Escuela Estados Unidos

My wife and her sister with her grandson,
at Escuela Estados Unidos, 2006

My last post about my wife and her elementary school reminded me of this story.

Panama City years ago named its elementary schools after various countries. My wife attended Escuela Estados Unidos. (This school was 0.6 mile from the Canal Zone, then under United States control.) The United States ambassador made a yearly visit to the school. The students would assemble and sing to him The Star Spangled Banner, in English.

While in Plaza Francia in Casco Viejo in 2006, we met these
students from Escuela Estados Unidos on a field trip.
Note their school badge, with the United States Coat of Arms.

Fifty Years Ago

My copy of the Oakland Tribune

I was playing marbles with classmates during recess at my elementary school in San Pablo, California, when a girl came up to us and said the President had been shot.

About the same time, in Panama City, Panama, my wife's elementary school teacher announced the same thing to her class.

Return to Humbug Canyon

Two weeks ago, I went to the abandoned gold mine of Cape Horn Tunnel in Humbug Canyon. Today I returned to the canyon for some more exploring. I wanted to see if there were abandoned gold mines down an unimproved road I had no time to visit on the previous trip. I found that there can be a big difference between what's on a topographic map and what actually exists.

Leaving the Sacramento Valley, I drove up Interstate 80 to Auburn, and then took the road to the old mining town of Foresthill. I traveled another thirteen miles to China Wall Staging Area, where I parked my truck. No other vehicles were about. This parking lot is just above the snow line. When the snows come, the lot will be filled with trucks pulling trailers with snowmobiles. I put on my day pack and went on my way. The temperature was in the mid thirties. Frost was on the ground. The elevation here is five thousand feet. There wasn't a cloud in the sky. Leaves had fallen from the deciduous trees. Most trees here are conifers.

I wound my way among the manzanita along the canyon rim. My route paralleled a water ditch once used for mining operations. No water runs through it now. I wonder if the ditch was built with Chinese labor, giving it the name China Wall. There's no wall around here, only this ditch. From the rim I could see six miles to Iron Point, the start of Euchre Bar Trail from the Alta side. Euchre Bar is my favorite trail. Indeed, this vast canyon, with its long stretch of the upper North Fork American River, is my playground. I've been to the canyon many times, yet I've seen only a small fraction of it. The rugged terrain alone will keep the vast majority of it out of my reach.

Rugged terrain, yet the early miners apparently scrambled over every square inch of it in their search for gold. After all, they sunk mine shafts in many remote places. I think the hillsides were far more accessible in the early years of the Gold Rush. I haven't researched this, but I think the Indians here used fire to clear the underbrush, as did the Indians in the Eastern forests, to give game such as deer room to thrive. When the first miners arrived, they easily walked about the forest. Later, the miners cut down the trees and suppressed the fires, and now the forest floor is choked with brush. Casual hikers like me aren't going to leave the unimproved roads or trails and plunge into that brush. So I'll never see most of this canyon up close. I can only go so far from a trail or dirt road.

Back to the object of my visit today: to walk down the unimproved road in search of abandoned gold mines.

The topographic map had a discrepancy - the unimproved road was shown as a foot trail. At about one hundred yards, a small tree had fallen across the road. I walked under it. Soon there were small manzanita bushes and pine saplings growing in the road. It had been years since a vehicle had come down here. And then the road completely diverged from the foot trail on the map. With the map loaded in my Magellan Triton GPS, my waypoint was in the woods with no trail nearby, although I was still on the road. I continued on a bit, until the vegetation in the road simply blocked progress. I shouldn't have gone this far. I had left a map at home giving my intended route, and I wasn't following it. Since I was alone, this wasn't a good idea. So I turned around.

I didn't see any abandoned mines along this route. Perhaps this had been a logging road many years ago.

I walked uphill and returned to my truck. My little exploration this day had revealed nothing of real interest. But it had been a pleasant hike nonetheless.

Cape Horn Tunnel

The autumn weather could not have been better for a hike, so off on a hike I went, to Cape Horn Tunnel on Foresthill Divide. I went to Cape Horn Tunnel a few years ago, in the winter, most of that journey on snow shoes. Today there were but a few small patches of snow at the China Wall Staging Area starting point. Two other vehicles were in the parking lot. They belonged to dirt bike riders - there's a network of motorcycle trails in this area. I would be hiking alone. I put on my pack and was on my way. The starting elevation was 5,000 feet. I would descend to about 4,250 feet. This would be a leisurely hike.

I traveled along the rim of the canyon and got a wonderful view of the North Fork area. On the return hike I would see boxcars, almost six miles away, of a westbound freight train traveling the rail line built by Chinese laborers in the 1860s.

View toward Iron Point from near China Wall

An unimproved road leads to Cape Horn Tunnel. I saw a few tire tracks on the first part of the dirt road, and then I saw no tire tracks. Autumn leaves covered many sections of the road. Few people drive down here.

Cape Horn Tunnel is an abandoned mine that dates to at least the 1880s. I don't know if it was a productive mine, or when operations ceased. The adit is next to the road. It's now filled with water.

Adit to Cape Horn Tunnel

The topographic map shows another mine nearby, the Alameda Tunnel, but the adit is down the hill a bit, in heavy timber, and since I was alone I didn't want to wind my way down there.

The unimproved road continued a short way to the creek in Humbug Canyon. At the end of the road was a tub. What a tub was doing here, I had no idea, but someone had hauled it here for some purpose. I also found some one-inch black plastic line, possibly used for water, but the line was disconnected. This was a beautiful spot, the small creek running through a steep gorge. Some mining activity had been going on somewhere around here. I'm not sure when the activity was going on. There didn't seem to be recent activity.

On the return, at a clearing with a view of the opposite hillside, I saw a young Giant Sequoia. These hillsides were logged about a century ago, and the trees date to then at most. Giant Sequoias are rare in these parts.

Young Giant Sequoia

I passed quartz outcrops by the road. I broke off a piece of quartz. It contained a very small amount of gold. If this quartz had gold worth taking, there would be a mine shaft here. But there is only a small amount of gold. I tossed the quartz to the ground and continued on.

Quartz outcrop

Downhill from Cape Horn Tunnel is a new mine shaft. I took the dirt road to it. The work on the mine appears recent, within one to three years. The miners had dug a horizontal shaft some forty feet into the slate, placing substantial timbers to support the walls and ceiling, and then they stopped their work. It had been a while since they last worked here. I noted the cobwebs on the safety helmet hanging on a beam. And the lack of fresh footprints in the mud. And there were no tire tracks in the dirt road.

 

 

 

 

 

I continued uphill. I passed several piles of bear scat on this hike.

I noted side roads leading here and there. I'm sure they go to mines not listed on the topographic map. I'll have to explore those dirt roads someday.