NEVADA COUNTY

Courtesy of Sparknotes.com

WHAT is Manifest Destiny?

Propounded during the second half of the 19th century, the concept of Manifest Destiny held that it was the divinely ordained right of the United States to expand its borders to the Pacific Ocean and beyond. Before the American Civil War, the idea of Manifest Destiny was used to validate continental acquisitions in the Oregon Country, Texas, New Mexico, and California. Later it was used to justify the purchase of Alaska and annexation of Hawaii.

Although Manifest Destiny became a rallying cry as well as a rationale for the foreign policy that reached its culmination in 1845-46, the attitude behind Manifest Destiny had long been a part of the American experience.

The impatient English who colonized North America in the 1600s and 1700s immediately gazed westward and instantly considered ways to venture into the wilderness and tame it. The cause of that ceaseless wanderlust varied from region to region, but the behavior became a tradition within one generation.

The western horizon would always beckon, and Americans would always follow.

Settlers of the Far West faced a four-month journey across little-known territory in harsh conditions. They prepared for the rigors of travel in jump-off towns like St. Joseph and Independence, Missouri, which prospered from the growth of the outfitting industry.

There, settlers purchased Conestoga wagons for the journey and stocked up on supplies like food, weapons, and ammunition. Due to fictional stories about the savage Indians that travelers would face along their way, travelers on the overland trails often overstocked guns and ammunition at the expense of other more necessary items.

Once they embarked, settlers faced numerous challenges: oxen dying of thirst, overloaded wagons, and dysentery, among others. Trails were poorly marked and hard to follow, and travelers often lost their way. Guidebooks attempted to advise travelers, but they were often unreliable.

Regardless of misdirection and hardships, thousands upon thousands of pioneers persevered and reached their destination. Many chose to follow the California Trail across the western half of the United States, with traversing the Sierra Nevadas being their last obstacle before entering California.

By Matthew Renda, Special to The Union

The history of transportation in western Nevada County is, as with any other aspect of the beginning stages of regional development by European settlements, inextricably linked with mining.

The reason for existence, the magnet that brought the adventurers coursing through the hills and the gold-rich valleys of the watershed, mining also sparked the advent of a sophisticated transportation network.

What began as a few hearty prospectors carrying their burdens on their backs, or the more well-capitalized versions with pack mules or other beasts of burdens bearing their equipment, slowly gave way to stagecoaches.

Entrepreneurs such as James Birch began to operate a stagecoach line that connected Nevada City and Grass Valley to Sacramento, with the coach towed by a team of steeds crossing the Bear River at Johnson’s Crossing and through Rose Bar, Rough and Ready and Grass Valley up into Nevada City.

As early as 1849, Wells, Fargo & Co. began delivering letters from the East to miners tucked in the foothills who were ravenously eager for news from their distant hometowns. The express lines would then convey letters bearing news of fortuitous strikes or hard luck toil back over the steep crest of the Sierra Nevada and across the trackless expanse of desert.

In 1850, the discovery of gold-bearing quartz veins in the earth beneath Grass Valley precipitated an explosion of hard-rock mining.

The enterprise, far different from the hands-and-pans self-sufficiency of most of the gold hunters in the region, required extraordinary manpower and large amounts of heavy equipment.

About two years before James Marshall discovered a nugget of gold in a tributary of the South Fork of the American River, Asa Whitney, a merchant from New York, began pushing the idea of creating a transcontinental railroad.

With a clear economic incentive to do so, namely the Gold Rush, the United States Congress introduced a bill in February 1849 attempting to raise capital for the creation of the Pacific Railroad.

In California, a consortium of businessmen from Sacramento, Nevada and Placer counties attempted to build a railroad that went through Grass Valley, Nevada City, and Auburn and over the crest at Henness Pass.

The plan was abandoned due to logistical difficulties, but once the federal government provided funds in 1853, Theodore Judah, an engineer from Connecticut who had built the first railroad in California in the Sacramento Valley, was hired to survey the mountains to determine whether a pass was possible.