Hopeton, Merced County, California

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Hopeton, Merced County, California

My great-grandmother, Mabel Grace Farnell, was born on May 18, 1879, in Hopeton, California 
and raised by her Aunt Johnnie (Johanna Silman Pittman b. 1848, d. 1922) and her husband, 
Judge Robertson.  My great-grandfather, John R. Graham, married Mabel on June 4, 1896.
I inherited John R.’s wedding band and wear it proudly to this day.

It is said that her mother, Belle Tackett, came across the plains in a covered wagon and got married, 
during this journey, to John Farnell.  Belle and John Farnell eventually settled on the Merced River in 
Hopeton.  Mabel was born in Hopeton on May 18, 1879. Within days of Mabel’s birth, John left Belle. 
Baby Mabel was given to Belle’s sister, Johanna (Silman) Robertson, to raise.  

On August 19, 2003, Robin and I set out, one morning from Roseville, to find Mabel’s birth town and to 
find the Hopeton Cemetery. I had hoped the town of Hopeton would still be there. I was looking for the 
remnants of the old post office. It does not exist at all that we could see. St. John’s Catholic Mission 
and the Hopeton Elementary School seem to be the only remnants of what was once the town of Hopeton. 

We eventually found the Hopeton Cemetery after much effort. It is off highway J17 on a "dairy" road 
approximately 1 mile from the junction of J59 and J17. The dairy road is not marked at this time but is 
between the Hopeton School and the Mission. The cemetery is about 200 yards down the dairy road and 
on the left. It is enclosed with barb wire, covered in weeds and in disrepair. Some of the headstones are 
still standing but most are broken on the ground. It is evident that some of the headstones are missing. 
I found one broken piece of headstone outside of the barbwire fence near the road where we parked. 
Someone had tried to spirit it off. I returned it to the cemetery. 

This historical brief is written in an attempt to document the setting into which Mabel was born before 
this history is lost forever.  Should the reader wish to visit the Hopeton Cemetery, a map is attached 
with directions to what is left of Hopeton, California.


History of Hopeton

As early as 1850 settlers came to the rivers and streams of Merced County and established homes.  
The vast fertile areas along the streams were used for livestock and agriculture, and almost invariably 
the ranch houses on the through road became inns.  Finally, centers of trade grew up about some of 
them.  After the advent of the railroad, however, trade deserted the old river towns and they became 
little more than memories.  Located on the Merced River six miles below Snelling was Hopeton, at first 
known as the "Forlorn Hope."  It was chiefly notable for the fact that it possessed two churches before 
Snelling had even one. [1]

John Muir stayed in Hopeton on one of his treks to the Sierra Nevada’s. The following letter was written 
to his friend, Mrs. Ezra S. Carr, on July 26, 1868. He was impressed with the flora of the San Joaquin 
Valley:

I have had the pleasure of but one letter since leaving home from you. That I received at Gainesville, 
Georgia. I have not received a letter from any source since leaving Florida, and of course I am very 
lonesome and hunger terribly for the communion of friends. I will remain here eight or nine months and 
hope to hear from all my friends. 

Fate and flowers have carried me to California, and I have reveled and luxuriated amid its plants and 
mountains nearly four months. I am well again, I came to life in the cool winds and crystal waters of the 
mountains, and, were it not for a thought now and then of loneliness and isolation, the pleasure of my 
existence would be complete. 

I have forgotten whether I wrote you from Cuba or not. I spent four happy weeks there in January and 
February. I saw only a very little of the grandeur of Panama, for my health was still in wreck, and I did 
not venture to wait the arrival of another steamer. I had but half a day to collect specimens. The Isthmus 
train rushed on with camel speed through the gorgeous Eden of vines and palms, and I could only gaze 
from the car platform and weep and pray that the Lord would some day give me strength to see it better. 

After a delightful sail among the scenery of the sea I arrived in San Francisco in April and struck out at 
once into the country. I followed the Diablo foothills along the San José Valley to Gilroy, thence over the 
Diablo Mountains to valley of San Joaquin by the Pacific pass, thence down the valley opposite the mouth 
of the Merced River, thence across the San Joaquin, and up into the Sierra Nevada to the mammoth trees 
of Mariposa and the glorious Yosemite, thence down the Merced to this place. 

The goodness of the weather as I journeyed towards Pacheco was beyond all praise and description, 
fragrant end mellow and bright. The air was perfectly delicious, sweet enough for the breath of angels; 
every draught of it gave a separate and distinct piece of pleasure. I do not believe that Adam and Eve ever 
tasted better in their balmiest nook. 

The last of the Coast Range foothills were in near view all the way to Gilroy. Their union with the valley is 
by curves and slopes of inimitable beauty, and they were robed with the greenest grass and richest light I 
ever beheld, and colored and shaded with millions of flowers of every hue, chiefly of purple and golden 
yellow; and hundreds of crystal rills joined songs with the larks, filling all the valley with music like a sea,
making it an Eden from end to end. 

The scenery, too, and all of Nature in the pass is fairly enchanting, strange and beautiful mountain ferns, 
low in the dark canons and high upon the rocky, sunlit peaks, banks of blooming shrubs, and sprinklings 
and gatherings of [   ] flowers, precious and pure as ever enjoyed the sweets of a mountain home. And oh, 
what streams are there! beaming, glancing, each with music of its own, singing as they go in the shadow 
and light, onward upon their lovely changing pathways to the sea; and hills rise over hills, and mountains 
over mountains, heaving, waving, swelling, in most glorious, overpowering, unreadable majesty; and when 
at last, stricken with faint like a crushed insect, you hope to escape from all the terrible grandeur of these 
mountain powers, other fountains, other oceans break forth before you, for there, in clear view, over heaps 
and rows of foot hills is laid a grand, smooth outspread plain, watered by a river, and another range of 
peaky snow-capped mountains a hundred miles in the distance. 

That plain is the valley of the San Joaquin, and those mountains are the great Sierra Nevada’s. The valley 
of the San Joaquin is the floweriest piece of world I ever walked, one vast level, even flower-bed, a sheet 
of flowers, a smooth sea ruffled a little by the tree fringing of the river and here and there of smaller cross 
streams from the mountains. Florida is indeed a land of flowers, but for every flower creature that dwells 
in its most delightsome places more than a hundred are living here. Here, here is Florida. Here they are 
not sprinkled apart with grass between, as in our prairies, but grasses are sprinkled in the flowers; not, 
as in Cuba, flowers piled upon flowers heaped and gathered into deep, glowing masses, but side by side, 
flower to flower, petal to petal, touching but not entwined, branches weaving past and past each other, 
but free and separate, one smooth garment, mosses next the ground, grasses above, petaled flowers 
between. 

Before studying the flowers of this valley, and their sky and all of the furniture and sounds and adornments 
of their home, one can scarce believe that their vast assemblies are permanent, but rather that, actuated 
by some plant purpose, they had convened from every plain, and mountain, and meadow of their kingdom, 
and that the different coloring of patches, acres, and miles marked the bounds of the various tribe and 
family encampments. And now just stop and see what I gathered from a square yard opposite the Merced. 
I have no books and cannot give specific names.

The yellow of these Compositae is extremely deep and rich and bossy, as though the sun had filled their 
petals with a portion of his very self. It exceeds the purple of all the others in superficial quantity forty or 
fifty times their whole amount, but to an observer who first looks downward and then takes a more distant 
view, the yellow gradually fades and purple predominates because nearly all of the purple flowers are higher. 
In depth the purple stratum is about ten or twelve inches, the yellow seven or eight, and second purple of 
mosses one. 

I'm sorry my page is done. I have not told anything. I thought of you, Mrs. Carr, when I was in the glorious 
Yosemite and of the prophecy of "the Priests," that you would see it and worship there with your Doctor 
and Priest and I. It is by far the grandest of all of the special temples of Nature I was ever permitted to 
enter. It must be the sanctum sanctorum of the Sierras, and I trust that you will all be led to it. 

Remember me to the Doctor. I hope he has the pleasure of sowing in good and honest hearts the glorious 
truth of science to which he has devoted his life. Give my love to all your boys and my little Butler. 

Adieu.

J. Muir. 
Address: Hopeton, Merced Co., Cala [2]


[Written April 23, 2004 by Randy Graham]

Notes
  [1] Historic Spots in CALIFORNIA, Third Edition; Mildred Brooke Hoover, Hero Eugene Rensch and 
Ethel Grace Rensch; Revised by William N. Abelow; Stanford University Press, Stanford, California; 1966.

[2] Letters to a Friend, Written to Mrs. Ezra S. Carr 1866-1879 by John Muir Houghton Mifflin Company, 
Boston and New York, 1915 Copyright, 1915, by Wanda Muir Hanna 

[3]  Photo Credits: All photos, attached, were taken by Randy Graham August 19, 2003.