Author’s Note

A short history of
Gold Creek, California

THE NATIVE AMERICAN legend of Whitefire Lake was whispered to the white men who came from the East in search of gold in the mountains. Even in the missions, there was talk of the legend, though men of the Christian God professed to disbelieve any pagan myths.

None was less believing than Kelvin Fitzpatrick, a brawny Irishman who was rumored to have killed a man before he first thrust his pickax into the hills surrounding the lake. No body was ever found, and the claim jumper vanished, so murder couldn’t be proved. But the rumors around Fitzpatrick didn’t disappear.

He found the first gold in the hills on a morning when the lake was still shrouded in the white mist that was as beautiful as it was deceptive. Fitzpatrick staked his claim and drank lustily from the water. He’d found his home and his fortune in these hills.

He named the creek near his claim Gold Creek and decided to become the first founding father of a town by the same name. He took his pebbles southwest to the city of San Francisco, where he transformed gold to money and a scrubby forty-niner into what appeared to be a wealthy gentleman. With his money and looks, Kelvin wooed and married a socialite from the city, Marian Dubois.

News of Fitzpatrick’s gold strike traveled fast, and soon Gold Creek had grown into a small shantytown. With the prospectors came the merchants, the gamblers, the saloon keepers, the clergy and the whores. The Silver Horseshoe Saloon stood on the west end of town and the Presbyterian church was built on the east, and Gold Creek soon earned a reputation for fistfights, barroom brawls and hangings.

Kelvin’s wealth increased and he fathered four children—all girls. Two were from Marian, the third from a town whore and the fourth by a Native American woman. All the children were disappointments as Kelvin Fitzpatrick needed an heir for his empire.

The community was growing from a boisterous mining camp to a full-fledged town, with Kelvin Fitzpatrick as Gold Creek’s first mayor and most prominent citizen. The persecuted Native Americans with their legends and pagan ways were soon forced into servitude or thrown off their land. They made their way into the hills, away from the white man’s town and the white man’s troubles.

In 1860, when Kelvin was forty-three, his wife finally bore him a son, Rodwell Kelvin Fitzpatrick. Roddy, handsome and precocious, quickly became the apple of his father’s eye. Though considered a “bad seed” and a hellion by most of the churchgoing citizens of Gold Creek, Roddy Fitzpatrick was the crown prince to the Fitzpatrick fortune, and when his father could no longer mine gold from the earth’s crust, he discovered a new mode of wealth, and perhaps, more sacred: the forest.

Roddy Fitzpatrick started the first logging operation and opened the first sawmill. All competitors were quickly bought or forced out of business. But other men, bankers and smiths, carpenters and doctors, settled down to stay and hopefully smooth out the rough edges of the town. Men with names of Kendrick, Monroe and Powell made Gold Creek their home and brought their wives in homespun and woolens, women who baked pies, planned fairs and corralled their wayward Saturday night drinking men into church each Sunday morning.

Roddy Fitzpatrick, who grew into a handsome but cruel man, ran the family businesses when the older Fitzpatrick retired. In a few short years, Roddy had gambled or squandered most of the family fortune. Competitors had finally gotten a toehold in the lumber-rich mountains surrounding Gold Creek and new businesses were sprouting along the muddy streets of the town.

The railroad arrived, bringing with its coal-spewing engines much wealth and commerce. The railway station was situated on the west end of town, not too far from the Silver Horseshoe Saloon, and a skeletal trestle bridged the gorge of the creek. Ranchers and farmers brought their produce into town for the market and more people stayed on, settling in the growing community, though Gold Creek was still known for the bullet holes above the bar in the saloon.

And still there was the rumor of some Indian curse that occasionally was whispered by the older people of the town.

Roddy Fitzpatrick married a woman of breeding, a woman who was as quick with a gun as she was to quote a verse. Belinda Surrett became his wife and bore him three sons.

Roddy, always a hothead and frustrated at his shrinking empire, was involved in more than his share of brawls. Knives flashed, guns smoked and threats and curses were spit around wads of tobacco and shots of whiskey.

When a man tried to cheat him at cards, Roddy plunged a knife into the blackguard’s heart and killed him before a packed house of gamblers, drinkers, barkeeps and whores. After a night in jail, Roddy was set free with no charges leveled against him by the sheriff, who was a fast friend of the elder Fitzpatrick.

But Roddy’s life was not to be the same. One night he didn’t return home to his wife. She located Kelvin and they formed a search party. Two days later, Roddy’s body washed up on the shores of Whitefire Lake. There was a bullet in his chest and his wallet was empty.

Some people thought he was killed by a thief; still others decided Roddy had been shot by a jealous husband, but some, those who still believed in the legend, knew that the God of the Sun had taken Roddy’s life to punish Kelvin Fitzpatrick by not only taking away his wealth, but the only thing Kelvin had loved: his son.

The older Fitzpatrick, hovering on the brink of bankruptcy, took his own life after learning that his son was dead. Kelvin’s daughters, those legitimate, and those who were born out of wedlock, each began their own lives.

The town survived the dwindling empire of the Fitzpatricks and new people arrived at the turn of the century. New names were added to the town records. Industry and commerce brought the flagging community into the twentieth century, though the great earthquake of 1906 did much damage. Many buildings toppled, but the Silver Horseshoe Saloon and the Presbyterian church and the railroad trestle bridge survived.

Monroe Sawmill, a new company owned and operated by Hayden Garreth Monroe, bought some of the dwindling Fitzpatrick forests and mills, and during the twenties, thirties and forties, Gold Creek became a company town. The people were spared destitution during the depression as the company kept the workers employed, even when they were forced to pay in company cash that could only be spent on goods at the company store. But no family employed by Monroe Sawmill went hungry; therefore, the community, who had hated Fitzpatrick’s empire, paid homage to Hayden Garreth Monroe, even when the forests dwindled, logging prices dropped and the mills were shut down.

In the early 1960s, the largest sawmill burned to the ground. The police suspected arson. As the night sky turned orange by the flames licking toward the black heavens, and the volunteer firemen fought the blaze, the townspeople stood and watched. Some thought the fire was a random act of violence, others believed that Hayden Garreth Monroe III, grandson of the well-loved old man, had lost favor and developed more than his share of enemies when the company cash became worthless and the townspeople, other than those who were already wealthy, began to go bankrupt. They thought the fire was personal revenge. Names of those he’d harmed were murmured. Fitzpatrick came to mind, though by now, the families had been bonded by marriage and the timber empire of the Fitzpatricks had experienced another boom.

Some of the townspeople, the very old with long memories, thought of the legend that had nearly been forgotten. Hayden Garreth Monroe III had drunk like a glutton from Whitefire Lake and he, too, would lose all that he held dear—first his wealth and eventually his wife.

As time passed, other firms found toeholds in Gold Creek, and in the seventies and eighties technology crept over the hills. From the ashes of Kelvin Fitzpatrick’s gold and timber empire rose the new wealth of other families.

The Fitzpatricks still rule the town, and Thomas Fitzpatrick, patriarch of the family, intends one day to turn to state politics. However, scandal has tarnished his name and as his political aspiration turns to ashes and his once-envied life crumbles, he will have to give way to new rulers—young men who are willing to fight for what they want. Men like Jackson Moore, Turner Brooks, Hayden Garreth Monroe IV and Ben Powell. With strong women at their sides, these men are destined to rule.

In Gold Creek, old names mingle and marry with new, but the town and its legend continue to exist. And, to this day, the people of Gold Creek cannot shake the gold dust of those California hills from their feet. Though they walk many paths away from the shores of the lake, the men and women of Gold Creek—the boys and the girls—can never forget their hometown. Nor can they forget the legend and curse of Whitefire Lake.