Kern County CA Archives History - Books .....Early Towns Were Wild And Woolly 1934
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Book Title: Where Rolls The Kern

CHAPTER VI. 
Early Towns Were Wild and Woolly.

   HAD Buena Vista County come into full legal existence, Keysville would
logically have been the county seat, for a time at least. However, this pioneer
town did not require the impetus that naturally comes from being the seat of
county government to make it the metropolis of the great Kern gold fields.

   The exact date of its founding is not definitely clear, but it is known that
from about 1854 to about 1860 Keysville held full sway as a hell-roarin',
rip-tootin' mining town, and had no apologies to offer to any town along the
entire Sierra front.

   It sprang into existence when Richard Keys, a soldier, discoverd a mine and
named it after himself; the town taking the discoverer's name with the ville
added to distinguish it from the mine. Undoubtedly it can lay rightful claim to
being the first town in the area now known as Kern County. True, there were
Indian villages and small white settlements prior to the founding of Keysville,
but it was the first to possess all the attributes of a real town; gin mills,
gambling establishments, hotels, livery stables, stores and all that went toward
the making of a real mining town in the California of the '50's.

   As a previous chapter has revealed, the placer excitement—or boom, as we
would say today—had reached its zenith by 1885, and by 1858 the placers had lost
practically all of their charm; but the lure of gold was as strong as it had
been before, and as strong as it is today, and the search was on for the quartz
ledges from which the placer gold had come. Various discoveries of more or less
importance were made, and by 1856 there was sufficient quartz mining to justify
the installation of the district's first quartz mill at Keysville, by A. T.
Lightner, Sr.

   At first, the most primitive methods of gold recovery from the quartz were
employed. One historian tells of the discovery in somewhat recent years of an
old Chilean-type quartz mill, consisting of two large wheels, hewn from solid
granite, seven or eight feet in diameter, eighteen inches thick, each weighing
three or four tons; with wooden stems.

   Like all mining towns, Keysville was destined to have rivals for commercial
supremacy, and the first of these resulted from a discovery, the story of which
is not altogether unlike the story of Jim Butler's discovery of Tonopah, Nevada,
many years later. Like Butler's story, this story has to do with a mule. The way
the tale goes, a Keysville miner by the name of "Lovely" Rogers, who, by the
way, had been a member of the famed Mariposa Battalion, was out doing a little
prospecting, with his mule as a companion. The mule, true to his racial
characteristics, wandered off, and before Rogers again set eyes on him, the mule
had traveled approximately eight miles Northward from Keysville, and had wound
up in a gulch. It goes without saying that "Lovely" was in none too good a frame
of mind by the time he espied his animal, and he picked up a piece of rock to
hurl at him.

   The rock was never thrown. It contained such a quantity of free gold that
"Lovely" was momentarily stunned, and to make what could be a long story a short
one, another rush was on.

   At the site of the Rogers discovery the town of Quartzburg appeared on the
face of the landscape. The reader must remember that this was long before the
days of planning commissions, and the accompanying red tape that surrounds the
platting of a new townsite. In those days, towns were like Topsy—they "just
growed;" and when a new gold strike furnished the incentive, as it frequently
did, they "growed" in a hurry.

   Quite generally the first acquisition of a new town was a thirst-quenching
emporium, and in order that there might be no undue delay in supplying interior
lubrication for the miners who were flocking to Quartzburg as a result of the
strike, one Adam Hamilton improvised a bar by laying a plank across two whiskey
barrels, and commenced doing a thriving business.

   Even in those remote days there were those who held to the belief that mining
operations, as well as other affairs of life, could be carried on without the
wholesale consumption of hard liquor, and it so happened that among the most
influential of Quartzburg's early citizens were men of this belief. They formed
their own "dry squad," and without undue ceremony ordered Hamilton and his
primitive bar out of town forthwith.

   There was sufficient force behind these orders to cause Hamilton to obey, and
he accordingly moved to a flat a mile South of the town of Quartzburg.
Hamilton's new location became known as Whiskey Flat, and it goes without saying
that his business flourished from the start, the miners "commuting," mostly by
foot-power, between their homes and the source of liquid supplies. Among their
number, however, there were many who might have been willing to walk a mile for
a Camel, but they were not willing to walk a mile for a drink. Accordingly,
great numbers of them moved down to Whiskey Flat. Soon the latter place had
assumed all the proportions of a town, and there was keen rivalry between the
two towns, Whiskey Flat having the edge in population and "attractions," while
Quartzburg made much of its fine moral influences.

   Whiskey Flat, later to be known, as it still is, as Kernville, continued as
the metropolis of the region for a number of years.

   Despite the rivalry and the resultant bitterness that existed between the
residents of the two towns, it was mutually agreed that they could at least meet
on common ground after death; and with this idea in mind, laid out a cemetery
midway between the two towns.

   The first fifteen "customers" all hailed from Whiskey Flat, and all had died
"with their boots on;" in other words from lead poisoning contracted from being
within range of a gun held in the hand of a rival, or an outraged citizen.

   They were all buried in a row, and when a resident of Quartzburg died from
natural causes his mourners refused to have him buried beside the dead gunmen.
Accordingly, his remains were reverently interred in another part of the burial
ground; and the section occupied by the first fifteen became known as Gunmen's
Row, and is so known to this day.

   The first killing to take place in Whiskey Flat took place soon after the
town started; but not until it had a saloon on each of its four main corners.
There was abroad in the land a man who possessed great prowess with a gun, and
who was absolutely ruthless in the use of such a weapon. One day a man appeared
in Hamilton's saloon and boasted that he was the noted killer, and bragged of
what he was going to do while on his visit to Whiskey Flat. He left Hamilton's
saloon to walk across to one of the other gin mills, and as he reached the
center of the street, four pistol shots rang out—one from the door of each of
the four saloons; and each shot had hit its mark.

   Upon investigation it was found that the dead man was not the notorious bad
one, but the discovery had been made too late to permit of rectification of the
error.

   It was not long before the Quartzburg-Kernville (Whiskey Flat) district
became one of the most important mining sections in the entire State. There were
a dozen mills in operation within a two-mile radius, and one authority states
that at the peak of its career Quartzburg boasted a population of 1300, and
Kernville, 3500. In the latter place there were two breweries and twenty-two
places where intoxicating liquors were sold at retail; indicating that a change
in name did not necessarily result in a change of sentiment or habits.

   In the 60's Senator John P. Jones acquired the discovery mine and several
others adjacent thereto, and consolidated them under the name of the Big Blue, a
property that has been operated intermittently with varying success throughout
the years. Within the past two or three years the Big Blue was under lease to
the great Guggenheim mining interests.

   In 1856, the Indians were conducting serious attacks on the whites in the
Tulare district, and there was much fear—not altogether ungrounded—that they
might make an attack on Keysville. As a wise precaution, a fort was constructed
on a small hill a short distance from the town. The fort occupied a strong
strategic position, and would undoubtedly have served a good purpose had an
attack been made; but the Red Men did not extend their raids to the district,
and the fort was never used for the purpose for which it was intended.




Additional Comments:
Extracted from:

Where Rolls the Kern

A History of Kern County, California
By Herbert G. Comfort

MOORPARK, CALIFORNIA:
The ENTERPRISE Press
1934


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