Lewiston, California and Helena Ghost Town

Well, here we are.  As we drove south on Sunday, October 27, 2019, toward Myers Flat, California from our campground in Klamath, California, we noticed that all of the traffic lights in Eureka were out -- replaced by stop signs.  We checked the internet, and -- sure enough -- PG&E had imposed electricity blackouts from Eureka south.  We stopped by the side of the road, reconsidered our choices, and decided to head west across the mountains toward Redding, California to get out of the blackout and wildfire dangers.

How far should we go?  We had trouble finding campgrounds with availability, because everyone in the Redding campgrounds, having heard of the blackouts, weren't leaving.  We worked our way west on Highway 299 and found a quirky little campground in Lewiston, California called Trinity River Resort & RV Park.  There seemed to be availability and we were able to make a reservation online.  Our next three stops are within the area of the wildfires and power outages, so we decided to stay here for twelve full days.  This will be a welcome change of pace from our 3- or 4-day stops coming down the coast.

We ventured off Highway 299, east of Weaverville, and up through Lewiston.  Our GPS's did not agree on an appropriate route and we chose the wrong one.  What's wrong with crossing a narrow, one-lane bridge that was barely wide and high enough for our motorhome?  Nothing -- unless you read the sign that says, "No RV's."  But we made it and continued on Rust Creek Road, a small back road, toward our campground.

When we arrived, the campground was essentially empty.  The owner/manager, Dan, is very friendly.  He helped us pick a site.  We got set up -- actually could get satellites for our DirectTV -- and settled in for a gorgeous fall evening in camp along the Trinity River:

Waking up in the morning on Monday, we found that it was below freezing, but a beautiful blue-sky day.  On our coffee walk, we spotted these two deer, a doe and her fawn, crossing the campground from getting a drink in the Trinity River before heading up the hill behind the campground:

The Trinity River is a major river in northwestern California, and is the principal tributary of the Klamath River. The Trinity flows for 165 miles through the Klamath Mountains and Coast Ranges, with a watershed area of nearly 3,000 square miles in Trinity and Humboldt Counties. Designated a National Wild and Scenic River, along most of its course the Trinity flows swiftly through tight canyons and mountain meadows.  The river is known for its once prolific runs of Chinook salmon and steelhead, which sustained Native American tribes for thousands of years. Due to its remoteness, the Trinity did not feature prominently in the early European colonization of California, but the gold rush in the mid-1800s brought thousands of gold seekers to the area. During and after the gold rush, the influx of settlers and miners into the Trinity River Country led to conflict with indigenous tribes, many of which saw severe depopulation due to fighting and foreign diseases. In the following decades logging and ranching, combined with mining runoff, significantly changed the river's ecology and led to the decline of its fish populations.

Trinity River is still a big fishing river for Steelhead and Chinook Salmon, although the salmon run this year was almost nonexistent.  Locals tell, us, however, that the Steelhead fishing is still exciting and rewarding.  Since we love fishing for trout and salmon, we've decided to try our luck, and today, Tuesday, October 29, 2019, we drove over to the local fly shop to get some local flies and some pointers about fishing the river.

As we drove, we drove the Jeep back across the Old Lewiston Bridge, which almost confounded our motorhome:

We took a side trip up past Lewiston Lake, which we also plan to fish later in our stay, to visit the bottom of Trinity Lake, which is a gorgeous reservoir in the Trinity Alps.  We visited Trinity Lake in 2013, and you can read about that in our blog entry for that visit, "Exploring Trinity Lake," which is a more detailed description of the lake.  Interestingly, when we were here in 2013, the lake levels were substantially lower than they are today, as you can see if you compare the photo below with the photos in our blog entry above:

After visiting Trinity Lake and the fly shop, we headed out to investigate a local ghost town, Helena.  It was settled in 1851 as a mining camp. It was known as Bagdad, North Fork, and The Cove before its post office opened in 1891; the post office was named Helena after the postmaster's wife.

We parked our car by this old building, and as soon as we stepped out of the car, the corner of the in roof on the right front corner of the building (as seen in the photo below) started flapping.  FLAP-FLAP-FLAP.....FLAP-FLAP-FLAP... as if to object to our presence.  We moved away, but then a tree above us took up the objections by creaking over our heads.  Hmmm....maybe there's something to this "ghost" town stuff.

In July 1848, not too long after James Marshall's famous gold find at Sutter's Mill – which started the California Gold Rush – gold was discovered on the Trinity River. The find attracted thousands of miners to the area and created boomtowns such as Douglas City, Francis, Hoboken, Lake City, Lewiston, Junction City and Quimby. Weaverville, located at the end of a trail from the Sacramento Valley to the Trinity, prospered as the main trade center through which gold was exchanged for imported supplies and services. The initial discoveries were placer deposits, carried by the river to settle in gravel bars. The Trinity River gold rush is also noted for the large number of Chinese miners attracted to the area, as many as 2,500 by 1854. Many of the Chinese were from the Pearl River Delta (Guangdong region) of China.

The site of the Helena ghost town was originally a Native American camp going back as far as 4,000 years ago.  After the gold rush began, a man by the name of Craven Lee filed a land settlement claim in 1852 on the North Fork of the Trinity River. This spot would grow into a small mine supply camp that originally went by the name North Fork. Placer mining in the area reached a peak in 1861. A major flood in that year destroyed much of the mining infrastructure in the area.  Mining operations were slowed, but eventually recovered and North Fork persevered for decades to come as a supply center for the mines and a lodging and entertainment hub for the miners.  In 1891 the name of the town was changed from North Fork to Helena to avoid confusion with another town of the same name in California.  It continued to be an outpost on the Trinity River until the 1930's when the new Highway 299 bypassed the town. Today there is nothing left but a few intact buildings from the earliest boom times.

Mining activity was initially concentrated in the eastern (upper) valleys of the Trinity River around Weaverville, as the hostile Native Americans and treacherous gorges around Burnt Ranch precluded the transport of rations and equipment to places further west. For about two decades the area was extremely productive, second only to the Sierra Nevada (the Mother Lode) itself. The rate at which gold was extracted, and new methods pioneered to access the harder to reach deposits, was feverish. The area was soon profiting $1.5 million a year, with hundreds of claims along the Trinity River equipped with flumes, waterwheels and other apparatus to separate fine gold from river gravel.

One profitable way to access gold was hydraulic mining operations, which sprang up across the Trinity River country starting in the 1860s. At one point, there were 307 hydraulic mines in Trinity County alone, of which 145 were "fully operational", all of which depended on the use of pressurized water to demolish hillsides in search of gold bearing ore. This had an enormous impact on the landscape – leveling forests, carving huge gullies and burying streambeds under dozens of feet of sediment – which still characterizes the area today. Elaborate flume, reservoir and tunnel systems were built to supply the massive quantities of water required by these "hydraulicking" operations.  On our drive, we passed an example of the "monitors" or "giants" that were used to wash soil away in gold mining:

After walking around the Helena ghost town, we drove further up the North Fork of the Trinity River, and were rewarded by beautiful mountain and canyon views:

Eventually, it was time to return to our campground.  We stopped at the confluence of the North Fork and the Trinity River and admired it as it flowed west toward its confluence with the Klamath River:

That was it for the day.  We reached our RV and hastened to start Baxter Hour.  David strolled down to the Trinity River to scope out the best approach to fishing it, while Kathy supervised the Big Fat Black Cat.  We felt we had learned enough to prepare us for at least a couple days of exciting fishing.  Stay tuned for that in the next blog entries!