Copperopolis' Mines Helped the Union Defeat the South
Copperopolis' Mines Helped the Union Defeat the South
Jeff checks out the former copper mining town of Copperopolis in Calaveras County and revisits the extensive mining that took place there starting in the 1860s.
He will also show you the former gas station where Michael Landon filmed “Highway to Heaven” in 1984.
#copperopolis #calaverascounty #historyhunters
hey history hunters. you are great persons I love youre videos thanks for sharing guys
wow that was a nice long video, looks like a peaceful place to live, Thanks Jeff and Sarah
I love watching these videos. they are extremely interesting and am now a history lover. Sarah and Jeff are awesome, you have captivated my attention!
12:08 Those were the days–when gas station attendants pumped your gas, cleaned your windshield, checked your oil…and then, there were the so-called ‘Gas Wars’, when filling stations sharing the same intersection would compete for customers, lowering their prices to attract the clientele. 🚗🚗🚗🚗🚗🚗🚗🚗🚗🚗🚗🚗🚗🚗🚗🚗🚗’Fill it with Ethel!’ 😂
At 5:05 the hawsonburger store initially was not dug out on the front and the old picture as you can see it just appears normal we. Came in later and dug out underneath the front exposing the dub rock level showing 2 doors in the front definitely thereby proving this was ground level. At 1 time and furthermore I will state that in many instances if one could dig down deeper you will find another basement level believe it or slurp it. If you don’t want to believe in this stuff you’re missing out on the most mindblowing aspect of our history that’s right in front of us. Number various I see it everywhere absolutely everywhere. You cannot believe that official historical narrative. All of these red brick and stone buildings are 345 600 years old. Or older than. What they are saying do you really think we were the first to inhabit this scene come on guys
And walking on those rocks???!!!Something my feet won’t do.
You should collect a rock from every place you visit and paint the name of location on the back.
Brilliant 💡 I’m going to start doing that.
When California was still a good state………..
If you want to see a area that was a copper mine you should go to Anaconda montana and butte montana.
Im glad i found youre page ive learn so much about the towns close around me 👍🏻
I love your adventures! Thanks for sharing them!!
I enjoy your vids, and how you show where Michael Landon filmed
Nah u see free masons was in both sides that’s how they so called won or did they really.
We’ve been there. We live in Clovis Ca. Sorry, but ur wife is missing out, by sitting in the car. IMO I love old stuff, history, stories ect. ✌️
That gas station looked way better in Highway to Heaven’s 1984 episode. Was that your oldest son in the picture with Michael Landon? The gas prices were amazing in the clip from Highway to Heaven…but 5 years later (in 1989) gas was even less than half of what it was in 1984! In April 1989 I paid $.54 per gallon in Oakdale, Ca (premium was $.57 per gallon) on F Street and Gilbert (Laurel) at what is today the Speedway gas station. Right after that, the Exxon Valdeez crashed and immediately gas prices skyrocketed. They’ve never been that low since. The world acted like half of its oil supply was on that ship.
Been thru that town hundreds of times never knew much about the history. Probably the only reason why that pay phone is still there if I remember correctly calaveras telephone co. Is across the street. You can spend the rest of your life doing videos in the motherlode. Use to ride my motorcycle going east heading to west point and end up in Angels camp via old dirt roads all kinds of stuff left over from the mining days. Enjoy your videos.
I’ve watched loads of your videos and there very good and interesting, Black Bart gets around.
I want to buy the box set of your show👌🇺🇸
Hey guys I aint buying it? I’m not buying it that they even gave a who’s hauler about this war in the South out here in California. Think about it use your logical mind and ask yourself. Why would they name this tone called Union? It just doesn’t make any sense at all. I don’t even think they they got that much copper out of there. It was probably all local and they sent 3 suitcases to the South. And then they called it good and said that they were part of the war nope aint buying it. I live about twelve miles from copper opponents ain’t by none of it
I would LOVE to be able to process all those tailings. Mining equipment is much more sophisticated than it was even 75 years ago, and especially going back into the 1800’s. After "Stand By Me" Wil Wheaton played Wesley Crusher in "Star Trek, The Next Generation"
I really love the new intro
I rode through Copperopolis today, plugged your channel when I was filming, and linked this vlog in my description. Gotta spread the word of a quality channel!
I loved Highway to Heaven, when I was a teenager watching Bonanza I had a huge crush on Michael Landon 😎
Thank you Jeff and Sarah for bringing us another great episode! I’m at Angle’s Camp again for a few days and we will be using some of your videos as guides to do some history hunting of our own. Your videos always bring new insights to the locations my wife and I visited and add new ones to visit in the future. We hope to run into you guys sometime in the future.
Recently visited Copperopolis due to your video. We made a detour to explore in the footsteps of my favorite history hunter! You bring history to life, its your gift .
You can still see her dairy wagon at the Angels Camp museum
Interesting. I’ve never been to Copperopolis, though I’ve been to Angels camp and Murphys a bunch of times, for Irish days. It’s this weekend actually. Would love to see an episode on Murphy’s. Very cool little town. Thanks for all you do, this is my favorite channel. 🍻
My oldest brother and his family live in Copperoppolis
After I got my 1st drivers license I found a little meadow on the way to Copperopolis that I claimed as my own little piece of Heaven.
Any time I was down in the dumps or had problems at home because of my Moms mental health issues I would borrow the car & head for my little meadow, with a lunch, a good book & my quilt & I would spend the day in my little meadow.
Being out in nature was my healing, saving grace. It always strengthened & healed my wounded Soul.
I can still see my little meadow in my minds eye even today.
Thank you for this reminder of those days.
My understanding is where there is copper ore they’ll be gold to recover also
very cool!
Excellent video 👍
Remember boys and girls we live in the gold country and sure there might be a little copper here and there no. Doubt about it but for a super tall story like that requires super tall super tall evidence and I just don’t see it. I don’t see any of it
It’s amazing how the buildings are still there . Very nice
Hi Jeff and Sarah! Playing catch up on your last two videos. When you commented on Oakes Ames, I realized I have some history for you! Not long after we moved to Colorado, we did a short road trip into Wyoming. After driving down a dirt road south of I-80, we visited a monument dedicated to the Ames brothers, Oakes and Oliver Jr. Out in the middle of nowhere in Wyoming, is a large pyramid dedicated to them. When you have some time, check it out! You can find info on it if you search Ames Monument.
Another interesting history video. Many thanks. Best wishes
Yes and Will Wheaton also starred on STAR TREK THE NEXT GENERATION!
Jeff, you amaze me. I was born & raised in Eureka, California till I left in 1986 at the age of 36, & still you keep coming up with places in California I’ve never heard of! I really enjoy your comprehensive history accounts of all these interesting areas. Your videos have become quite polished & impressive, too. Thank you!
Oaks ames is the person my town was named after he was aquented with one of our well known early settlers Mrs. Duff she was very wealthy she and her husband moved here from onadoga New years
Starting my day coffee ☕️ HH
I’m SO not a binge watcher BUT with your channel, I am.
Thanks!!!
Has a lover of history this channel is right up my alley. Just found it today and have been binge watching most of the day. Love,love, love it.
Awesome video. Thank you for finding all these cool little known California towns and their unique history. I’d recommend Washington State but there’s not much historically redeeming or interesting about the place.
I’m Hugh history buff and civil war & old west are always fascinating. Thanks I appreciate your show since I can’t make it out to these places I get to see where & how history was made. Can’t afford to travel so this is only way I get to see historic places!!!!
Thanks for another informative video. I didn’t know Will Wheaton was working during the early 80s. I will keep my thoughts on Michael Landon to myself. Keep up on telling us all the history here in Ca. Thanks! Side note: That saw is an early version of an electric hacksaw for cutting metal parts.
Ethel Willard (Adams) 7th cousin 5x removed
The Brownsville Mining District and the Table Mountain Ranch house are located on Pennsylvania Gulch Road east of Murphys. The area got the name Brownsville from Alfred Brown and his brother George who were early owners of the ranch. The ranch had several more owners before it became the home of Ethel Adams.
Ethel Adams did not live inside the boundary of the Murphys town site but she was a large part of the life of Murphys. Ethel was born in Boston in 1858 to wealthy parents, and came to California in 1884 when her parents settled in Carmel, but visited Murphys frequently to take care of her father’s mining interests in this area. Ethel’s father, Zabdiel Adams Willard, came from a family that made their money manufacturing clocks and chronometers. The Willard home in Boston was the center of many large social events. His two children, Ethel and Jack, were brought up in that environment among well-known political figures and influential businessmen, and they were educated at the best schools in Boston.
Ethel met a mining engineer through her father’s contacts, and they married in 1886. The marriage to William J. Adams did not work out, so Zabdiel Willard paid a financial settlement to his son in law and William Adams deeded his interest in the ranch to Ethel and then left. Ethel Adams’ estranged husband William J. Adams died in San Francisco in 1910 from typhoid fever. Zabdiel Willard then purchased more acreage next to the land owned by his daughter, and deeded the newly purchased land to her. Because she was financially backed by her father, Ethel was able to make a showcase out of the ranch.
Ethel had a passion for animals, especially thoroughbred horses and dogs and eventually had three hundred and twenty acres on the home farm and another four hundred acres of grazing land reaching to the Stanislaus River. She ran a dairy, making choice butter from her Jersey cows and selling it in nearby towns, and often Ethel Adams drove the delivery wagon herself.
Ethel could often be seen riding her favorite horse, usually with a couple of her dogs accompanying her. She valued being alone but also did not avoid the social side of life and would host parties and balls, sometimes in Armory Hall if the event was too large for her home. A club house was built on her property next to a small lake in memory of her brother Jack who had died recently and parties were held there.
In April of 1897 the ranch house caught fire when no one was home, not the first fire at the property. By the time the few people who were on the ranch could arrive the home was lost with most of the possessions, including an extensive collection of museum quality Japanese items that Jack Willard had collected on his travels and had given to his sister. A new ranch home was designed immediately, with architects from Stockton arriving in Murphys a week later to work on the plans for a new home. Within a month, the house was under construction, with a tent city erected on the ranch for the artisans working on the building.
Ethel Adams was a working rancher and led the cattle drives to the mountains with her ranch hands. She was rumored to sleep in the barn with them and at times also ate there with them. She treated her ranch hands and domestic employees as family, and one of her big disappointments was when she discovered that her trusted ranch foreman George Hinkston was not the honorable person she had believed him to be. Around 1920 she hired a new foreman from Massachusetts, Fred Kenney and he remained with her at the ranch until her death.
On the ranch were English Walnuts, French prunes, peaches, grapes and apples. There was a natural spring which irrigated most of the farm with the waters collected in a large reservoir near the house, where Ethel Adams would often row around in a small boat. The Union Water Company ditch ran along the mountain side above the property and the water from it was also used for irrigation, with a pipe from that ditch bringing water to the house and barns.
In 1927 Ethel Adams had surgery to remove a large abdominal tumor. Against the advice of everyone she went on a cattle drive before her surgery was healed, and died in the mountains she loved. Her ranch hands brought her body back to Murphys and she was cremated, with the cremains buried under an oak tree on her ranch. The oak tree later ended up being in the front yard of a home in the Murphys Ranch Subdivision. That oak tree died many years later supposedly from over watering but possibly just from old age. Her ashes were removed in 2019 and reburied in Buena Vista Cemetery.
In her will Ethel Adams left the ranch she loved to her foreman, Fred Kenney. The only other local person to receive a bequest was Louis Malaspino who was left some of the income from a trust fund. There is a local legend that Louis Malaspino agreed to take the blame for some rustling that had occurred around 1916 and was paid by Ethel Adams for going to jail so she and the ranch would not be embarrassed. There is no proof of that but Louis Malaspino did get sent to prison for rustling at that time.
The old dairy is still there, but a large barn that was across the road is no longer standing. The reservoir that was to the left of the house is gone, but a new one is across the road. The many fruit trees are gone, as is the dance hall next to the lake that was the scene of many parties. Where there were fields of hay on Pennsylvania Gulch Road now there is a vineyard and housing development.
There is a burial ground on part of the Table Mountain Ranch that was used in very early years for the miners and families of the Brownsville mining district and the Douglas Camp area. There were at least twenty grave markers there at one time but the ranch foreman, George Hinkston removed them because they were in the way of the cattle, and is supposed to have dumped them in Coyote Creek. Currently only one grave has a marker that was installed for the Webster family in 1909. The grave is surrounded by a wrought iron fence.
Most of the attached photos are courtesy of Judy Marvin, current owner the property.
Copperopolis, a hidden gem! Great video Jeff. Michael Landon references are always enjoyable!
Awesome job delivering great information! I live here in Copper and thank you for your footage and insights!👏🏻
Michael Landon’s character always knew where to go but many times he didn’t know who to meet or even what his assignment was. In my opinion one of the saddest episodes was when they arrived at a beach community and Victor French fell in love with a woman. Victor French died in 1989 and Michael Landon died in 1991, leaving me to believe that they really were on a "mission" together.
I had to search who Black Bart was. TY ✌️
Looks like a 1934 Ford truck. A lot of places for Sarah to explore!