Rural Mysteries of the North Fork Polygon

The Essays of
Gene L. Markley

A quarter centrury ago, Gene Markley wrote a series of essays about history and mystery in the North Fork Polygon and other Northern California foothill locations.

Semi-anonymous contributor Dave-Bro recently acquired the complete collection of Gene Markley's essays at a local yard sale and donated all four books to the Rural Mysteries Book Club Research Library. Here's an overview of the writings of Gene Markley:

• Bogus Thunder - 1976
• Sojourning in Rough Country - 1977
• The Sugar Pine Journals - 1979
• Hills of the Coyote - 1980

Bogus Thunder Mountains

His first book, Bogus Thunder, inspired many high-school students to scramble into remote, rattlesnake-infested canyons and explore unstable mining tunnels. It also may have been the inspiration for this very Web site. Chapter topics include "Big Foots Haunt the Divide", "Hunting Waterfalls", and "The Gorge Scramble". More...

Here's some excerpts from a few of the essays featured in Gene's second book:

• Humbug Hues - "It was one of those beautiful calm Autumn days of Indian Summer, being after the last of the dry September heat and before the slush of the early winter... I decided to wander among the old hamlet sites and mines of Humbug Canyon..."
• The End of the World - "Few persons realize it, but the end of the world is closer than they think! It is only about 40 miles from Auburn, located south-east of Big Oak Flat. Here, a canyon wall rises in perpendicular fashion up through a long series of shale faces, chutes, and benches..."
• The Slot - "My two lady gorge scrambling clients and I were camped at an ideal bench above the crowded waters of the North Fork of the American River. Here the river forces its waters through an inner gorge called The Slot..."

Markley's third book contains the following stories:

• Claude Chana's Demise - "...Thus Claude Chana, a young, far sighted, energetic man from France was the first to mine gold in Placer County and more important still, the first to establish fruit ranching in Placer County..."
• Gum Shan - "Gum Shan, Cantonese for Mountain of Gold, lured the poor peasants of Kwantung Province, China to the New World... The perpendicular cliff rose 1,400 feet above the North Fork of the American River... The Chinese requested that reeds be brought up from the delta so they might weave baskets to dangle down the face of Capehorn... Thus a lone Chinese was dangled over the side of the cliff, drilling and hacking away... All summer, fall, and winter of 1865 dangling Chinese chipped away at the face..."
• Dope is King - "...The sport of snowshoe racing dominated the culture of the mining camp of the Northern Sierra from the early 1850s to 1911... The most important man of each ski team was the Dope Man... The Dope Man was a specialist in the art of waxing skis..."

Here's some excerpts from a few of the essays featured in Gene's fourth book, Hills of the Coyote, printed in 1980:

• The Gold of Murderers Bar - "...It was places like Murderer's Bar which lies just several hundred yards up the Middle Fork of the American River above the North Fork junction where wild tales of wilderness, Indians and miners can be told... A natural, permanent limestone outcropping cuts diagonally across the narrow portion of Placer County at this point..."
• The Ghost of Last Chance - "The little isolated mining camp of Last Chance was indeed the most remote of the high country gold villages. Located on a small narrow divide between Grouse Creek on the South, Deep Canyon on the North, and the wild chasms of the North Fork of the Middle Fork of the American River to the west, it was indeed the very end of civilization..."
• The Pool -

    "The old man's swimming hole was located right down there below Auburn on the American River. You can say it was just half way between the old railroad bridge and the ancient fault line that runs west of the pool. Here the American River has cut a rock face along the eastern leaving a moving pool of water about ten feet deep. On the west bank, where the river slows, a sand beach has developed which ascends among several outcropping of country rock. These rock outcroppings serve as natural monuments to the primitive sacred pool." More...

    Yes, the old fellow had been going there for his dip for almost fifty years. Yes, the fact is that this spot was one of those sacred places created by the spirits of the river, the rock outcroppings and the Sierra Sky. They must have spent considerable time creating this spot because the outcome can only be termed splendid. Sure enough anyone with a little sensitivity can pick upon the spirits of life residing there. Bobcat, fox, coyote and puma seek out the spot to drink. Fasting Maidu braves sought manhood here among the monuments, listening to the song of the river and breathing the canyon mist. Mountain ridge shadows guard the spot and digger pine sweep the sky from the east bank.
    Will the pool that slows the river and serves as a reminder to all beings of the perfections of life, be allowed to continue its sacred ways? The mother rock that underlies the area holds the answer and she definitely says the river will continue to flow through the sacred pool. The spirit of earth that laid down and later changed the ancient volcanic and sedimentary rocks into the present often gray-looking bedrock had no Auburn Dam in mind. This is because she continued to modify the basic rock structure with intrusion of green stone, granite plutons, serpentine and quartz veins. As if to keep the canyon wild forever, she faulted and folded the geologic sequence into a baffling array of slipping, sliding blocks.
    The major faults created under the immediate slope of the Sierra were dubbed by man the Melones and the Bear Mountain. The Melones fault line runs to the east of Auburn in the Alta region. The Bear Mountain fault cuts slightly to the west and feathers out under the Auburn area. These active faults were formed because underneath our feet the tectonic plate of the Pacific is thrusting and grinding against the Northern American Plate. This action results in the plates being broken up and spinning about fragments of one another. Now and then they hang up for a period of time, but when stress builds, they slip by each other producing earth tremors of varying magnitudes.
    Some on somewhere proposed the Auburn dam; exactly why is hard to comprehend. But it seems likely they never got near the sacred pool. If they had, the river would have certainly told them about the crustal movements around here. Oh, they should have seen the ancient fault lines running up along Eagle Rocks to above the ridge south of Train Village. Or perhaps with a little scouting noticed the talk zones that dip out of the right dam abutment and into the left abutment.
    If they could have looked skyward they would have been directed to the ancient pre-Cenozoic fault we call the Melones that dips down from Alta into Great Gap. Yes, this old crust is still moving around up there; not much, but little by little it moves first up, then down. The underlying fragments of the tectonic plates are spinning around each other beneath historical Green Valley. Getting back closer to the sacred pool, the sky spirit could have told the dam sponsors plenty. I suppose they never looked up at the blue Sierra sky that opens wide above the surround ridges. If they would have, the words would have hit them dead on. Now this fault slipping around beneath Auburn is a bin more serious than the one up a Giant Gap. The Bear Mountain Fault has a long history of breaking loose now and then. Why back in 1888 or 1889 it jolted Nevada City with readings of five plus. Again in 1909 it banged with a reading in the five or six range. Then, woe, in 1975 it struck Oroville with a hard five. I guess dam builders are deaf as well as blind.
    It does seem like a funny spot to build one of the highest dams in the world. It is to be one of those fancy, thin, double-curvature, concrete-arch types. The height to be 700 feet and the crest 4,150 feet. This concrete beauty build atop the same fault which created the sacred pool will back up 2,300,000 acre feet of Sierra snow water. That's a lot of water to put Sacramento under.
    These mini-type earthquakes we have around here, especially near the Rocklin-Penryn pluton, wouldn't hurt the dam much, but if ever the main fault broke loose like in 1888 and 1809, we would be in deep trouble. I mean the people down in the flood plain would be in deep, deep water. Of course there is also a chance that a slice of the ridge Auburn is constructed on might peel off and end up down in the American River Canyon.
   Perhaps a million or so souls would perish making it the worst disaster in the history of mankind. However, a few would survive up in one of the state’s high-rise buildings.
    It seems the combined spirit power of the river, rocks and sky are getting their message across. Maybe the old fellow should be told he doesn’t have to worry about the dam flooding his swimming hole. He's been plenty depressed the last five years or so. Well, even if it was built it couldn't last long. The whole waste coast is acting up. From Mount Baker in Washington to Mount Shasta in Northern California to Independent on the Nevada border the faults are heating up. The plates are like that, quite for a while, then Bang! -0 they're spinning and grinding about one another. As she ages, the earth is undergoing many changes, both fast and slow. Yes, it's true we're being drug out into the North Pacific Ocean. This pulling is why the Nevada Ranges are like they are, why the Sierra Nevada were formed, why the Trinity Alps are where they are, why now and then north of Auburn there is a good jolt, and why the Auburn Dam is a bad idea.
    Besides who could destroy one of the most magnificent sacred pools ever created and what about the rights of the old man who must have some claim to the future of the river. After all, fifty years is a long time to bathe in these sacred waters. Guess you could call him a holy man by now. Then the fox, coyote, bobcat, puma, kink fisher, ringtail cat, and rattlesnake all have to be listened to. This is the age of public input, isn't it? Most of all the pool is sacred, a religious place where ancient tribes gathered to fast and worship. The light blue Sierra snow water, the ridge-wide sky, and the rock monuments that spring above the black Sierra sand all will die if the engineering mind and the financial interests succeed."

Rural Mysteries of the North Fork Polygon