THE MINERS

 The  first person to be credited with becoming a permanent settler in the area was a  German  named  Joseph  DeBlondy. DeBlondy was called Mountain Joe by those who knew him, and it was rumored that he had first come to Northern California as a guide with John C. Fremont. Mountain Joe operated a wayside inn and trading post near Lower Soda Springs on Soda Creek in the 1850's. While operating this inn, Mountain Joe met Bill Fox who was an escapee from the Yreka jail.  

While hiding out on Soda Creek, Fox discovered a pocket of placer gold. DeBlondy spent a great deal of his own time looking for gold plus drinking homemade whiskey.  After meeting Fox, DeBlondy began to tell all who would listen of Fox's success. Eventually those stories evolved to the point that DeBlondy described Fox's claim as a bonanza located near a cabin on the headwaters of Soda Creek.  

The search for this mythical mine was to spread to the five northern counties of the state. Needless to say Mountain Joe's tales started a gold rush and by the winter of 1854 each creek up and down the canyon had its own camp of miners living on its banks.   

In 1853 a fifteen-year-old boy named Cincinnatus Heine ran away from home in Northern Oregon. According to Heine he had met Mountain Joe DeBlondy sometime earlier, and, after listening to his tales of the riches and excitement to be found in the gold fields of Northern California, decided that was the life for him.  Upon arriving at Mountain Joe's cabin on Soda Creek, Heine found a land being torn apart by the miners in their search for riches. Heine lived with Joe taking care of him when he was too drunk to care for himself, and helping with Joe's inn and trading post. As time passed the miners came to know Heine as Joe's boy.

Cincinnatus Heine eventually became the well-known poet and writer under the pseudonym Joaquin Miller, Poet of the Sierras.  Several of his poems and stories were based on a battle with the Indians in Castle Crags in 1855 in which he was wounded by an arrow  It has been said this particular battle was the last one fought in which the Indians used only bows and arrows as weapons. 

One of the early day miners who came and ended up staying, even though he did not make a big gold strike, was Ross McCloud. McCloud entered California in March of 1851 and ended up in Shasta County during the summer of that same year  McCloud moved in 1852 from the mining camp at Dog Creek to Portuguese Flat where he operated a boarding house or hotel.  

By late in 1855 the Indian problems in the canyon had lessened somewhat, at least temporarily, and this, coupled with the increase in mining activity, pointed out the need for a better trail up the canyon. McCloud contracted in 1855 to survey and improve the trail from Shasta City to Upper Soda Springs. With a crew of six men he worked on the route over the next several months. The trail when completed left Shasta City and traveled over Sugar-loaf and Backbone ridges, and then dropped back down close to the river near Dog Creek. Ross McCloud purchased in 1858 the squat­ter's rights to one hundred and sixty acres at Upper Soda Springs ( Upper Soda Springs was Siskiyou County).  

Over the next several years he and his wife Mary developed a hotel there. After McCloud's death from a stroke in 1868 Mary and their son George contin­ued to operate the hotel at the mineral springs.  In 1874 George built a fancy new resort there which became a very popular tourist stop for many years. The resort was sold in 1897 at public auction to John and Elda Masson who continued to operate it. Elda Masson was George McCloud's sister, so it was still in the family. 

Beginning in 1855 when McCloud com­pleted the trail up the canyon, attempts were made to raise money to convert it to a wagon road, but were defeated by those with interests along the Trinity route.  Though daily stages began running from Shasta to Yreka in April of 1858 the forty miles between the Pit River and Upper Soda Springs had to be traversed on mule back. 

 However, by 1861 a toll road was opened from Pit River to the area and in 1862 William H. Brewer wrote of traveling up the new road reporting it was very narrow. In fact in many places one had to back up when encountering traffic coming in the opposite direction. The round trip toll in 1862 was $25.50. In 1868 the toll road was sold to Dr. Louis Autenreith of Yreka.  Many of the teamsters used to curse Autenreith, who, because of his physical build, they nick­named Kettlebelly. The road was referred to as Kettlebelly's Road and the name still sticks today to the ridge which it crossed.

*Upper Soda Springs was in Siskiyou County. The state park road through the campground still follows much of the old route and is referred to as Kettlebelly Road. 

In 1858 George Washington Bailey who, because of poor health had come to try the mineral water, acquired the Lower Soda Springs property from a squatter named Amasa Ball.  Wash, as he was called, opened a small wayside inn and stage station (Bailey's Station) at the confluence of Soda Creek with the Sacramento River which he operated until 1883. At that time he sold out to the Pacific Improvement Company, a holding company of the California and Oregon Railroad Company. 

Another early day settler to the upper Sacramento Canyon was Simeon Fisher Southern of Kentucky. Southern was from an old Kentucky family and was a soldier during the Mexican American war of 1846, wounded in battle at Monterrey, Mexico. After the war Southern continued to serve in the Army until he arrived in California in 1855. 

 After living in both Shasta and French Gulch, Southern moved in 1859 to Sweetbriar to work for his brother-in-law George Greathouse.   While living at

Sweetbriar Southern began construction of log house on the west side of the Sacrament( River near the mouth of Hazel Creek. Once the house was completed he moved his family into it and opened a trading post. Afte the stage began to travel up the canyon Southern added corrals and a large two story hotel building to his homestead to serve as stage station.  As the years passed this beautiful area became known as Southern' Stage Station, then later as Sim's Resort When the railroad reached the area the station was named Sims after Simeon Southern. 

Christopher Columbus Huffacre was a other gold seeker who entered the upper Sacramento Canyon during the gold rush period and ended up making Castella his home. It is possible that he traveled in the same wagon train as Wash Bailey because he was married to Bailey's sister Eva. Huffacre was known by the initials C. C. and, unlike Bailey who had given up on mining by the time he arrived in the area, C.C. continued to seek gold throughout his life.  

In the 1860's Huffacre acquired land from a squatter named Parker.  Parker's claim was for 320 acres which included the south side of Castle Creek and the land where the Castella Fire Hall is now. In the late 1850's or' early 60's Huffacre and a partner named Kramer built a wing dam on the east bank of the Sacramento on the site where the Castle Crags State Park picnic area is now located. The dam was used to divert the river so the two miners could work a pocket of placer gold.  

While digging in the site they discovered an underground mineral spring which had high concentrations of sulphur and carbon dioxide. Huffacre and Kramer removed approximately $1400 in gold from the site which was eventually acquired by Huffacre's brother-in-law Wash Bailey. 

Huffacre built an old style boarding house beside the road on his property on the south side of Castle Creek as well as a store and bar. He used his lands up the creek to graze his dairy cattle. In 1886 Eva Huffacre died and in December of 1892 C.C. married Rose Farren of Sweetbriar. Her sister Ellen was married to T. J. Loftus, another miner in the area.  

The Farren sisters had two brothers who owned 320 acres at Sweetbriar. Ed­ward Farren, one of the brothers, had been injured while working for the railroad which had given him land at Sweetbriar to compensate for his accident disability. Ellen and T. J. Loftus eventually inherited this property. Huffacre sold his store in 1891 although he continued to operate his dairy, boarding house and bar. His free time was spent developing mining sites, including mines on Soda Creek, Echo Lake and in the North Star mining district.

MINING OPERATIONS

Though the search for gold led to the early settlement of the Castella area in the 1850's, the most successful mining operation in the Castle Creek mining district was a cinnabar or quicksilver mine known as the Altoona. It was discovered about 1870 and was to continue to operate until it shut down for the final time in 1958.   

The Altoona was supplied by pack train from Castella. About a mile away was the Integral Quicksilver Mine, and eventually a small town sprung up around these two mines, known as Cinnabar, with a company store, hotel, saloon and several residences.   

 Scott Conway of Castella had the contract to haul supplies in from Castella and quicksilver out. Conway also acted as a hunting guide for tourists, as well as owning and operating the Altoona restaurant in Castella. 

Another mineral find which proved also to be more important than gold was chromite. Chromite ore is processed to make chrome and, although Shasta County has some of the largest chromite deposits in the country, the concentrations are insignificant when com­pared to those found in Africa and parts of South America.  Local mining of chromite has been profitable only during those times when the U.S. Government has been willing to subsidize the mining costs.  This has usually happened during war years when foreign imports have been threatened or reduced. 

The oldest chrome mine in the area was discovered by C. F. Dougherty on Hazel Creek south of Sims in 1902; at that time two men working at the site were mining two tons of ore daily, loading it on railroad cars at Chromite Spur. From there the ore was shipped to Vallejo or Denver for processing. In 1904 Dougherty sold out to a German syndicate which continued to mine the site for a short time. C. F. Dougherty and L. H. Brown found another chromite deposit on Castle Creek and developed it in 1907. The major users of chrome at this time were the copper smelters, the chrome being used to line the furnaces.

The mining operations on Little Castle Creek were to continue to operate off and on through the first twenty years after 1900. By 1916 the Little Castle Creek mine was producing 15,000 tons of chromite ore per year. L. H. Brown sold the mine in 1915 to California Chrome Company, a subsidiary of Union Carbide which operated it until 1918 when the owners closed it down and allowed their claim to revert to the government. When the demand for chrome went up during the first world war several new claims were opened. Arthur Coggins developed a claim on Little Castle Creek and Dan Kirby developed the Chrome Eater claim on Castle Creek. A new strike was made on Shotgun Creek, but with the war's end the demand for chrome dropped before it could be developed. Manley M. Brown and his son prospected around the old mine on Little Castle Creek in 1937 and when the demand for chrome rose due to another threat of war the Brown developed their claim.

 By 1941 there were twenty-eight men working that mine and or the adjoining Coggins claim. The ore was shipped to smelters at Seattle and San Francisco. Several new chrome mines wen developed in the early 1940's by Phil Munk and George Costa.  

In 1942 the Montros Mining and Milling Company built a concentrating mill under government contract on Indian Creek just north of its confluence with Castle Creek.

 Ore was processed from the Lambert mine in Butte County, Ray and Fred Bagley's claims on Eddy Creek, George Costa's Ruby Lily and Shasta Lily mines on Crow Creek, the Canton-Wine claim on Castle Creek and the Brown and Coggins mines on Little Castle Creek. By late 1943 the concentrating mill was running full blast, employing a crew of twenty men. After the ore was concentrated at the Castella mill it was shipped by rail to Sacramento where it was stockpiled. After World War II the demand for chrome dropped again and in 1946 the mill at Castella closed down. During the Korean war the U. S. Government once again decided to increase its stockpile of chrome, so the Castella mill was purchased from Montrose Mining and Milling by Castle Crags Chrome Company, and, re-opened. In 1953 Castle Crags Chrome Company sold out to a San Francisco company which changed the name to Castella Mining and Milling Company.  

 In the mid-l 950's the mill was operated by Don Shuler and was processing seventy-five tons of ore per day, the ore coming from the Munko, Costa pit and the Neely mines on Crow Creek and the Brown mine on Little Castle Creek. Joseph Ammirati acquired the old stamp mill site in the late 1950's and then sold it to Castle Crags State Park. The old chrome mill was torn down and the equipment sold as salvage in 1959. 

Several asbestos claims were developed in the area in the early 1900's. The Trinity Asbestos Mining Company made plans in 1915 to build a road from Castella to Carr­ville in Trinity County.  Trinity Asbestos had a mill capable of producing 100 tons of asbestos per day. The road was finally built by the U. S. Forest Service in 1921 and is still in service today, although still not paved. Several asbestos claims were operated in the 1930's and a stamp mill was built on Mears Creek in 1937 to concentrate the ore. A barium claim was developed east of Castella on Girard Ridge.

Today the only thing left to remind us of the mining ventures are some of the names given to spots in the area, such as Asbestos Gulch and Chrome Gulch located west of Castella on the headwaters of the east fork of the Trinity River.