavino at the Goat Ranch.

Acknowledgments

I am grateful to the following people who provided me with vital information and endless encouragement. They made this story possible. I am forever grateful to them for their time and generosity. My spiritual gratitude goes first to Jesus Christ for his divine wisdom to guide me in his Father’s plan for me to write this story. My heartfelt thanks to my wife, Therese, for her patience and understanding for the many hours (years) she had to endure alone while I was hunkered down in my room to make this story a reality. Thanks, Terry.

The backbone of my story is information from my late cousin, Harvey N. Dondero, who interviewed surviving descendants of our grandparents and gathered documents for a story called Giuseppe ‘Joe’ Scanavino and His Family. Mr. Dondero completed the story in 1984, the same year he died. In 1988, his daughter, Marilyn Dondero Loop, assembled the information and had the story printed in a pamphlet that was distributed to the Dondero–Scanavino families, including museums in Mono County (Bridgeport, Bodie, and Lee Vining). I am indebted to Kent Stoddard, president of Mono County Historical Society, and his wife Sharon, who meticulously poured over old copies of the Bridgeport Chronicle-Union newspapers to highlight information pertinent to my story. Special recognition is also extended to the following people who shared their information with me. They are Marilyn Dondero Loop, Judy S. Habbeshaw (Dondero), Victoria Jean Scanavino Young, Ellen King (staff member of Mono Lake Committee), author Michael Piatt, Mono County historian Norman DeChambeau, Ella Hayes, Dr. W. C. Anderson, Butch Seymour, Bob Pilatos, Charles Chuck Eproson, Sheila Giovacchini, David Kellogg, William and Michelle Denault, Donna Lee Bevins, Frank Jurado, Eunice Bettencourt Langreder, Glenda Bayless, Don and Rita Banta, Steve Cedar Berger (former president of Mono Basin Historical Society), Ilene Mandelbaum, Alice Dolan, Lily Mathieu, Elmer Buddy Beyer, and Kathi and Jim Richards.

A special thanks to my wife Terry and her family who shared my past with their present by providing encouragement. A warm thanks to Terri Geissinger (Bodie Foundation historian/guide), an extraordinary person and special friend. She is the lifeline, the hallmark, and the gold standard for Bodie history and its cemetery. Thank you, Terri.

Introduction: The American Dream

The American Dream

Perhaps you and I have something in common, something some people take for granted, something some people will sacrifice their life to obtain. A good chance that something is our American heritage, our US birthright citizenship. I am a US citizen by birth because I was born in the United States. I am proud of my paternal grandparents who came to America from Italy and became naturalized American citizens of the United States. I am thankful that they initially endowed me two fundamental heritages, my American citizenship and my Christian faith, two opportunities that enabled me a better life in the United States of America. And it all began because of the American dream!

This story is about the American dream of my paternal grandparents and their twelve children who lived on a farm in the early 1900s. The farm the family called the Goat Ranch is located near a declining former gold rush town called Bodie, today a ghost town and National Historic Landmark, situated near Bridgeport and Mono Lake, California. Conway Summit connects Bridgeport Valley to the north and Mono Lake basin to the south. The family farm is located on the Mono Lake side of Conway Summit within the northern fringe of Mono Lake basin and the Bodie Hills. Like many Mono Lake families living on farms in the early 1900s, my paternal grandparents and their twelve children were survivors in a region where there was no 7-Elevens, patient healthcare clinics, or Home Depots. The Scanavino family overcame the challenges and hardships of living on a secluded and isolated location by using their ingenuity, as in growing crops during late winter. They were among the European trailblazers in Mono Lake basin by clearing the land to build a farm to grow hay and vegetables that they sold to Bodie and the mining towns of Lundy and Aurora. They were the pathfinders of education in northern Mono Lake basin where they built a schoolhouse to educate the twelve Scanavino children. The family lived in the era of the horse and wagon; they survived the worldwide 1918 flu pandemic although they lost a family member who died in the military from the so-called 1918 Spanish flu during the last days of World War I. The Scanavino family lived during the harsh winters of Mono County with a snowstorm that took several lives, like the 1911 snowslide that killed eight men and destroyed the Jordan–Mill Creek hydroelectric power plant that supplied electric power to Bodie. Equally challenging for the Scanavino family was the changing times of America, beginning in 1860 when Grandfather Giuseppe first came to America through 1982 when Aunt Idell, the last surviving adult child of my grandparents, passed away in a nursing home in Stockton in 1982. That is 122 years of the first and second generations of the Scanavino family. Aunt Idell, second youngest of three sisters and fifth oldest in a family of twelve, represents the end of the second-generation Scanavino children who were all born, raised, and educated at the Goat Ranch not far from Bodie, a declining gold rush town. Like Bodie, their story is historical.

America becomes a second home for many immigrants. They came to America in caravans. Even as you read these words, people from all four corners of the world continue to migrate to America. They come in caravans by the thousands, and some attempt to enter the United States illegally. They come to apply for asylum, and many are willing to die—and many have died—trying to come to America. They come for different reasons. In most cases, they come in search of the American dream in the land of freedom and liberty. The immigrants migrate for a place to call home, a place for the opportunity for a better life—America!

Goat Ranch wishing well. Symbolic of the American dream for the Scanavino family and in honor of my grandmother Maria Scanavino who was the sole owner and manager of the Goat Ranch from 1908 to 1922. Because of her, the Goat Ranch (the Comstock) survived. And because of her, all twelve children received their basic education in the schoolhouse that became operational in 1897. She is remembered for keeping Giuseppe’s dream alive—to educate the twelve children and to maintain the farm. (Photo taken in 1962.)

Chapter 1

Four Thumbs across Italy

In 1859, four young boys, ages eleven to seventeen, set out on lonely dusty Italian roads in search of the New World, America. The two brothers were joined by two younger friends, Felice Poli and Domenic Garibaldi, who also lived on a small farm in Italy. Their plan was to hitchhike from Italy to France and catch a ship to the New World. They were not running away from home. They were in search of a new life. They heard about the 1849 California Gold Rush and were willing to leave behind their close-knit family and farm life near the small township of Cembrano, Italy. Giuseppe and his younger brother Antonio had mixed feelings about leaving their parents Angelo and Katina and their youngest brother Andrea and three sisters at home, but the American dream was like the answer to a prayer. And so the two brothers, with the determination to make their lives better, the blessing from their parents, and encouragement from their four siblings, left a familiar past for an unknown future with only a few Italian coins in their pockets. Off they ventured, one taller than the other, their traveling sacks tossed over their shoulders.

Fast-Forward to the Future of the Life of Giuseppe Scanavino

The four youngsters began their arduous journey by hitchhiking from Italy to Paris, France. When the four boys reached America in 1860, the oldest boy turned eighteen. That young man was my paternal grandfather, Giuseppe Joe Scanavino. The four youths made it to the New World and ultimately to the Wild West of Nevada and California. My grandfather’s early days in Nevada involved the shoring of mine shafts and working on the railroad between Carson City and Virginia City. Before my grandfather left Virginia City, Nevada, he hauled freight as a mule skinner and drove stage in Nevada from Carson City to Hawthorne and Aurora, Nevada. He also rode shotgun between the mining towns of Aurora and Lundy. Grandfather Giuseppe left Virginia City to live in Aurora, Nevada. While he stayed in Aurora, he worked as a blacksmith in Bodie, California. He saw Bodie when it was a gold rush boomtown, from 1876 to 1880. Before he settled down in California in 1884, he was employed as a blacksmith, a carpenter, and a teamster and rode shotgun to deliver bullion for Wells Fargo. He ultimately became a farmer, growing and selling vegetables. He married a young Christian woman, and they raised twelve children who completed their basic education at a schoolhouse that was constructed adjacent to the family residence. Giuseppe died in 1908 at his farm called the Goat Ranch. He was buried at the Bodie cemetery, nine miles from the Goat Ranch.

Scanavino Family Buried in Bodie and beyond the Stateline and Sierras

Today, Bodie is a State Historic Park and a genuine California gold mining ghost town. My father, who is also called Joe, is buried with his father Giuseppe Joe and his four brothers in the Scanavino family burial plot in Bodie. My father’s four sisters and four of his brothers, including his mother, are buried elsewhere, namely, Hawthorne, Nevada, and Stockton, California. My father’s four sisters are buried with their husbands. My paternal grandmother, Giuseppe Joe Scanavino’s wife Maria, was buried head-to-head to her youngest son Victor at San Joaquin Cemetery, Stockton, California. I believe Maria selected Stockton for her burial plot because her family and relatives are buried at the Stockton cemetery. It had been twenty-six years since her husband Giuseppe passed, and after managing the Goat Ranch for fourteen years, she moved to Stockton to be near relatives and three of her children where she resided in her own household for twelve years until she passed away from natural causes.

To Know My Family Is to Know Bodie

The two Scanavino generations that preceded me—my paternal grandparents and their twelve children—are interlaced with Bodie history. To know them is to know something about Bodie life during the early 1900s. My paternal grandfather saw Bodie’s heyday in the late 1870s. In 1912, my father saw Bodie slowly become a ghost town. I first saw Bodie in the late 1940s when only one person lived in Bodie—the lone watchman and his dog Peaches.

Silver and Golden Soils and Family Spiritual Souls of Bodie

In 1962, I attended the ceremony in Bodie when the town was designated a state park. To me, Bodie is more than a memory and a historic landmark—it is family history. The town of Bodie represents the location where my father is buried in the same yellowish-brown soil that once made Bodie a renowned gold rush boomtown. My DNA is in the Bodie soil, and my memories will always connect me with Bodie. It is in this way that Bodie history and the history of the early Scanavino family (including my early days living near Bodie) are intertwined in this story. From baptism to death, the early Scanavino family will always be connected to Bodie by way of baptismal records and the Bodie cemetery.

My father once stated, Our family is connected to Bodie by coming and going, religiously in birth and ritualistically in death. The history of the Scanavino family at the Goat Ranch is history interwoven with the former mining town of Bodie that today is not only a National Historic Landmark but also a resting place of my father, his six siblings, and his father, Giuseppe Joe Scanavino.

The Name Joe Is Generational

I am a grandson and a great grandfather who is writing about my paternal grandparents and their twelve children. Intertwined with their story is my memoir that describes my earlier experiences with eight of the twelve adult surviving children of my paternal grandparents who, as children, lived during the era of the horse and buggy. The name Joe represents four generations, Grandfather Giuseppe, my father, me, and my firstborn son.

Why Is the Name Jo-Boy Used in the Title of This Story?

Giuseppe preferred to be called Joe, the namesake for my father, me, and my firstborn son, who also goes by Joe. The name Jo-Boy is a name I had in childhood and young adulthood; it represents my interactions and experiences with eight of the surviving adult members of the early Scanavino family. My childhood friends still refer to me as Jo-Boy. I am third-generation Scanavino from this early Scanavino family, one of the seeds in this clan. Consequently, my memoir is interwoven in the story of my early Italian American family, thus One of the Seeds: Jo-Boy.

The Four Farm Boys in a World in Need of Their Farm Skills

The four Italian boys earned their way to France by using their farm experience and knowledge of horses. Giuseppe and his brother were in the right place at the right time in the age of horse and wagon. They were skilled in horse care and repairing wagon wheels, experiences they learned back at the family farm in Italy. In blacksmith shops throughout their journey, they pounded metal into horseshoes and cleaned numerous horse stables. According to my father’s older brother Steve, Giuseppe’s words of wisdom were usually about working hard and taking pride in a job, no matter how dirty or small the job was. He expected his children to do their best and take no shortcuts. He mentioned that cleaning horse stables was no less important than feeding and watering the horses.

Italy

Following the light of the sun, we left the Old World (Christopher Columbus).

On the world map, Italy, a country in southern Europe, resembles a boot and is occasionally referred to as the Boot. My father once said that his parents were born near a small village called Cembrano, Somewhere between the bootstrap and the toe…somewhere between Genoa and Rome. The community of Cembrano is southeast from Genoa and northeast of the capital city of Rome.¹

Two Versions of How Grandfather Giuseppe Came to the West Coast

Uncle Steve stated in his unpublished story of the Scanavino family that his father, while in New York, heard about the 1849 California Gold Rush. So the four young travelers teamed up with a wagon train where they ultimately ended up in Virginia City, Nevada, where another big discovery of gold and silver was taking place in the West, beginning about 1859.

The other version, according to my father, is that his father came to the West Coast by way of a ship and then joined a wagon train to cross over the Sierra Nevada mountains to Virginia City, Nevada. At any rate, both versions are possible in that Grandfather Giuseppe returned to Italy to find a woman to be his wife. His prospective bride joined him later in America.

Station Stops

According to an article in the Oakland Tribune, dated October 31, 1966, The fastest way for a traveler to reach California overland was by stagecoach—about 21 days from St. Joseph, Mo., to Sacramento—at a cost of about $300.00, averaging about ten miles an hour. Station stops were spaced approximately every twenty miles to allow the passengers to catch their breath and for the stage driver to exchange horses. The former Hector Stage Station was one of those locations and was situated on the Bodie–Lundy road, one mile south of the Goat Ranch and three miles northwest of Mono Lake, California. The pace of the horses, of course, was much slower while ascending steep mountains in the Mono County area, such as Cottonwood Canyon south of Bodie or Geiger Grade between Bodie and Masonic–Bridgeport, including the many passes over the Sierras, namely, Tioga, Donor, and Sonora.

From the East Coast to the West Coast, it would take four to five months by covered wagon.

The Sea Passage My Grandfather Traveled from England to America

I recall my father saying that his father departed New York to sail around the horn of South America to San Francisco, California. My father was twelve years old when his father Giuseppe died in 1908. Giuseppe lived for forty-eight years in America and was married for twenty years until he died at the age of sixty-six. His wife, my grandmother, never remarried.

Various Iconic Structures Were Nonexistent for the Four Young Travelers

The Eiffel Tower, for example, was not constructed until 1889, twenty-nine years after the foursome arrived in Paris, around 1859. I can imagine four scruffy-looking young hitchhikers standing in the shadows of towering buildings in a city they only saw in newspapers. In Paris, did they visit the construction of the huge and magnificent Grand Hall opera house? Did they see the tall majestic twin towers of the Notre Dame Cathedral? Perhaps, but their survival depended upon finding work to finance their voyage to the New World. Whether it was true grit or their faith in God, or both, they kept going. The foursome left Paris and hiked their way to Le Havre, a major shipping port located in the northwestern corner of France.

They Herded Cattle across the English Channel

When the four young travelers left Le Havre, France, they rode a cattle barge across the English Channel to Southampton, England. My father’s sister Idell told me that the four boys paid their fare by herding cattle on and off the barge. Apparently, the men who were originally hired to herd the cattle failed to do the job after getting drunk on wine the previous night. So the four youths volunteered to herd the cattle on and off the barge and were paid for feeding the livestock and cleaning nearby horse stables. They also worked at the dockyards, loading and off-loading freight from incoming and outgoing ships. In England, they worked once again at the waterfront and nearby horse stables, saving money for a ship going to America.

They Sailed around the Horn and Settled in Nevada and California

In 1859, the same year that gold was discovered in Bodie, my grandfather, his brother Antonio, and their two friends were in the process of hitchhiking from Italy to France and ultimately to sail from England to America. Giuseppe Scanavino left New York in 1860 and arrived in San Francisco in 1861 via the southern tip of South America (about six months). The Panama Canal was not constructed until 1903–1904. From San Francisco, my grandfather traveled by wagon train over the Sierra Nevada mountains from Central California to Carson City and ultimately to Virginia City, Nevada, in 1862. After several years in Virginia City, Giuseppe moved to Aurora, Nevada. For a brief period, Giuseppe drove stage from Aurora to Carson City to deliver bullion for Wells Fargo before he worked in Bodie. He eventually moved to California in 1884 where he ultimately made his home with his wife and his twelve children at the Goat Ranch.

Victor, the last and twelfth child, was born one year before his father, Giuseppe, died in 1908. After Victor completed the school program at the Goat Ranch in 1922, he and his mother moved to Stockton where they were ultimately buried in the same cemetery.

Giuseppe Joe Scanavino (1842–1908)

The story of my grandfather takes the reader from the early gold mining discoveries to the technology that evolved to extract and process the precious quartz ore of gold and silver from the eastern side of the Sierra Nevada mountain range of Nevada and California. Giuseppe was directly and indirectly involved in the gold and silver mining effort during the early mining days in Virginia City, Nevada. But Giuseppe’s main story takes place down the Cottonwood Canyon where he subsequently built his American dream, the Goat Ranch, near Mono Lake and within close proximity to the former major mining districts in Mono County, namely, Bodie, Masonic, and Mono Lake basin.

My grandfather’s life story in America began while Abraham Lincoln was the president of the United States and while America was struggling with the Civil War. He lived while America was in the growing process and while the United States was coming together as one nation during the War Between the States.

Giuseppe (Joe) Scanavino, 1842–1908

In 1859, the same year W. S. Bodey discovered gold in Bodie, my grandfather left Italy to come to America where he eventually settled in the West, beginning in Virginia City, Nevada. After Giuseppe worked for the Virginia and Truckee Railroad and hauled freight from Nevada to California, he stayed in Aurora, Nevada, where he commuted to Bodie by wagon to work at the blacksmith shop for the Bodie Foundry. Giuseppe was present during Bodie’s peak period, from 1877 to 1880, when the town was at the crescendo of its heyday, a time when the drinks were on the house and the future of Bodie appeared to be at its zenith.

In the early 1900s, the towns of Bodie and Lundy were slowly dying, on the verge of becoming ghost towns. The Goat Ranch was about equal distance from both towns; in fact, the main road between Bodie Canyon and Lundy Lake Canyon ran through the middle of the Goat Ranch property, just fifty feet between the family schoolhouse and potato cellar. In the early 1900s, the Goat Ranch provided crops and potatoes to the remaining residents of Bodie and Lundy Lake. In the late 1890s, as the Scanavino family became larger, most of the gold fever and mining activity began to decline, which ultimately resulted in mine closures in Lundy and Bodie. However, as if there was new hope of finding gold again, many of these same mines in Mono County reopened in the early 1920s but succumbed to the upcoming war years in the mid-1940s.

My grandfather married a woman half his age, supposedly less than a month after they met in 1888. After my grandparents got married, they wasted no time to build a farm and to acquire a large family. They built a blacksmith shop to repair wagon wheels, a schoolhouse to educate their children, and a barn and corral and shelter sheds for their livestock. They grew alfalfa and hay to feed their livestock and used innovative methods, such as recycling animal heat to keep the chickens and ducks warm in the winter. My father joked that his parents spent the first year of their marriage clearing away more than 365 acres of sagebrush to make way for growing alfalfa in the northern pasture above the ranch. The meadow below the ranch was divided to graze livestock and grow hay.

---

¹ During the 1980s, while I was in the US Navy on sea duty, assigned to VAW-125 Squadron, aboard the US aircraft carrier, USS John F. Kennedy (CV-67), the ship’s crew humorously referred to Naples, Italy, as our home port away from our designated home port at Norfolk, Virginia. The rationale was based on the numerous times the carrier JFK anchored off the coast of Naples during the four years I served onboard the Big John during the Cold War between the United States and Russia. Prior to that tour, I was assigned to a former aircraft carrier, USS Gilbert Islands, recommissioned as a communications ship, the USS Annapolis (AGMR-1), affectingly called Anna. During 1960–1970s, the Anna was stationed off the coast of Vietnam. The Anna remained in the Tonkin Gulf area during the Vietnam War to relay communications to other ships and military installations. My tour of duty aboard the Anna was from May 1968 to December 1969. The crew rotated off the ship after eighteen months while the Anna remained in the Tonkin Gulf as a floating communications station to relay communications until it was decommissioned at the Philadelphia Navy Shipyard in December 1969. Anna’s motto was Voice of the Sea. I served aboard two US Navy carriers (Pacific and Atlantic oceans), USS Annapolis (AGMR-1), the Anna (May 1968 to December 1969, Vietnam Era), and John F. Kennedy (CV-67), the Big John (1976–1980, Cold War with Russia).

Chapter 2

Life in the New World

Lurking Dangers

Historical sources indicate that danger lurked for immigrants coming to America. In the 1860s, immigrants took a chance traveling the high seas with threats of shipwreck, crowded conditions, disease, and piracy. Many of the early immigrants landed in different locations of New York Harbor where they were robbed, abused, and misguided or, worse, raped and killed. It was reported that some immigrant family members were snatched and held for ransom. It is a wonder I am here today in view of what could have happened to my grandfather if he got sidetracked, ransacked, or killed while hitchhiking or traveling the oceans. I appreciate Giuseppe’s determination, courage, and fortitude. He never gave up along the way, and in the end, he had it all—a loving wife and hardworking children to sustain his dream, the farm. My grandparents learned to speak and write English alongside their growing children in the schoolhouse my grandparents built next door to the main house.

Famous Men Who Crossed over the Sierras in the 1800s

Giuseppe, like anyone traveling from California to Nevada, had to cross over the Sierra Nevada mountain range, the Big Mountain as my father referred to the Sierras, the major mountain range in California. The Spaniards referred to the Sierra Nevada as a big snowy mountain range. The Spaniards were the first to discover the land that became California, followed by European settlement. Long before California became a state in 1850, the territory was visited and settled by trappers, explorers, guides, prospectors, and pioneers who crossed over the Sierras of California. Some history authors claim that the legendary trapper and guide Jedediah Smith was the first white man to cross the Sierras in 1827, followed by other trappers and explores. Joseph R. Walker, a mountain man who died in 1876 at the age of seventy-seven, may have been the first Euro-American to see the Yosemite area, located west of Mono Lake by way of Tioga Pass road from the Mono Lake entrance near the resort town of Lee Vining, the gateway to Yosemite. Walker Lake near Hawthorne, Nevada, was named after Joseph R. Walker. Walker River and Walker Pass are also named after him. The famous Kit Carson expedition traversed the Sierras in 1844, about eighteen years before my grandfather Giuseppe first crossed over the same treacherous mountains in 1862. My grandfather and his family lived within Mono Lake basin, a place Mark Twain, the author, visited briefly while staying in Aurora, Nevada, twelve miles northeast of Bodie.

I traveled the road from Mono Lake basin to Aurora, probably the same route Mark Twain (his real name was Samuel Langhorne Clemens) used to view the Mono Lake landscape. About twenty-six years after Twain saw Mono Lake, the Goat Ranch was built in the middle of the Bodie–Lundy road, about one mile from the southern entrance of Cottonwood Canyon to Bodie within the Bodie Hills. The Goat Ranch location is my favorite view of Mono Lake with its two islands. Someone once asked if the goats on one of the islands originated from the Goat Ranch. With a wink in the eye, my father said it’s possible the original goat owners at the Goat Ranch (about 1884) secured their goats on the big white island because they could not afford to build a large fence. The goat owners figured their goats would be safer on the island surrounded by water. Coyotes and mountain lions normally lurked near Mono Lake where ducks and nesting birds feasted on black alkali flies and brine shrimp along the northern shore of Mono Lake. In the early days, the American Indians in Mono Lake, known as eaters of the brine fly pupae, harvested the brine flies for their source of protein.

A Tribute and a Reason to be Proud

This story is initially possible because several generations ago, a young man took a risk and thumbed his way out of his Italian homeland to sail to America for a better life. I am forever indebted to my paternal grandparents and their twelve children. They were hardworking and honest people. They are the reason for this story and reason I am proud of them. The result of writing this story about the first- and second-generation Scanavino is a deeper appreciation for who they were and what they have done. I am here because of them. And because of them, I do not take my American birthright citizenship for granted; it is a legacy that began many miles and many years ago. My grandparents came too far and worked too darn hard for me to forget how they achieved their American dream. No ifs, ands, or buts about that!

The State of California Began with a Belated Shout of Gold

Someone once said, There is gold in them thar hills.

In 1848, the Mexican–American War ended, and a big discovery of gold was found that same year in the California foothills on the western side of the Sierra Nevada mountains. The discovery of gold at the South Fork American River was a surprise and a secret until word leaked out. And when it did, it was either a shout or a whisper, Gold! What followed was the era of the forty-niners, the 1849 California Gold Rush.

The 1849 California Gold Rush

Beginning in 1849, one year after gold was discovered, a tsunami wave of people poured across America to California by crossing over the Sierras as potential pioneers, settlers, gold seekers, entrepreneurs, ranchers, sheepmen, cattlemen, prospectors, and the so-called sodbusters that symbolized farming families like my grandparents in the 1900s.

The Word of Gold Spreads like a Virus

In a short span of time, commencing in 1849, massive migrations flooded the western side of the valleys and foothills of California in search of their American dream or their fortune in gold. By 1850, just two years after the big 1848 gold discovery, California became the thirty-first state to join the statehood. In 1860, the California State Capitol was constructed in Sacramento, less than fifty miles from the location where gold was first discovered in 1848 at Sutter’s Mill in Coloma, California. According to some historical sources, the silver and gold boom lasted from 1849 to 1855, the era of the California’s first big gold rush of 1849.

California or Bust via Covered Wagons and the Argonauts

This first big wave of travelers during the 1849 California Gold Rush were coined the forty-niners to represent the year the big gold rush began. The 1849 California Gold Rush was symbolized by the motto California or Bust painted on canvas-covered wagons (prairie schooners). Multitudes of forty-niners traveled across the Great Plains to the West Coast in search of their fortune. They knew from hearsay that the cross-country journey was dangerous with many obstacles, such as treacherous weather, illness, American Indian assaults, and the vastness of scorching and freezing prairies. The biggest challenge was crossing over the towering rugged Sierra Nevada snowcapped mountains of California. Any one of these perils, the mountains and the weather, had the potential to prevent their destination or end their life as in the case of thirty-eight members of the famous Donner Party who died in 1846 during a snowstorm in the Sierras.

They Came by Way of the Ocean

About this same time, sea travelers (referred to as Argonauts during the forty-niners era) came to California by way of the ocean as in the case of my grandfather in the 1860s. Argonauts had their traveling fears too—a shipwreck or fire at sea, the risk of food spoilage, bad weather, and the threat of deadly illnesses or pirates. My grandfather’s journey to America began with his thumb to hitchhike from Italy to France. My grandfather and his younger brother Antonio came to America in the footsteps of the forty-niners. In their beginning years in Virginia City, they panned for gold, and when they did not strike it rich, they returned to what they knew best, farming and growing vegetables.

Big Discoveries of Gold/Silver Found in Nevada and Once Again in California

In 1895, a second gold rush fever flared up that became a massive Easter egg hunt for the proverbial golden goose with its golden eggs buried in the Bodie sagebrush foothills east of the Sierra Nevada mountains. About this same time, gold and silver were also discovered in Virginia City, Nevada. Eventually, both Bodie and Virginia City constructed railways to transport wood to stamp mills where ore was crushed to extract the precious metals of gold and silver, using steam, and later electricity, to operate the stamp mills. I believe stamp mills represent the beginning of modern mining technology in Bodie and later, in 1890, the use of the cyanide process and lime for a third chance to extract the last ounce of gold. Bodie’s glory days were short, and yet the town lives for a secondary purpose, history for future eyes.

Gold Is Discovered and Territories Become States

After California became the thirty-first state in 1850, Nevada became the Union’s thirty-sixth state in 1864 at the time of the American Civil War (1861–1865). The discovery of gold and silver during both big gold rush periods (1849 and 1859) triggered rapid growth of diverse populations within and around these mining sites on either side of the Sierra Nevada mountain range. Bodie, for example, had a Chinatown, which incidentally burned down in the big fire of 1892. These mining industries mushroomed overnight but financially fizzled away in the span of twenty years or less. California is where my father’s parents found their American dream, down the mountain from the former gold rush mining town of Bodie, a boomtown for four years (1876 to 1880).

National Historic Landmarks: Virginia City, Nevada, and Bodie, California

Beginning in 1857, the surge of gold seekers settled in California—Dog Town (1857), Monoville and Bodie (1859), and Masonic (1860)—and Nevada (Virginia City, Gold Hill, and Aurora) including numerous other productive mining sites throughout both states.

My Home State of Nevada Is the Silver State

Nevada was christened the Silver State because of its Comstock Lode of silver production, beginning in 1859, followed by several major bonanzas stemming from the Comstock Lode in Virginia City. This was the first major silver discovery in the United States. Both former boomtowns (Virginia City and Bodie) were ultimately declared National Historic Landmarks.

California: The Golden State

California was nicknamed the Golden State, which manifested from the 1849 California Gold Rush. Both California and Nevada were admitted to statehood shortly after each of their big gold/silver discoveries. The first big discovery of gold in California was in 1848, causing a gold rush the following year to the western side of the California Sierra mountains. I believe a second big gold discovery in California began in 1857 (Dog Town), which sparked a gold rush in 1859 to the eastern side of the California Sierra mountain range. It is the 1859 gold rush era that Grandfather Giuseppe ultimately experienced while working as a blacksmith at the Bodie Foundry during the town’s big heyday, in 1879.

The 1880s Was a Big Change for Bodie and Giuseppe

I believe the year 1880 marked the beginning of change in Bodie by the utilization of modern mining equipment and innovative mining methods, such as the reconstruction of a sawmill (Mono Mills) in 1880 and a first-time railroad in 1881 to transport cordwood and lumber to feed the Standard Stamp Mill in Bodie. The 1880s was a big change for Giuseppe too. He eventually went from working for someone else to working for himself by owning property, getting married, and having a large family to work the farm and provide vegetable crops to residents in the mining towns of Bodie, Aurora, and Lundy.

Bodie: Abandonment and Expectation

Ultimately, Bodie became a ghost town when the expense of mining became greater than the production of gold and silver. In 1954, on a trip to Bodie, my father said, The town of Bodie still stands today as if it awaits the return of its former occupants. He said this about the contents inside one of the houses that contained a dusty kitchen tabletop that was artfully arranged with dishes, cups, and silverware. Empty chairs, just waiting.

The Ghost Town’s Past Becomes Its Future After It Was Abandoned

Today, Bodie is a State Historic Park, a National Historic Site, a National Historic Landmark, a former gold rush boomtown, and a real Wild West ghost town that hasn’t changed much since the last families left Bodie in the late 1930s. Bodie’s past is its future in terms of the historical and educational value the town offers today.

Goat Ranch Located in the Center of the Mining Country

Beginning in 1889, my Italian American grandparents and ultimately their twelve children lived nine miles south of the former gold rush boomtown called Bodie. The Goat Ranch was the location where the early family lived, farmed, and was educated. The Goat Ranch is between nine and thirty miles within the radius of the major mining sites in the Bodie Hills and the Masonic Mining Districts (Upper, Middle, and Lower towns).

Other mining production sites within Mono Lake basin included the Log Cabin Mine, the May Lundy Mine, and Copper Mountain, located southwest, west, and northwest of nearby Mono Lake, respectively. The Log Cabin Mine, located above Lee Vining at an elevation of 9.600 feet, got its start in 1910 and was claimed to be the largest gold-producing mine in California. It was state of the art and used the mercury (quicksilver) process to extract the gold from the tailings. There were dozens of other mines scattered throughout Mono County with such names as Noonday, Red Cloud, Addenda, Oro, and Defiance.

The Chemung Mine and Mill near Masonic began in 1909, a year after my grandfather died. The mine discontinued operation in 1938, the year prior to my birth. The Homer Mining District (1879) included the May Lundy Mine, which is about seven miles west of Mono Lake. W. J. Lundy supplied Bodie with lumber, and the mine was named after his daughter, May—May Lundy Mine. The canyon to the mine was named after Mr. Lundy, Lundy Canyon.

From Boom to Gloom

The boom days for most of these instant mining towns were short-lived—Here today and gone tomorrow, according to my father who compared the mining life span to the short longevity of mushrooms. My father lived to see Bodie, a former gold rush mining town, slowly become a ghost town. My father is forever connected to Bodie. His baptism is documented in Bodie records, and he is buried in the Bodie cemetery.

During the early 1900s, my early Scanavino family (grandparents and their older children) attended the Catholic Church in Bodie, located southeast across town from the Methodist Church. The Catholic Church burned down, in 1930. Both churches were constructed in the same month and year, September 1882.

Religion officially came to Bodie about the same time the mining industry instituted technology in the mining effort. And about that time, some mines in the Bodie Mining District were slowly running dry with occasional productive gold strikes. In contrast to the good news that Bodie was booming in 1879, some Bodie residents began to doubt their future in Bodie. They feared the town would dry up. In the early 1880s, the town was still recovering from the deadly epidemic of the 1870s, followed by the worldwide pandemic of 1918.

The