Introduction          Browse Stories          Carol Ballard Arriola         Nancy Garrett Werner

Introduction: In mid-2013 I asked people from Mariposa to submit a write-up on how they or their family came to be in Mariposa. It was sent to people on the MCHS alumni mailing list, and also posted on Facebook. If you're from Mariposa and haven't heard of it before, here is your assignment:

You thought you were done with homework? No way!  We are putting together web pages relating to recent Mariposa history (the part we lived through) and you are invited, in fact, encouraged, in fact, begged to participate.

1. How I Got to Mariposa (that's this page): The story of how you and your family first came to Mariposa County. If they were there long before you were born, go back as far as you can, with as much detail as you have available, but remember, even the Internet has limits.

2. Our Elementary Schools: This project is well under way, having been started in 2007 in connection with the class of 1957 50-year reunion (read it here). So far only four schools are represented, which is just a small part of the many country schools that once dotted the county. If the school you attended is already covered, feel free to add additional memories that we may have missed. Although this is intended to be primarily personal memories, if your parents told you good stories that you still remember about long-gone schools, send them along. Photos of the school or early classes are welcome.

I'm not sure where this will end up, but at the least it will be part of the Alumni Association web site. Who knows? It could become a book and sell tens of copies! Yes, TENS, not TONS.

One last assignment, which is for "extra credit." If you have not already done so, write down everything you remember and share it with your kids and grandkids and so on. Audio and video recordings are good too. Everyone who dies takes with them a lot of knowledge and memories that can't be recovered anywhere. Nearly every week I think of something I wish I had asked my parents about.

How this will benefit you: Several years ago I wrote up the story of all the backpacking trips I had taken starting in the late 1970s, and covering events that had occurred between 32 and 10 years earlier. I found as I wrote that I remembered more and more details, the recording of it triggering additional memories. So as you write, you will be rewarded by some great memories you thought were forgotten. And it will be good for your brain!

Text in parentheses and in italics below are notes and comments by the editor (me).

Click on photos for a larger view; they will open in a new window.

My parents, Glenn and Helen, younger brother Jim, and I moved from San Fernando when I was ten. San Fernando was even more obscure than Bootjack in those days. We were surrounded by sweet potato and asparagus fields as far as the eye could see until the Japanese farmers were all taken away to concentration camps. We left in 1945 and returned a year later to discover tract houses in all directions. Bicycle paths made by Jim and me had names and were now paved roads!

Daddy begin work in old Los Angeles, wheeling wheelbarrows of cement for the City in 1925 at age twelve, helping to support his mother and little sister. Grandma made very little money playing the organ in silent movies. Daddy progressed to Park Superintendent for Griffith Park, then had his own city ranch in Castaic until the war in 1941 when he went to work for Lockheed. Working for Lockheed made extra money with which we all bought war bonds.

When Harvey and Nola Bonnell moved to Mariposa, Daddy drove their moving truck. I think he did odd jobs for them, not sure, but I know we knew them in some working relationship. Mama rode along on the second load of pigs, goats and chickens to Mariposa, drove through what became our ranch, which Harvey told them was for sale. Daddy asked Mama if she would "like it for her birthday" and two weeks later we traded houses with those people: Gone forever was the stash of war bonds for our someday ranch. It didn't take long to learn that it was impossible to earn a living working the ranch and Daddy went to work at Scott's Mill after getting up at 4 a.m. to milk cows and feed pigs, rabbits and the works. I never once heard him complain.

Barb Butler (nee Young) lived down the street from Mama, maybe in third grade. They remained best friends forever. Barb was Mama's maid of honor at Mama and Daddy's wedding. Chuck and Barbara Butler and son Bobby came to Mariposa to visit us and like us, decided to move there.

There was a lot of discussion about living together. They would build an extra room on our tiny 700 square foot house. I hated the idea for a variety of reasons, but instead of talking about it, all I did was cry when it was spoken of. I don't know why the togetherness plan didn't come about; nobody ever talked of it again and I had forgotten all about it until now. Can you just imagine seven people living in a little house like that? They must have all been nuts. I assume they all were very short of money in those days right after the war and thought that would help us all.

In any event, Mariposa became our home for many years. My mother died young (in her 50s); Daddy remarried and spent his final years in the southern California desert. I ended up in the Santa Cruz area, while Jim spent the rest of his life in Mariposa, also passing away too soon.

Dick Estel ( Class of 1957 ): (Most of the information here also applies to Linda Estel, Dick's sister)

In the early 1900s my grandfather, Frank Estel, became friends with the boy across the road, Roy Merrill, in rural Fulton County,  Ohio. It was a friendship that would last throughout their lives.

Time passed, a bunch of stuff happened, and in 1935 Frank, his wife Mabel, and son Bob decided to seek the gold of California. Not nuggets of the real stuff, but the silver and copper of a job in those hard times. Frank had cousins in Pasadena, and in the winter of 1934-35, they set out for the west.

Of course, it would be more romantic if they had traveled on Route 66, but that highway ran through some high altitudes and latitudes, and the possibility of snow was great, so they took the more southern route of US 60, through Phoenix.

Grandma’s diary for January 3 contains a simple one-line entry: “Arrived in Pasadena 1:30 at Fred’s.”

In Pasadena Dad, Grandpa and Grandma stayed at the home of Frank’s cousin, Florence “Flossie” Estel Hemphill. Fred Estel was her brother.

They played the part of tourists, going to the ocean, seeing the southern California sights, going to the movies, and enjoying warm sunshine at a time of year when they had normally experienced the snow and below freezing weather of northwest Ohio.

Frank and Bob also worked at whatever odd jobs they could find, such things as delivering handbills. Grandma’s diary for March 5 notes that they worked all day and made $3 each.

Meanwhile, Roy, his wife Ruby, and sons Marion (Molly) and Deane had been in Mariposa since the mid 1920s, living on a ranch in Bootjack, at the junction of present-day Highway 49 South and Silva Road.

Mabel’s diary records the Estel family’s very first visit to Mariposa County:

February 1: Started for Roy Merrill’s. Left ten till seven; arrived fifteen till five. Norbert L. rode with us to Chowchilla.

Feb 2: Roy, Ruby, Frank and I went on a hike over their ranch. Boys hauled sand. ("Boys" being Roy & Ruby's teenage sons Deane and Marion AKA Molly.)

Feb 3: Went to Yosemite; had a grand trip – about 50 minutes from Roy’s. Fed the deer; picnic dinner.

Feb 5: Frank, Ruby and Bob went to Merced for parts for our Ford. Ruby and I went to her mother’s at Mariposa for dinner. Home 6 p.m.

Feb 6: Bob and Marion put new gear in our Ford. Frank and Roy went to Merced for cement. Ruby and I worked jigsaw puzzle; Mrs. Todd came over.

Feb 7: Rained all day.

Feb 8: Came back to Pasadena. Left Roy’s 8 a.m.; home 5:15. Went to Fred’s in evening.

In April, the diary records a visit from Roy. This is presumably the visit Dad spoke of when Roy went to Long Beach to see about equipment for a sawmill he planned to start. During this time he told Dad and Grandpa he would hire them to work at the mill if they were interested.

They accepted this offer and left Pasadena early on the morning of May 28, 1935, arriving at Roy’s place about 6 p.m. The men, including Molly and Deane, immediately began work building the mill, a project that took about six weeks. The base of the mill was three huge cedar logs, mortised into posts. During construction the Estel’s and other workers stayed in tents at the mill site. The construction site was along Owl creek, at the 5,000 foot elevation, between Footman and Windlass Ridge, and the mill was often referred to as Owl Creek Mill. Access was by a dirt road that wound up over the first ridge, leaving the main road just north of Jerseydale Ranger Station.

Because of the elevation, work came to a halt during the winter, and the Estel’s returned to Ohio at least two of those first winters. In 1938 Bob returned with his new bride, the former Hazel Mason.

Although Frank and Mabel returned to southern California, Dad worked at the mill until it burned down in 1947.

Grandpa and Grandma ended up living in Ventura before moving to Fresno after his retirement. Bob and Hazel stayed in Mariposa the rest of their lives (2005 and 2007 respectively).

I came along in August of 1939, just in time to attend the first Mariposa County Fair. After living a short time in a cabin on the Merrill ranch, Dad built a house where Pegleg Road joins the present Highway 49. We spent some time in Ventura in 1942-43, where my sister Linda was born, on February 12. The day before, Molly and Addie Merrill welcomed their first child, Marvin. Dad and Grandpa worked for a defense contractor in Port Hueneme , but we soon returned to Mariposa, in time to go back to work at the mill.

At some time in the early 1940s the Merrill’s moved to a place on Triangle Road, property that is still in the family and occupied by Molly's daughter Susan Merrill Crandall, and one of Marvin’s sons and his family.

The rest is history that will be recorded elsewhere

(Susan's house, built in the early 2000's, was destroyed in the Oak Fire in 2022. The other house, dating from the 1940s' survived.

Dick retired from the Fresno County Department of Social Services in 2002 and lives in Clovis. Linda moved to Minnesota in her 20s, and lives with her wife Anne on 20 acres outside Duluth ).

Gail Rowe (Class of 1955): (This is also the story of Gary Rowe, Gail's older brother)

During the Second World War my parents, Les and Alma Rowe, became very close to the Ansel “ Mike” Michael family. My father worked at the Naval Air Base in Los Alamitos, CA and Mike was in sales with Western Auto in the area. The families began to discuss the possibility of going into business together once the war ended, perhaps opening a Western Auto Dealership together.

As the war drew to a close, the two families put their homes up for sale and took several trips to find a small, mountain community in which to begin a business and raise their families, visiting Sonora, Tuolumne, and Sutter Creek, among other towns. Once they visited Mariposa, they agreed that it had all they wanted in terms of business potential, despite the fact that merchandise would have to be trucked up from Merced, thirty-seven miles away. The next step was finding a suitable location within Mariposa.

They fortuitously ran into Lena Light at a local restaurant and she told them of a building owned by Roy and Alice Hampton, who also owned the Fremont Hotel. An agreement was quickly reached with the Hampton's to rent and remodel the building situated on the main street between Oscar Hagen’s Capitol Café and Bar and the Highway Patrol Office. Fortunately, both families were able to sell their homes and get the money needed for moving, renting the store, and remodeling it. My folks sold their home on the very last day before they left the Los Angeles area for Mariposa with all their worldly goods.

Mike and Virginia Michael, their two children Ilene and Danny, my folks, my brother Gary and I, and our dog Polly arrived in Mariposa on April 4, 1946. Both families moved into the unfinished basement of the store. My father and Mike worked feverishly to finish the basement (which included removing one very large king snake) so the two families could inhabit the space, and struggled to finish and stock the new store.

I explored the town. The first new friends for Gary, me, Ilene, and Dan were the Tedrow children, Barbara, Cathy, and their younger siblings who lived across the creek from the store.

In our first week or so in Mariposa, Gary and I also found our way to the softball field between the high school and elementary school and met Orville Rhoan, Wally Hufford, George Stoughton, John Tressider, Clifford Dulcich, and a few others engaged in a baseball game.  We were encouraged to join in. In subsequent days this group was also joined by Leroy and David Radanovich and Lloyd Bradshaw. I knew I’d found a home.

Gary and I were enrolled in the Mariposa Elementary School in the spring of ’46 and soon found ourselves under the skillful guidance of such teachers as Mrs. Fellows, Mrs. Ellingham, and Mrs. Clark. It was a wonderful start to a life of - and in - education.

Gary and Gail Rowe, Ilene and Danny Michael

The "Blue Team" in front of the entrance, Gail
on the left, 1950 or 1951 (Click here for names)

McNally Family:

(The following was written by Velma McNally Tarver, sister of Claude, Lindsey, Merrill, Esma (Poor), Irva (Jordan), Mary (Oakes), et al, who I knew. It was taken from the Mariposa History and Genealogy web site (click on Chronicles; then on Hart/McNally). As Mariposa natives know, the McNally family is connected to many other pioneer and later day families in the county. Our thanks to Velma for permission to use this. --DE)

I am a native of Mariposa and my family line goes back quite a few years. David Hart was my great grandfather. He was born in 1825 in Jacksboro, Anderson County, Tennessee. He died July 30, 1903 at the Hart Ranch at Sebastopol Flats near Big Spring Hill. He married Nancy Bruce, daughter of Daniel Bruce and Mary Brenner, also of Jacksboro, Tennessee. They are buried in Anderson County, TN, along with many of David’s brothers and sisters.

David made several trips to California on horseback, the first time being about 1848. He originally mined along the American River, but eventually came to Mariposa County where he discovered a placer gold deposit on Big Spring Hill. Sometime between 1853 and 1858, he moved his family to Missouri where he formed a wagon train to California in 1857. He financed the venture, and the families were to work off the debt.

He settled at the top of Big Spring Hill and named their town Sebastopol Flats, in honor of an uncle who died at Sebastopol, Russia while fighting in the Crimean War. At one time there were as many as 14 buildings in the town. He donated the property and the building for the first Sebastopol school, which was in use for many years until the new school was built on Bootjack Road. I started first grade in the new school the first year it opened (about 1930).

David and Nancy had fourteen children. The eldest was Mary Elizabeth, born in Tennessee in 1847, died in 1931 in California, married Ruggles Sylvester Cochran in Mariposa in 1871. William C. Hart was born 1849 in Tennessee, married Nancy Jane Bolton in 1880. He was shot and killed by his brother Charles Clay, January 7, 1885.

Charles Clay was born in Tennessee in 1851 and died in Mariposa in 1915. My father, Henry McNally, used to tell us children stories about Charlie, which we devoured with great interest. He told us that my mother, Dora, was very afraid of Charlie, but that he would not harm a hair on her head. He also told us that he (Henry) befriended Charlie and when he spent time in prison for killing Bill, he took care of his horses. When Charlie got out of prison, he would come by my parents’ house, and my Dad would find a strange horse in the barn, and another gone, and a box of groceries on the porch. That is sometimes the only way that he knew that Charlie was there.

Susan, my grandmother was born in Tennessee in 1852 and died in 1929 at Seaside, California. She married David Christopher McNally in 1872 in Mariposa. He was born in Scotland. His family was from Ireland, but moved to Scotland during the potato famine and then migrated to Toronto, Canada. David and his brother Daniel came to California by ship around the horn. They left two sisters in Toronto. David and Susan made their home in the Red Mountain Area and later lived at Bootjack, which he named because the road forked right there and looked like a boot jack.

David McNally mined and ranched, sometimes in partnership with his father-in-law. He developed the Silver Bar Mine, at that time the only silver mine in Mariposa County.

Susan and David had six children: Nancy Kathryn born 9/17/1874, died 5/8/1935 in Fresno, married William Williams 9/11/1900 Bear Valley; Walter David born 4/18/1875 Sebastopol, died 2/20/1957, married Alberta (Birdie) Lewis (no relation to my mother); Margaret was born 1878, died 11/17/1934, married Carl S. Gibbs 12/19/1904 in Bootjack. Henry John (my father) was born 12/18/1879, died 11/18/1954 married Dora Ethel Lewis 1/1/1907 at Mt. Bullion. They made their home on Indian Peak Road, then called Raymond Road. All ten of their children were born there.

Henry had a varied career of miner, carpenter, bar keeper (at my grandfather’s sawdust floor saloon at Bootjack). He was a school bus driver and for quite a few years was a fire lookout for U.S. Forest Service at Signal Peak Lookout Station.

Minnie McNally was born 8/16/1880 and died 1/16/1963. She married Spencer Pierce and lived in Fresno for quite a few years, then moved to my grandparents’ old place at Bootjack when grandmother died.

Raymond was the youngest. He married Minnie Kenyon in San Jose in 1909.

I have the history of the Hart family from Thomas in England, and it includes many names important in the history of the United States. They include Daniel Boone; Henry Clay, whose wife was Lucretia Hart, early settlers in Boonsboro. Captain David Hart, (my GGG grandfather) and Nathaniel Hart assisted in the rescue of Jemima Boone when she and two Callaway children were kidnapped by the Indians.

--Velma McNally Tarver, MCHS class of 1942

(The original version of this narrative includes a great photo, and there are other photos here and here.)

Dottie Smith Pingiczer (Class of 1957): (While this doesn't quite fit any of the "assignments" above, it is worth preserving and captures a particular experience of coming to Mariposa) 

I just read the article about every one from the class of ‘57 going to small schools. I would like to share some of my thoughts.

Just before I entered 9^th grade, we arrived from the big city of Riverside to the small area of a ranch off Triangle Road.  Imagine leaving the big city life to a life of no TV, no phone, a half mile from the Barrett turkey farm. A place where the only heat was from a wood stove – and you had to chop wood in the summer to keep warm in the winter!

I now tease Beverly Van Gundy that she was “upper class” as they had propane! My parents and the Raby family moved together from big city life to county life. Those changes are now good memories –going to the old school house with a bell that still worked. PTA meetings near the Wass family home were more of a social gathering.

I remember box socials and hoping my boy friend would bid on mine. Such a different life style. The news from the town of Mariposa 0would travel faster than a telephone call even though we were twenty miles from Mariposa (although most had no phone). Every one knew or knew of every one.

I remember when females could not wear jeans or long pants to school. I would walk a half mile on a dirt road to Triangle Road where Mr. Bevel would stop with the bus.

My last year in high school my dad was the bus driver...and I was lucky to have his picture in the class year book.

Nancy Garrett Werner: My first memory of Mariposa County was visiting my Grandfather William O. Garrett at his mining cabin in the summer of 1948. He and his brother George Garrett had a mining claim in the Merced River Canyon. He always harbored a love for gold and worked this claim throughout his life. He also harbored a love for pancakes and I’ve been told he had pancakes for breakfast nearly every morning. His cabin was between Bagby and Coulterville on the canyon side of Highway 49. In later years my father Norman William Garrett and his brother Donald Frederick Garrett worked another claim in the same area.

The Merced River became the “Gold” in our family because we fell in love with the tiny town of Bagby, and thus began our many camping trips to that beautiful spot on the river. There was a beach just below the old bridge and also across the river by the stamp mill and mine tailings. Bagby boasted a hotel and restaurant/store plus several homes and cabins. The residents became family because we were there so often. Certain characters particularly stand out in my mind. There was a man named Chris Mills. He was a miner, a great story teller and friend to our family. (In later years Chris “struck it rich” on a claim not far from my Dad’s claim.) I remember The Riddle Boys, Homer and Jimmy. We would swim, fish, and slide down the mine tailings.

I will never forget my “big sister” Ethel Clark who lived behind the store with her mother, Charlene, and her brothers Bill, Mike and Donald. Her Grandfather lived in a cabin upriver at the old railroad turn around. I learned to swim in that river and our family and friends spent many happy times camping, swimming and fishing at that memorable location. In later years, my Dad developed a trailer park aptly named Fly-A-Way Park along the creek where he used to catch minnows. His wish was to have others discover the gem of a place called Bagby on the Merced River.

My Grandparents had also lived for a time in a home near the Merced River in a place called Hunter’s Valley. I believe this would have been in the early forties. I’m pretty sure my Aunt Lucile and Uncle Robert Galbraith lived in Bear Valley around the same time.

Interestingly enough, my Dad told me a story about a family member named Frank Garrett (Uncle George’s son) who is buried in Bear Valley. Apparently he was killed in a gunfight with a John Beck, in 1921. I have found newspaper articles that indicate the killer went unpunished for years but turned himself in, in 1945 in Oroville, California. There was a trial in Mariposa County but he was acquitted due to his age and his account of the incident.

My Father, Norman William Garrett was born in Jacksonville, Oregon on April 23 1917 "on the Applegate." My grandparents farmed and my grandfather became Deputy Sheriff in Jacksonville for a time. They then moved to Orange County, California. Norm served his country in WWII with the U.S. Coast Guard in the South Pacific, then went to work for the Santa Ana Fire Department and remained there for 17 years. Norman always loved spending time in Mariposa County and it was on one of those Bagby vacations that he ran into Sheriff O.M. Whitley. Norm mentioned to “Whit” that he would jump at the chance to work for him and the Mariposa County Sheriff’s Office. A few months later he got the call and in December of 1958 our family moved to Mariposa. Dad began as a Deputy Sheriff. It went from a two man office to three. Martin Tresidder was the under sheriff. The prisoners were housed in the old rock walled jail and had to be taken to a local restaurant for their meals. After Martin retired Dad became under sheriff and served in that capacity for two years. In 1966 he was elected sheriff. During his service the new jail was built and the department grew in number. They even boasted a “working posse” Dad served two four year terms as Sheriff.

My mother, LaRue Fipps Garrett, also had Mariposa roots. Her Aunt Eunice Bauer Fipps was born in Hornitos in 1889. Her father was Michael Bauer and her mother was Mary Jane Geary. Michael was the son of Aegidius Bauer who emigrated from Germany and ranched on the north side of Hornitos. Mary Jane was the daughter of John Geary whose family came from Ireland. Mom’s cousin Marion Reeb Rogello also hailed from Hornitos. I remember visiting Mary Jane when she lived in San Francisco. My family loved to hear her stories of life in early California. On our many Bagby vacations we would often stop by Hornitos and visit with Jennie Gagliardo, a family friend, and then on to Mt. Bullion to visit with Eli Maria, who had been my grandfather’s mining partner. So much Mariposa history was gleaned from these visits.

In 1973 my father remarried Alberta Rose Jeffery (Jeffery Hotel). She too, has very deep Mariposa County roots. She worked at The Mariposa County Hall of Records for 28 years and became County Treasurer/Tax Collector in 1971, retiring in 1978. She was born in Yosemite National Park and is a descendant of early Mariposa County families who settled on the northside in Coulterville. Alberta’s father was Albert Jeffery. Both he and his father George Jeffery were born in Coulterville. George Jeffery married Mary Jane Canova, a long time Coulterville resident whose parents (Canova/Castagnetto) emigrated from Italy in the 1800s.