The Brewer party, 150 years later
Posted: Sat Jan 22, 2011 8:48 am
You know their names from the peaks: Brewer, Hoffmann, Gardiner, Cotter, Clarence King, Abbot, Gabb, and of course Whitney. 150 years ago, in late 1860, the field team of the California Geological Survey--led by William H. Brewer--started out on their 4-year, 14,000 mile journey around California. Which, of course, included some of the most important early exploration of the High Sierra.
Brewer described their travels in detail in his letters to family back east; these letters were later collected and published as Up and Down California. Brewer's letters form an extraordinary portrait of California at a pivotal moment: the gold rush over, everyone looking for (and promoting) the next boom, Secessionists and Unionists jockeying for control of the state, the best land tied up in hopeless legal tangles thanks to the Mexican land grants; the government bankrupt, the roads poor to non-existent, the transportation unreliable, disparate regions going their own way. Ten years after statehood, California was barely a state at all.
At Up and Down California, we're following Brewer's travels as they happen--posting excerpts from Brewer's account in real time (+150) along with present-day photos of the places Brewer describes. We won't get up to the Sierra until 2013, but for anyone who's interested in history, or California, or California history, there's plenty of fascinating material in the meantime. I hope you'll check it out.
Brewer described their travels in detail in his letters to family back east; these letters were later collected and published as Up and Down California. Brewer's letters form an extraordinary portrait of California at a pivotal moment: the gold rush over, everyone looking for (and promoting) the next boom, Secessionists and Unionists jockeying for control of the state, the best land tied up in hopeless legal tangles thanks to the Mexican land grants; the government bankrupt, the roads poor to non-existent, the transportation unreliable, disparate regions going their own way. Ten years after statehood, California was barely a state at all.
At Up and Down California, we're following Brewer's travels as they happen--posting excerpts from Brewer's account in real time (+150) along with present-day photos of the places Brewer describes. We won't get up to the Sierra until 2013, but for anyone who's interested in history, or California, or California history, there's plenty of fascinating material in the meantime. I hope you'll check it out.
)...and one of the reasons I started this is that I didn't see anybody doing anything to commemorate the 150th.