“...we did not even know
that we were in California.”

John Bidwell
           
John Bidwell beat the rush.
           
In 1841, John Bidwell was a participant in what is generally considered to be the first American caravan to travel from the Missouri River to California.  When the California Gold Rush began in 1848, Bidwell was already established in the Gold Country.  He would become one of the most important citizens in the new state that would emerge.
           
John Bidwell was born in New York in August 1819.  Over the next ten years, he lived in Pennsylvania and Ohio.  In 1839, Bidwell moved to Missouri and began his life in the West.  Supporting himself as a teacher, he took up a land claim in Weston, Missouri.  For two years, Bidwell’s life was routine.  Then, during a short absence from his land, claim jumpers seized his property.  Now landless, lacking prospects, and disenchanted with his employment, Bidwell was favorably impressed by the stories of California wonderment spun by a visiting French trapper.  He decided to seek his fortune in the what seemed to be paradise.
           
In May 1841, John Bidwell joined a wagon party of sixty-nine emigrants heading to California.  Jumping off at Independence, Missouri, the party remained intact until reaching Fort Hall, in present-day Idaho.  There, the expedition split, with half going to Oregon, and Bidwell’s portion remaining on the California route.
           
In November 1841, Bidwell’s party, now numbering thirty-two, arrived I California, after a difficult, often treacherous, journey.  Bidwell would soon find employment as clerk with John Sutter at Sutter’s new fort in New Helvetia, today’s Sacramento.  While cool to the Bear Flag Revolt of 1846, Bidwell served enthusiastically for the American forces during the Mexican War of 1846-1848, achieving the rank of major.  Following the war, Bidwell briefly returned to Sutter’s employ.  However, after the 1848 discovery of gold, he turned to prospecting.  John Bidwell found gold on the banks of the Feather River at a location still known as Bidwell’s Bar.
           
With the shiny metal in his pocket, Bidwell abandoned mining and turned to farming.  In 1849, he acquired the 22,000-acre Rancho Chico in the northern Sacramento Valley.  Bidwell instantly became one of California’s largest landowners.  Through diligence and innovation, he also assumed a respected role in the state’s agricultural production.
           
Prominent and secure, Bidwell showed an increasing interest in the Golden State’s political development.  In 1849, he was elected to California’s first state legislature.  Originally a Democrat, but switching allegiance to the Republican Party during the Civil War, Bidwell was appointed commanding general of the California Militia during the conflict.  In 1864, Bidwell was elected to Congress.  In 1875, Bidwell unsuccessfully sought the governor’s post in California.   In the 1890s, John Bidwell strongly supported the reformist Prohibition Party.  He was that party’s 1890 candidate for governor and the 1892 candidate for President of the United States.
           
Firmly established in the booming town of Chico, John Bidwell became a Sacramento Valley magnet for the powerful  and celebrated.  Among the visitors to Bidwell’s sumptuous mansion were President Rutherford Hayes, General William Tecumseh Sherman, Susan B. Anthony, Frances Willard, Leland Stanford, John Muir, and Asa Gray.
           
Beginning in 1889, Bidwell began to serially publish his memoirs in the The Century Magazine.  Collected and published in book form in 1890 as Echoes of the Past About California, Bidwell presented a description of his journey to California and his subsequent activities in the state’s early days.
           
John Bidwell died in April 1900 at the age of 80.
           
In this passage from his book, John Bidwell describes his arrival in California and the stories o the fearless Jimmy Johns, Bidwell’s discovery of a giant tree stump, and the huge and mysterious pile of horsebones.  It is a tale of three emotions common to the western traveler -- admiration, astonishment, and anxiety.

 

We were now in what is at present Nevada, and probably within forty miles of the present boundary of California.  We ascended the mountain on the north side of Walker River to the summit, and then struck a stream running west which proved to be the extreme source of the Stanislaus River. We followed it down for several days and finally came to where a branch ran into it, each forming a canon. The main river flowed in a precipitous gorge, in places apparently a mile deep, and the gorge that came into it was but little less formidable. At night we found our- selves on the extreme point of the promontory between the two, very tired, and with neither grass nor water. We had to stay there that night. Early the next morning two men went down to see if it would be possible to get down through the smaller canon. I was one of them, Jimmy Johns was the other. Benjamin Kelsey, who had shown himself expert in finding the way, was now, without any election, still recognized as leader, as he had been during the absence of Bartleson. A party also went back to see how far we should have to go around before we could pass over the tributary canon. The understanding was that when we went down the canon if it was practicable to get through we were to fire a gun so that all could follow; but if not, we were not to fire, even if we saw game. When Jimmy and I got down about three-quarters of a mile I came to the conclusion that it was impossible to get through and said to him, "Jimmy, we might as well go back; we can't go here." "Yes, we can," said he, and insisting that we could, he pulled out a pistol and fired.
           
It was an old dragoon pistol, and reverberated like a cannon. I hurried back to tell the company not to come down, but before I reached them the captain and his party had started. I explained, and warned them that they could not get down; but they went on as far as they could go and then were obliged to stay all day and all night to rest the animals, and had to go among the rocks and pick a little grass for them, and go down to the stream through a terrible place in the canon to bring water up in cups and camp kettles, and some of the men in their boots, to pour down the animals' throats in order to keep them from perishing. Finally, four of them pulling and four pushing a mule, they man- aged to get them up one by one, and then carried all the things up again on their backs -not an easy job for exhausted men.
           
In some way, nobody knows how, Jimmy got through that canon and into the Sacramento Valley. He had a horse with him-an Indian horse that was bought in the Rocky Mountains, and which could come as near climbing a tree as any horse I ever knew. Jimmy was a character. Of all men I have ever known I think he was the most fearless; he had the bravery of a bulldog. He was not seen for two months-until he was found at Sutter's, afterwards known as Sutter's Fort, now Sacramento City.
           
We went on, traveling as near west as we could. When we killed our last ox we shot and ate crows or anything we could kill, and one man shot a wildcat. We could eat any- thing. One day in the morning I went ahead, on foot of course, to see if I could kill some- thing, it being understood that the company would keep on as near west as possible and find a practicable road. I followed an Indian trail down into the canon, meeting many Indians on the way up. They did not molest me, but I did not quite like their looks. I went about ten miles down the canon, and then began to think it time to strike north to intersect the trail of the company going west. A most difficult time I had scaling the precipice. Once I threw my gun ahead of me, being unable to hold it and climb, and then was in despair lest I could not get up where it was, but finally I did barely manage to do so, and make my way north. As the darkness came on I was obliged to look down and feel with my feet, lest I should pass over the trail of the party without seeing it. just at dark I came to an immense fallen tree and tried to go around the top, but the place was too brushy, so I went around the butt, which seemed to me to be about twenty or twenty- five feet above my head. This I suppose to have been one of the fallen trees in the Calaveras Grove of sequoia gigantea or mammoth trees, as I have since been there, and to my own satisfaction identified the lay of the land and the tree. Hence I concluded that I must have been the first white man who ever saw sequoia gigantea, of which I told Fremont when he came to California in 1845. 

Of course sleep was impossible, for I had neither blanket nor coat, and burned or froze alternately as I turned from one side to the other before the small fire which I had built, until morning, when I started eastward to intersect the trail, thinking the company had turned north. But I traveled until noon and found no trail; then striking south, I came to the camp which I had left the previous morning.
           
The party had gone, but not where they said they would go; for they had taken the same trail I followed into the canon, and had gone up the south side, which they had found so steep that many of the poor animals could not climb it and had to be left. When I arrived, the Indians were there cutting the horses to pieces and carrying off the meat. My situation, alone among strange Indians killing our poor horses, was by no means comfortable. Afterwards we found that these Indians were always at war with the Californians. They were known as the Horse Thief Indians, and lived chiefly on horse flesh; they had been in the habit of raiding the ranches even to the very coast, driving away horses by the hundreds into the mountains to eat. That night I overtook the party in camp.
           
A day or two later we came to a place where there was a great quantity of horse bones, and we did not know what it meant; we thought that an army must have perished there. They were, of course, horses that the Indians had driven in and slaughtered. A few nights later, fearing depredations, we concluded to stand guard-all but one man, who would not. So we let his two horses roam where they pleased. In the morning they could not be found. A few miles away we came to a village; the Indians had fled, but we found the horses killed and some of the meat roasting on a fire.
           
We were now on the edge of the San Joaquin Valley, but we did not know we were even in California.  We could see a range of mountains lying to the west-the Coast Range-but we could see no valley. The evening of the day we started down into the valley we were very tired, and when night came our party was strung along for three or four miles, and every man slept where darkness overtook him. He would take off his saddle for a pillow and turn his horse or mule loose, if he had one. His animal would be too poor to walk away, and in the morning he would find him, usually within fifty feet. The jaded horses nearly perished with hunger and fatigue. When we overtook the foremost of the party the next morning we found they had come to a pond of water, and one of them had killed a fat coyote. When I came up it was all eaten except the lights and the wind- pipe, on which I made my breakfast.
           
From that camp we saw timber to the north of us, evidently bordering a stream running west. It turned out to be the stream that we had followed down in the mountains -the Stanislaus River. As soon as we came in sight of the bottom land of the stream we saw an abundance of antelopes and sandhill cranes. We killed two of each the first evening. Wild grapes also abounded. The next day we killed fifteen deer and antelopes, jerked the meat, and got ready to go on, all except the captain's mess of seven or eight, who decided to stay there and lay in meat enough to last them into California. We were really almost down to tidewater, and did not know it. Some thought it was five hundred miles yet to California. But all thought we had to cross at least that range of mountains in sight to the west before entering the promised land, and how many beyond no man could tell. Nearly all thought it best to press on lest snows might overtake us in the mountains before us, as they had already nearly done on the mountains behind us (the Sierra Nevadas). It was now about the first of November. Our party set forth bearing northwest, aiming for a seeming gap north of a high mountain in the chain to the west of us. That mountain we found to be Mount Diablo. At night the Indians attacked the captain's camp and stole all their animals, which were the best in the company, and the next day the men had to overtake us with just what they could carry in their hands.
           
The next day, judging from the timber we saw, we concluded there was a river to the west. So two men went ahead to see if they could find a trail or a crossing. The timber proved to be along what is now known as the San Joaquin River. We sent two men on ahead to spy out the country. At night one of them returned, saying they came across an Indian on horseback without a saddle, who wore a cloth jacket but no other clothing. From what they could understand the Indian knew Mr. Marsh and had offered to guide them to his place. He plainly said "Marsh," and of course we supposed it was the Dr. Marsh before referred to who had written the letter to a friend in Jackson County, Missouri, and so it proved. One man went with the Indian to Marsh's ranch and the other came back to tell us what he had done, with the suggestion that we should go and cross the river (San Joaquin) at the place to which the trail was leading. In that way we found ourselves two days later at Dr. Marsh's ranch, and there we learned that we were really in California and our journey at an end. After six months we had now arrived at the first settlement in California, November 4, 1841.

 

Image Captions

Bidwell – 1850 – John Bidwell, c.1850

Bidwell Store – The earliest known image of Bidwell’s Chico Rancheria Store and Post Office, c. 1852.  Bidwell is the tall man with the top hat in the center of the picture.

Bidwell Mansion 1939 – The Bidwell Mansion in Chico, California, in 1939. Bidwell Mansion State Historic Park is a beautiful, three story, 26 room Victorian House Museum that stands as a memorial to John and Annie Bidwell. The Bidwells used the Mansion extensively for entertainment of friends. Some of the guests that visited Bidwell Mansion were President Rutherford B. Hayes, General William T. Sherman, Susan B. Anthony, Frances Willard, Governor Stanford, John Muir, and Asa Gray.

Bidwell Mansion – The Bidwell Mansion today.

Bidwell Park Chico – Bidwell Park was established July 20, 1905 through the donation by Annie Bidwell of approximately 2,500 acres of land to the City of Chico. Since that time, the City has purchased additional land, such as Cedar Grove in 1922, and 1,200 acres of land south of Big Chico Creek in Upper Park in 1995. Today, the total Park size is 3,670 acres (nearly 11 miles in length), making it one of the largest municipal parks in the United States.  This image shows the park entrance in 1939.

Bidwell --  Annie and John Bidwell on a hunting expedition in the Sierra Nevada c. 1890.

Bidwells – Annie and John Bidwell on the grounds of their mansion c. 1890.

Bidwell – Sutter deed – An 1848 document detailing the purchase by John Bidwell of lots owned by John Sutter in the Sutterville.  Bidwell paid one dollar per lot.

 

Credits

Images from the Bidwell Mansion State Historic Park; the Eastman Collection of the University of California, Davis; the California State Library, Sacramento; and the Online Archive of California at http://www.oac.cdlib.org/