Hilariously High Hopes for Alpine County in 1864
We don’t know exactly who “Forty-Niner” was. But on February 10, 1864, someone penned a letter to the Sacramento Daily Union under that pseudonym. What we do know is that he was a resident of Silver Mountain City. And he was a little ticked off.
The burr under “Forty-Niner”s saddle was that Alpine wasn’t officially a county yet. Oh, a bill to create the new county had been proposed in the state legislature. And “most of the candidates for office in Amador county, of both parties” had glad-handed their way through Silver Mountain the prior September, promising that, “if elected, they would do all in their power to obtain for us, from the present Legislature, a new county.”
But despite such enthusiastic promises (Forty-Niner groused), “it is a mystery to the people living on this side of the mountains why, thus far, there has been so little action taken by the Legislature.”
Forty-Niner actually wouldn’t have to wait too much longer. The “Alpine Bill” would officially receive California’s legislative stamp of approval just one month later (March 16, 1864, to be precise). And freshly-minted Alpine county would vote in its first slate of officials the following August.
But Forty-Niner’s lengthy letter to the Sacramento Union is a great look back on expectations of the day – just why a new county was being formed posthaste.
First, of course, was Silver Mountain’s sheer physical isolation among the “snowy mountain peaks.” The booming mining town, the writer pointed out, was over one hundred miles from the current county seat of Jackson, compelling those who had to attend court to incur “a heavy expenditure of money as well as great loss of time.”
The prospective county already had residents – an estimated 1,600 (albeit possibly transitory) voters had participated in the previous September’s election. And according to Forty-Niner, that was only the beginning! By the following July, he confidently predicted, it would be a “low estimate to place the population . . . at five thousand people.” (Umm, nice thought. But if that was a bet, he’d have lost.)
The area, he believed, was primed to boom. After all, “the mineral wealth of Silver Mountain and its surrounding country is known throughout the State of California.” And it was “equally well known” (he claimed) “that as soon as the roads are open in the Spring, a large number of quartz mills will be erected in and around Silver Mountain.” And there was more! With all that anticipated growth, “a large number of desperadoes and crimes of various grades must inevitably follow.” A likely crime surge which underscored the need for local courts. (Got that? Even crime was an argument in favor of a new county.)
“Forty-Niner” frankly acknowledged that Alpine would face huge financial headwinds. “It is true that, for the first year, taxes will be high,” he conceded. “And, being a mining community at present, with but one quartz mill in operation, with but little grazing and less agricultural lands, [the tax burden] will comparatively fall on but few.” There was also the astonishingly high administrative cost. Amador County was demanding that Alpine assume $25,000 of Amador’s debt as a condition of the split. You’d think that would be unfair, the writer noted; Amador would get to keep its “fine Court House and Jail,” while Alpine would “have to commence without a dollar’s worth of public property.”
And roads? Well, the wanna-be county barely had any roads to speak of. Although Silver Mountain City was (as Forty-Niner described it) a “large and thriving town,” the Big Tree Road didn’t yet reach it from the west. Teamsters with wagonloads of goods could only haul their freight as far as Markleeville, and from there had to transfer cargo onward by mule. But hey, road crews were hoping to finish a new wagon road from Markleeville as far as Silver Creek by spring. And the citizens of Silver Mountain had “subscribed five hundred days’ work” to connect their town with that toll road. The fact that neither segment was completed didn’t seem to matter.
That $25,000 demand by Amador apparently got whittled down in the end. But one source still pegged Alpine County’s initial debt at an astronomical $22,000, including $10,000 owed to Amador. [As nearly as I can tell, Amador may never have been paid in full. As late as 1878, Alpine had forked over some $11,000 in principal and interest, but still owed another $4,327.50.]
Despite Forty-Niner’s glowing assessment of Alpine’s prospects, in August 1864 the Monitor Gazette bemoaned the newly-formed county’s financial condition. “Alpine County commences business for herself poor,” the newspaper observed, “with a debt of $10,000 due Amador County resting upon her, and comparatively little property subject to taxation. . . The ways and means to carry on her government will consist of county scrip, and manage economically as we may[,] this must run very low.” Even elected officials were required to take IOUs for their salary. And that county scrip typically traded at a hefty discount, sometimes as little as 25 cents on the nominal dollar.
Founded in optimism, Alpine would struggle. Dissatisfaction was almost immediate – and continued for decades. One early county judge wrote that the county “has been most wretchedly managed since its organization.” By 1872 even the newspaper was calling for county records to be examined, saying “the devil himself couldn’t make head or tail of the DA’s books.” Claims were made that county officers were “going in and out of office every two years at least, and in some instance – by bargain and sale – oftener.” In 1871, the Republican Central Committee refused to count votes from Bear Valley, saying “there were more votes polled than there were Republicans in the precinct.” And there’s a whole ‘nother story to be written about the Alpine county treasurer who embezzled $4,392 in county funds in 1877 (a case that would drag on as late as 1889).
Today, Alpiners who gaze wistfully across the border at nearby Nevada (with its lack of income tax) might be curious just how close they actually came. Back in November 1862, well before California’s Alpine Bill was presented for a vote, Silver Mountain citizens banded together and petitioned the Legislature of Nevada Territory to be recognized as a new county there. Yes, subsequent surveys could have changed things. But who knows how the outcome might have been different. The name wouldn’t have been Alpine County, though. According to the Daily Alta, if that original burst of civic pride had succeeded, the county would have become “Silver County,” Nevada. It does have a ring to it.