• • • •
Olmsted first encountered Bear Valley in October. Winter and spring were benign. With July came the searing heat of summer. California was in the middle of a two-year drought. The trees wilted and the desiccated foothills turned brown and dusty. The weather became insupportable. In July the family set out for the higher and cooler terrain of the Sierra Nevada. The party included the governess, Miss Errington; the German housekeeper, Meta; and the cook, Bell, a black man; as well as William Ashburner and his wife. There were ten horses, eight mules, and two donkeys. They traveled forty miles to the South Fork of the Merced River, a place called Clark’s. Here they camped for several weeks in an uplands meadow (now called Wawona) on a ranch belonging to Galen Clark. He was an affable New England–born explorer and frontiersman who had discovered the nearby Mariposa Big Tree Grove. Olmsted called him the “doorkeeper of the Yo Semite,” for his ranch served as a stopping point for visitors traveling to the valley.
Clark took Mary and Olmsted to see the giant sequoias. It was a five-hour ride, but worth it, as Mary recounted:
I know of no simile to convey to you an idea of the effect these trees produce on one. The color of the bark is that of light tan bark and the sides are in great fluted lines. They are like cathedral columns or gigantic organ pipes. We spread our blankets down in a fern brake where the delicate leaves of the ferns growing up five feet or more were between us and the camp fire and an opening among the tree-tops let in the star light from the almost black sky. As the fire lighted up the giant tree, the effect was sublime and kept one awake in spite of the fatigue of the day.
Olmsted returned to Bear Valley for two weeks to attend to business and inspect the construction of the new stamp mill. When he came back, the party left Clark’s and followed the Merced eight miles up into the Yosemite Valley. The valley had been discovered by white men thirteen years earlier, and thanks to visiting writers, photographers, and painters, it had become well-known. Starr King, an enthusiast of landscapes, wrote a book about Yosemite in 1860. The photographer Carleton E. Watkins visited the valley a year later and published a series of widely distributed stereoscopic views. The month before Olmsted arrived in Bear Valley, the painter Albert Bierstadt spent two months sketching Yosemite. The resulting monumental paintings—Domes of the Yosemite and Valley of the Yosemite—were instant popular successes. Bierstadt was accompanied by Fitz-Hugh Ludlow, a writer whose description of Yosemite appeared in the Atlantic in June 1864.1
They pitched their tents opposite the 2,425-foot Yosemite Falls, the highest waterfall on the continent. The majestic scenery made a strong impression on Olmsted:
We are camped near the middle of the chasm on the bank of the Merced, which is here a stream meandering through a meadow . . . like the Avon at Stratford—a trout stream with rushes & ferns, willows & poplars. The walls of the chasm are a quarter of a mile distant, each side—nearly a mile in height—half a mile of perpendicular or overhanging rock in some places. Of course it is awfully grand, but it is not frightful or fearful. It is sublimely beautiful, much more beautiful than I had supposed. The valley is as sweet & peaceful as the meadows of the Avon, and the sides are in many parts lovely with foliage and color. There is little water in the cascades at this season, but that is but a trifling circumstance. We have what is infinitely more valuable—a full moon & a soft hazy smokey atmosphere with rolling towering & white fleecy clouds.
Willa Cather would later make a distinction between wilderness and landscape. The American West, she wrote, is “a country still waiting to be made into a landscape.” The unique and affecting charm of Yosemite, as Olmsted perceptively noted, is that it is both wilderness and landscape. The craggy vastness of the chasm is older than any human presence, yet the valley floor appears comfortably domesticated. Olmsted appreciated this curious contrast; he and Vaux had created precisely this effect in Central Park, where the wilderness of the Ramble was side by side with pastoral meadows.
The Olmsted party camped in Yosemite until the beginning of October. They went on picnics and walked in the surrounding forest. Under the tutelage of Miss Errington the children looked for fossils. Mary indulged her hobby of rock collecting. Olmsted and John made a six-day excursion into the High Sierra. They were guided by William Brewer of the California Geological Survey, which was mapping the area. Olmsted was not fit enough to hike and was obliged to ride, yet they managed to reach the top of a previously unclimbed 12,764-foot peak. The Geological Survey customarily named mountains after prominent explorers and scientists, and Olmsted chose Mount Gibbs, in honor of his chemist friend Oliver Wolcott Gibbs.
• • • •
The family resumed its life in Bear Valley. Although Olmsted felt better after his mountain holiday, he was not entirely cured. “I find the old symptoms returning as soon as I come back to the desk,” he wrote his father. “I am very well so long as I don’t think,” he wrote Knapp. That was hyperbole: Olmsted might stop himself from writing, but not from thinking. He was drawn into public life. The hard-fought presidential election of 1864 embroiled Mariposa County as it did the rest of the country. Lincoln appeared vulnerable. He had put Grant in command of all the Union armies. Grant fought Lee for six bloody weeks in Virginia but was unable to defeat him. The war, now in its fourth year, appeared unwinnable. The Democratic candidate was the embittered General George McClellan. He ran on a platform suggesting a cessation of hostilities with the South and a negotiated peace. Olmsted, who staunchly supported Lincoln, wrote a long letter to the Mariposa Weekly Gazette titled “The Manager of the Mariposa Estate Defines His Position.” The tables turned a few months before the election. Atlanta finally fell to Sherman’s army, and General Philip Sheridan defeated the Confederates in the Shenandoah Valley. Lincoln was elected. In Mariposa County, Secessionist sentiment proved impervious to Olmsted’s rhetoric and Lincoln was narrowly defeated.
Earlier the U.S. Congress passed an unnoticed but historic act. The legislation, introduced by Senator John Conness of California, granted the Yosemite Valley and the Mariposa Big Tree Grove to the State of California “for public use, resort and recreation . . . inalienable for all time.” This was the beginning of what would become the National Park System. In September Governor Frederick Low of California appointed a commission to survey the valley and to recommend how the land grant should be managed. The Yosemite Commission included Josiah Whitney, the head of the California State Geological Survey, several prominent Mariposa County business leaders, William Ashburner, and Galen Clark. Low was the nominal chairman, but the Commission’s real head was Frederick Law Olmsted. He was a natural choice, known to Low, who was also a Unionist, to Whitney, and, of course, to Ashburner and Clark. As manager of the Mariposa Estate he was an important figure in the county. Above all, he was a nationally recognized expert on parks.2
The same month that he was appointed to the Yosemite Commission, Olmsted was hired to lay out the grounds of a cemetery in Oakland. Mountain View was to be San Francisco’s premier cemetery, following the model of rural cemeteries such as Greenwood and Laurel Hill. The consulting fee of several thousand dollars was welcome, but in this case money was not the prime motivation. Olmsted was challenged by the site: two hundred acres in the Oakland Hills, overlooking San Francisco Bay. The treeless, hilly terrain was quite unlike anything he had encountered in the East. Since coming to California he had begun to appreciate the Western landscape. Mountain View was an opportunity to explore its difference. It was also his first independent landscaping commission.
“I am going to lay out a burying ground near here & it is a great comfort for me to have that object,” he wrote Knapp, “other than the heart-sickening waiting on gold, which, so far, don’t come.” Eventually the gold did come. In October the Princeton mine hit a rich vein and gold production increased substantially. The company stock rose in value. It appeared that, at last, the Mariposa Company had turned the corner.
Olmsted, too, prospered. “I am for the present ma
king money pretty fast for such a vagabond as I am,” he wrote his father. His annual salary was a regal $10,000 (about $300,000 in modern dollars), but since his contract specified that he be paid in gold—which was worth more than greenbacks—his real salary was as much as twice that amount. He was finally able to pay off his debts. In January 1864, only three months after his arrival, he was even able to invest $2,500 with his stockbroker in San Francisco. In April he increased this to $4,000. He was a conservative investor. He avoided the volatile mining industry, although he expected California in general—and San Francisco in particular—to prosper. He bought stock in a steamship company, the state telegraph company, and a San Francisco water company. “I look therefore to enterprises which are related to the whole of this field or large parts of it as likely ipso facto to be safe, (if well managed and free from excessive competition),” he wrote Godkin, who had asked him to make some investments on his behalf. In July Olmsted assured him: “The mining stocks here have fallen on an average more than one half since I wrote, but the stocks I recommended have not fallen on an average at all. I have made from 2 to 3 per ct a month on all my investments.” By the end of the year, the value of his investments was $6,000.
Looking back over the last year at Bear Valley, Olmsted was content. His health had improved. Prosperity, public recognition, a role in civic affairs, new creative endeavors, a happy family life: he could not have asked for more.
* * *
1. Olmsted read Ludlow’s article, “Seven Weeks in the Great Yo-Semite,” and judged his overwrought and bombastic description “an abomination.”
2. That summer, Olmsted was awarded an honorary master of arts degree by Harvard University.
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
Olmsted Shortens Sail
ON THE EVENING OF JANUARY 6, 1865, two visitors from San Francisco called at the manager’s office in Bear Valley. John Fry was an agent of the Bank of California, which handled the affairs of the Mariposa Estate. He was accompanied by a representative of Dodge Brothers, a San Francisco provisioner and the Estate’s largest creditor. Fry informed an astonished Olmsted that the Mariposa Company in New York had refused payment on its outstanding debt of sixty thousand dollars. Consequently, the Bank of California would no longer honor Mariposa Company checks. Fry himself had just spoken with the sheriff in Mariposa to initiate legal proceedings. He was courteous but firm. He was here to attach the property of the Mariposa Estate.
Olmsted protested that there must be some misunderstanding. He showed the pair his accounts. They agreed that everything seemed in order. He appealed to Fry to suspend legal proceedings until he, Olmsted, had a chance to discuss the situation with the officers of the bank in San Francisco. He was sure that he could straighten things out. Fry agreed. Olmsted quickly arranged to depart. “My impression is that Mariposa will float over this bar,” he assured Mary. But he did take one precaution. Before leaving, he collected four thousand dollars’ worth of gold bullion, as well as some instruments, and gave himself a bill of sale amounting to almost the full value of a year’s salary. He thought that the bank had been unnecessarily hasty, but he prepared for the worst.
He arrived in San Francisco late at night. He immediately met Darius Mills, the bank’s president, and William Ralston, the cashier, whom he had telegraphed from Stockton. They, too, were courteous and assured Olmsted that their actions were not a reflection of their regard for him. He would continue to enjoy their full confidence, respect, and friendship. But the Mariposa Company was another matter. They darkly alluded to a “great Wall Street swindle.” They told him that they had no choice but to act quickly to protect their shareholders. As far as they were concerned, Olmsted’s employers were as good as bankrupt.
Olmsted knew that the Mariposa Company’s cash reserves were low. He had been directed to undertake extensive—and expensive—improvements, and in 1864 his operating costs exceeded income by about $300,000. This deficit was to have been paid from cash reserves. But unforeseen, a previously unknown creditor of Frémont’s had contested the title to the Estate. The claim was settled out of court for $300,000 in gold. The company used current gold production to pay its debts; during October and November, production had been high, but in December the rich vein ran out. Mariposa was caught short.
Temporary liquidity problems were common in the mining business. What had panicked Mills and Ralston was a recent scandal. In December 1864 Opdyke had brought a libel suit against his old political adversary Thurlow Weed, who had published an article alleging that Opdyke had misused public funds as mayor. The trial lasted several weeks and attracted enormous publicity. Opdyke lost his suit and emerged with his reputation severely tarnished. During the trial, the defense charged that Opdyke and his partners had shortchanged Frémont when they bought the Mariposa Estate. The charge was calculated to gain the sympathy of the jury since Frémont was a popular public figure. However, he denied that he had been cheated; on the contrary, he admitted that he had underrepresented the Estate’s indebtedness at the time of the sale! This revelation coming on top of Opdyke’s humiliation rattled Mariposa investors. Frémont testified on December 21. On December 28 the value of the stock, which had been $45 when Olmsted arrived in California, dropped to $30; by January 2 it had tumbled to $19.
Olmsted, who was unaware of the trial, assumed that the Mariposa Company was solid.1 He persuaded Mills and Ralston to wait a few days until he could contact his superiors. He telegraphed the Mariposa president for advice and assistance. The response was “a sort of bunkum message from Mr Hoy, amounting simply to ‘don’t worry.’ ” Stalling for time, Olmsted negotiated an agreement whereby the Bank of California would receive all gold produced by the mines in exchange for granting a grace period of one hundred days before taking legal action.
Meanwhile in New York, the disgruntled Mariposa shareholders voted down the board’s proposal to float a half-million-dollar bond issue. Olmsted was left in the dark about this, as he was about the other developments. Still hoping for some reprieve, he worked mightily to make the best of a worsening situation. He felt an obligation to the creditors and to his subordinates, particularly Pieper and Martin. The mines had to be kept open. This was not easy. Olmsted had been called an autocrat, yet on this occasion he showed himself a persuasive mediator. At one point, the unnerved bank attached the company stores. The miners, unpaid and deprived of supplies, refused to work. Olmsted immediately wrote a public letter to the men explaining the situation, and with Pieper’s help, managed to calm them down. From San Francisco, he made arrangements with the sheriff, who was now effectively managing the Estate, to reopen the stores. Crisis followed crisis. In February the men who were owed back pay occupied one of the mines. Olmsted defused that situation, too, and convinced the bank to postpone collecting on the debt and to pay the miners.
Weeks turned to months. Olmsted stayed in San Francisco, but still no word came from New York. It dawned on him that he was on his own. At first he remained upbeat, explaining in a letter to Mary:
We have lived so very happily of late, & you & the children are doing so well, I shall be disposed to stay as long as possible at Bear Valley. It will not be easy for us to shorten sail to the degree that it will be required if we go East. But although we should probably have to manage a good deal closer than we ever have before, I feel less anxiety about it than usual—less oppressive anxiety. The truth is I have enjoyed the last few months so much, that I think I have [been] sufficiently well charged with caloric to bear a little cold weather, if necessary, without breaking my heart or my temper—and I hope it is the same with you. A certain degree of health and of luxury does tend to limit your discontent, a fact which I don’t think before last summer—autumn—I ever made any progress of faith in. “What I mean to say, is” that I have an increased and increasing positive respect for you as well as a decreased disrespect for your occasional perversities. You will think that I am sick that I write this—but I am, however that may be, very happy in our
experience of late.
Despite his warning to Mary about having to manage “a good deal closer than we ever have before,” Olmsted’s financial situation was far from desperate. True, with the Estate in virtual receivership, he was not currently being paid a salary. Moreover, his lawyer had advised him that the bill of sale he had issued himself before leaving Bear Valley was “tomfoolery” and would not withstand legal scrutiny. On the other hand, he had good news from Morris Ketchum. The previous year Olmsted had deposited the one hundred shares of Mariposa stock he had received as annual pay in Ketchum’s bank. Ketchum had had the foresight to sell the shares in November, when they were still worth $36. As a result, Olmsted personally lost nothing in the Mariposa collapse.
Olmsted and Ketchum had a special understanding. Before Olmsted left New York, Ketchum had approached him with a proposal. If Olmsted would provide him with advance information of mining discoveries and shortfalls, in return he would buy and sell Mariposa stock on Olmsted’s behalf. Olmsted agreed. This was long before insider trading was outlawed, but the arrangement does cast a shadow on Olmsted’s probity. Or rather, it suggests that Strong was mistaken: Olmsted did have a mercenary nerve. He was not a novice in business and understood that he needed Ketchum’s help if he was to succeed financially. Their agreement lasted until May 1864, when the prudent Ketchum stepped down as a trustee of the Mariposa Company.
Olmsted’s account with Ketchum, Son & Company contained seven thousand dollars; with his California investments, he had accumulated thirteen thousand dollars. Nevertheless, he had no intention of dipping into his savings—he needed income. An opportunity soon presented itself. “I have another landscape gardening nibble,” he wrote to Mary in Bear Valley, “and shall do all I can to hook it, for Miller’s sake.” Edward Miller was a Central Park surveyor whom Olmsted had brought to Mariposa to work on the irrigation canal. With all improvements on the Estate halted, Miller had nothing to do—and no salary. He joined Olmsted in San Francisco.
A Clearing In The Distance: Frederick Law Olmsted and America in the 19th Cent Page 27
