18 MONTEREY COUNTY WEEKLY april 20-26, 2023 www.montereycountyweekly.com Up and Down Monterey County, 1861 | Part 1 William H. Brewer was born in New York state in 1828 and grew up on a farm near Ithaca. At age 20, he enrolled in Yale University’s School of Applied Chemistry and had originally planned to attend for just a year, but quickly realized one year wouldn’t be enough to explore his burgeoning interests, so he ended up spending two. After teaching for a few years following his time at Yale, he traveled to Germany in 1855 and spent two years in Europe, where he studied chemistry, geology, mineralogy and botany. In the summer of 1856, he walked 600 miles through Switzerland, soaking up the majesty of the Alps. He returned to America in 1858, having also traveled to France and England, and took a job as a chemistry professor in Pennsylvania. Tragically, his wife Angelina, whom he married in August 1858, died shortly after giving birth to their son nearly two years later, and his son died just a few weeks after that. It was at this inflection point of Brewer’s life that, in 1860, the California State Legislature authorized a geological survey of the state, including its botanical features. Josiah D. Whitney, a professor of geology at Harvard, was put in charge of the survey, and in recruiting his men, corresponded with one of Brewer’s former professors at Yale. Upon hearing of Brewer’s qualifications and character, Whitney decided to hire Brewer as the first man to join him. From November 1860 to November 1864, Brewer traveled with Whitney and other men on various traverses throughout California, and aside from keeping a journal, Brewer also wrote letters to his brother Edgar, which were published posthumously in 1930. Those letters paint a vivid picture of California in the early days of the American West, a treasure of contemporaneous observations. In 1861, Whitney’s party traveled on two occasions throughout Monterey County. The Weekly is publishing edited versions of those letters, chronologically, as space allows. (Look for subsequent installments in the coming months.) These excerpts have been edited for length. Brewer entered Monterey County at its southern border, and here is where our journey begins. -David Schmalz Camp No. 28, Nacimiento River. Saturday afternoon, May 4, 1861 It is a lovely afternoon, intensely hot in the sun, but a wind cools the air. A belt of trees skirts the river. I have retreated to a shady nook by the water, alike out of the sun and wind; a fine, clear, swift stream passes within a few rods of camp, a belt of timber a fourth of a mile wide skirts it—huge cottonwoods and sycamores, with an undergrowth of willows and other shrubs. We have been here three days… We crossed the San Luis Pass of the Santa Lucia Mountains, a pass about 1,500 or 1,800 feet high, and entered the Santa Margarita Valley. North of the Santa Lucia chain, which trends off to the northwest and ends at Monterey, lies the valley of Salinas, a valley running northwest, widening toward its mouth, and at least a hundred and fifty miles long. This valley branches above. One branch, the west, is the Santa Margarita, into which we descended from the San Luis Pass. We followed down this valley to near its junction with the Salinas River and camped at the Atascadero Ranch, about twenty-two miles from San Luis Obispo and six from the Mission of Santa Margarita. On passing the Santa Lucia the entire aspect of the country changed. It was as if we had passed into another land and another clime. The Salinas Valley thus far is much less verdant than we anticipated. There are more trees but less grass. Imagine a plain 10 to 20 miles wide, cut up by valleys into innumerable hills from 200 to 400 feet high, their summits of nearly the same level, their sides rounded into gentle slopes. The soil is already dry and parched, the grass already as dry as hay, except along streams, the hills brown as a stubble field. The Mission of Santa Margarita was in ruins. It is the seat of a fine ranch which was sold a few days ago for $45,000. The owner, Don Joaquin de Estrada, lives now at Atascadero Ranch, where we camped. This last ranch is all he now has left of all his estates. Five years ago he had sixteen leagues of land (each league over 4,400 acres, or over 70,000 acres of land), 12,000 head of cattle, 4,000 horses, etc. Dissipation is scattering it at the rate of thousands of dollars for a single spree. Thus the ranches are fast passing out of the hands of the native population. Camp No. 29, Jolon Ranch, on San Antonio River, May 8 The American who has this ranch keeps 15,000 or 16,000 sheep. He is a very gentlemanly Virginian and was very kind to us. He says that the loss of sheep by wolves, bears, and rattlesnakes is quite an item. We are in a bear region. Three men have been killed within a year near our last camp by grizzlies. Monday we came on here, about twenty-five miles. The day was intensely hot, and as we rode over the dry roads the sun was scorching. We crossed a ridge by a horrible road and came into the valley of the San Antonio, a small branch of the Salinas, and followed up it to this point, where we are camped on its bank. We passed but one ranch and house in the 25 miles. In one place, two bears had followed the road some distance the night before—their tracks were very plain in the dust. The contemporaneous letters of William H. Brewer, a scientist with the California Geological Survey, bring the Wild West to life. By William H. Brewer Edited by David Schmalz William H. Brewer, a scientist with the California Geological Survey, wrote in his journal on Dec. 19, 1862: “I have been adding up my perigrinations in this State since I arrived twenty-five months ago, and the following are the figures: mule-back, 3,981 miles; on foot, 2,067 miles; public conveyance, 3,216 miles; a total of 9,264 miles.” The Mission of Santa Margarita was in ruins. It is the seat of a fine ranch which was sold a few days ago for $45,000.
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