Early daytrips included Raymond to Wawona

Mountain Moments

By Dwight Barnes

(Updated: Wednesday, May 07, 2008, 6:21 PM)

Pages copied from a tour guide entitled "Yo Semite Valley and the Big Trees of California" not only describe the colorful scenery along the stage route from Raymond to Wawona, but also adds a bit of historical mystery about one of the stops.

Published in 1894, the small pocket size booklet was one of several crafted by San Francisco travel promoter J. M. Hutchings. In it, Hutchings takes the prospective traveler on a trip from Raymond to Wawona on a horse-drawn stage stopping at Grub Gulch, King's Gulch and Ahwahnee.

The mystery is in King's Gulch. For present day historians, this is an unknown name for an unknown town and there is little clue as to its location. Furthermore, if Hutchings quote is accurate -- and there is no reason to think he is anything but -- it means that an early effort to transmit electrical energy some four miles distance took place along the Fresno River 114 years ago. Hutchings description of King's Gulch declares:

"Here a rich quartz lode is being very profitably worked by electricity. The plant for the electric power is down on the Fresno River, some four miles distant, where the subtile force is generated and then transmitted to the King's Gulch mill. The stage tarries here for a few minutes for the purpose of allowing passengers to examine the modus operandi of gold mining by electricity." Hutchings' words came just one just one year after completion one of the first long distance transmission electrical energy anywhere in the nation. It had been in 1893 that the Standard Company built a generating plant near Bridgeport and transported the energy 12.5 miles to operate a stamp mill in the historic mining town of Bodie. After all, generation of electrical energy still was a new thing. It had only been in 1888 that Nikola Tesla had first demonstrated the use of alternating power needed for transmission of electricity.

About three miles below Ahwahnee on the Fresno River, rancher, retired forester and historian Larry Ballew says there is the foundation of an old power plant on his property between Grub Gulch Road (600) and the Fresno River. The river had been diverted through a tunnel "big enough to drive a Cadillac through" to operate the generators.

If this is the site of the powerhouse, where was the mining operation located? Ballew says that name King's Gulch is new to him.

Hutchings only hint is that it is between Grub Gulch and Ahwahnee where the stage stopped for lunch and the countryside was one with valley oaks dotting the landscape.

Who was the king for which the mining operation was named? Where was it located? What happened to the mill? Why did this early transmission of electrical energy go unrecorded for posterity? (Next week we will look at Hutchings' colorful description of the landscape and towns along the stage route.)