POKING AROUND SOULSBYVILLE

I’ve never stopped in the little gold-rush town of Soulsbyville until my treatments at SpineForce brought me here. My friend Jan and I decided to kind of meander and poke around town.

An old sawdust burner caught my eye. They are huge and hard to miss, of course. I didn’t know there were any left. They’ve all been removed or just fallen down. This one is being cared for and preserved. Bully for Soulsbyville.

Soulsbyville is located above Sonora, CA. on highway 108. And while it was a rip-roaring gold town at one time when the gold petered out, it became a lumbering town. Thus the sawdust burner.

And here, you can just pull over and enjoy a feast of blackberries along the road. Of course, Jan and I ate the big fat black ones before I remembered to get out my camera.

Back on 108 headed down hill, I stopped to take a picture of this funky mailbox. A nearby company manufactures that pipe this fellow is made from. Jan wondered why I took a picture of this mailbox.

This question from a woman who builds pyramids in her yard. Huh?  I like pictures of funky mailboxes. And, in fact, I’m in the process of designing one of my own since my mail box post is rotting and needs replacement.

I was telling Jan how I missed the old Byrd House since they widened the highway and voila! There it was, not gone after all. I was truly surprised and even though it is crowded by a power pole and practically touching the electric wires, I had to record this strange building. It was once Byrd Realty Office, many years ago. I’m glad it has been preserved. I guess I like Eclectic things.

We eventually got to the gold-rush town of Columbia. I told her I knew where there was a dragon but it is in someone’s yard and I’ve never gotten a good picture of it. Well…

Jan pointed out that his snout was blackened and he must snort flames.

Isn’t he handsome?  We found the pipe and propane tank hiding near his tail. And, no one came out and took a shot at us. People are pretty laid back here.

As we were leaving the “dragon” road, we spotted this old miner’s cabin. The Motherlode used to be full of little miners cabins. They, too, are falling apart, being removed and are just supposedly useless relics from the past. This miner knew to build on top of a rock to prevent his foundation from rotting away.

I’m glad this old cabin is still around to remind us of the rudimentary places the miners called home. This one is quite big compared to others I’ve seen, and must have housed a wife and children, too. The brow over the window, or former window, is still holding on.

From the front, you can see a modern address and electric meter. It is very possible someone still lives here.
Jan wanted to visit Spineforce and if she hadn’t been with me I’d have probably just headed for home instead of seeing things from a tourists eyes. It was fun.

BE AT POULOSKIS AT 1700

Late yesterday, Jim got a mysterious text message on his phone, "Be at Pouloskis at 1700." He left a return text, "Where is Pouloskis? " We asked everyone we ran into if they knew where Pouloskis was? No one we talked to in Cypress Cove had a clue where or what Pouloskis was. Terri, the office attendant at Cypress Cove even looked up boat names that register into the area. Nothing. We were at a loss and hadn't found a ride. A visit to Pilot Town was looking pretty dim for Tuesday. Its the off season for fishing and many boaters have alternative season jobs.

We called several local marinas and got names. We called numbers plastered on the sides of boats passing by. Tuesday dawned cold, gray and windy. At 11:00 a.m. Chris Calloway called us and offered to take us to Pilot Town on an open boat. We debated briefly since neither of us brought winter clothing. "Bundle up, you are gonna be cold," he told us. When would we have another opportunity to visit this unusual place?

Chris knows how to dress for an open boat. He promised we wouldn't get wet. We managed to avoid frostbite on the 20 minute drive over. A slew of cliche's come to mind, like "colder than a well digger's ass in the Klondike."

When Chris pulled up into Pilot Town, a pilot boat was backing up to the dock. The skipper was a retired 25 year employee of Texaco, now working as an engineer on the pilot boats. Hewett Peles informed us what everyone else had already told us, and what we had read, "There is nothing here to see!"

Yeah, we know. We aren't normal tourists. We don't only flock to tourist sights. He told us the pilots used to work several branches of the river, they were called the Branch Pilots. "Now, the branches are all full of sand. They have dredges taking the stuff out, but they'll be at it forever. Only one branch near the gulf is navigable now," he told us. We asked which direction to the post office. "It was only a trailer on piers. It was one of the first buildings to go in Katrina," he said. The building below is floating on a barge and is in good shape.

The Pilot's barracks was in good shape. At first we thought the sign was a joke since this is a very quiet community, but people come here to hunt and guns are noisy.

This building right next to the barracks was clearly damaged during Katrina, but others were far worse. Below you see the piers for the boardwalk and house, all that is left of this residence.

Air conditioners, stoves, refrigerators and washing machines lay rusting about where they once graced peoples houses. We saw a door with the knob still on it floating in the water and the pink bathtub below overgrown with weeds.

We walked the cement "boardwalk" , built in 1993, in both directions as far as it would go. We saw about 5 intact buildings and many crushed beyond repair, sunken into the swamp or gone altogether.

Chris then took us around the North side of the Island to see the camps which suffered little damage. Small cabins on stilts. He had never visited or navigated around Pilot Town and he showed us the depth gauge reading 23 1/2 feet change within 100 yards to 2 feet. Nature reasserting itself, trying to rebuild the island in its own way. We saw egrets that looked like flamingos because they had eaten enough shrimp to turn temporarily pink; raccoons, ibis', and many other birds. It is/was a unique community in that all houses there are built on stilts or float.

It wasn't our intention to go to Pilot Town to document Katrina damage, but to wander as far south in Louisiana as we could go, just for the heck of it. We did it! We decided to celebrate our adventure.

When we returned home, Jim claimed his fingers were still cold enough to chill the champagne. (Whatta ham!) As for Pouloskis? He never returned our message. There is a military installment nearby, military time-1700? We decided it was just a wrong number.

MONTE WOLFE REVISITED

An anonymous comment came in my message box about the supposed illegality of the Amador County Forest Service officials removing a door and chimney of the Monte Wolfe cabin in the deep river canyons of the Mokelumne. I blogged about Monte Wolfe three times in March of this year which relates the escapades of a venerable Mountain Man and his disappearance. He lived by himself in the rugged canyons of the Sierra Nevadas. He built cabins in three counties and roamed Amador, Alpine,Tuolumne and Calaveras Counties at will. He built single log bridges to cross the rivers for his own convenience and set out caches so he could range where ever he wanted to go. He built and maintained a fish trap to mine those rivers, planted potatoes, hired out as a mountain guide and socialized with hikers, hunters, forest service officials and locals living near by. He became a legend after his disappearance.

The photo above is of one of his small cabins. His main cabin was in Calaveras County.
After Monte Wolfe's disappearance, his main cabin was kept in repair by a group of interested citizens from Calaveras County calling themselves The Friends of Monte Wolfe Society. I'm told, members of that group still maintain his cabin. The trail is difficult to find, but Monte hasn't been forgotten. People still remember him, his haunts and wonder what could have happened to him because no trace of Monte was ever found.

In Amador County, a group also formed to maintain his cabin on the Moke. Members met with the Forest Service in 1962 and signed an agreement. However, in 1964, the Congressional Wilderness Act was signed into law to maintain or manage wilderness as pristine. That means no trails, no structures, no mechanical devices, etc. The cabin was over fifty years old and considered historical. It was documented and went through the preservation office and evaluated. The finding was that the Wolfe cabin was eligible for the National Historic Register. I spoke with Marilyn Meyer, from the U.S. Forest Service at length about this.
There is a "next step" after eligibility to preserve a structure. That next step was never taken. The 9th Circuit Court then ruled on dams and wilderness and defines wilderness as (paraphrased) ... magnificent works of nature to be kept as pristine without the interference of man...
In a nutshell, the forest service, by law, must allow the dams, and structures, such as the cabin to deteriorate and become one with nature again.
I queried her about this, knowing that the 9th Circuit Court was taking aim at the dams, not Monte's cabin. But the law paints with a broad brush.
I find it sad that we can't (the way the current law is now written) still preserve Monte's cabin. Then I asked her why the U.S. Forest Service was hastening the deterioration by removing a door and chimney to the cabin?
It seems the very people who want to maintain the cabin have decided they should have it for their own personal use. They've cut forest service locks on the cabin door and brought in their own locks. Brought in plastic pipe to pipe water, set fires in the stove, brought in pesticide sprays, carved their initials in the cabin post and walls. While the archetecture of the cabin is unique and admirable, the people who have made alterations do not appreciate that historic buildings are not altered. They are maintained as they were.

The destiny of the cabin is deterioration. Sad as that is, it won't affect the legend that is Monte Wolfe. Don de Young has a book coming out about Monte with much new information about his life. I'll be sure and let you know when it is available. And who knows, maybe the preservation group will investigate legal options to see if the cabin can legally be preserved and become a National Monument.