THE MINERAL KING ROAD CORRIDOR
Historic Points of Interest
The
first historic trails and roads into Kaweah Country were nothing
more than horse and cattle routes and primitive wagon traces.
There was almost no real construction to create them. Some
followed old Indian trails along the foothills and up the canyons.
Others were simply the markings of hooves and wagon wheels leading
from one place to another along the easiest route.
THE
WAY TO MINERAL KING
When
Hale Tharp rode into the Kaweah foothills, it was a cross-country
trip on horseback. Only after he and John Swanson brought a
small herd of cattle and built the first log cabin and barn
for their homestead did a wagon trace and trails begin to appear.
The first wagon route ran from Visalia to Horse Creek, and after
the rest of the Tharp family arrived in 1859, it gradually became
worn into a passable roadway. In the 1860s, other families
used it to settle on their own homesteads in the Three Rivers
area. As these new settlers arrived, the pathway extended with
branches to each inhabited property.
This
early trail and wagon trace crossed the Kaweah River several
times. Eventually foot bridges were built over some of the river
crossings to facilitate access to each other’s homes, especially
during the high water season. In 1869, an actual roadway was
constructed from Lemon Cove to Three Rivers. It crossed the
river at least six times. By 1873, this road had been extended
by James Pogue up to what became Power House No. 1, close to
what is now the entrance to the Mineral King road.
Nothing
lay beyond this road except a few stock trails until silver
was discovered in the Mineral King area in 1872. To facilitate
the rush of miners up the East Fork canyon, a wagon road was
begun by the Visalia and Inyo Wagon Road Company in 1873. It
was completed as far as the Bear Ranch and over the top of Red
Hill about 300 yards. In 1874, John Meadows and his crew continued
the route by building a trail on up the canyon. It continued
up the south side of the canyon to some point between Lake Canyon
and Lookout Point. There it crossed to the north side and joined
the Milk Ranch stock trail built in the 1860s by the Works brothers.
John Lovelace had extended that trail from his Milk Ranch range
up to Harry’s Bend and the new Meadows trail joined it somewhere
around Atwell’s Mill.
Throughout
the first mining rush of 1873 to 1875, this was the favored
route to Mineral King. Two other trails also were built to
the valley. One was via Hockett Meadows and Tar Gap. The other
was from Dillon’s Mill on the North Fork of the Tule River.
It ran up the Little Kern and over Farewell Gap, the route first
taken by Harry O’Farrell.
It
took a second mining boom in Mineral King to create a road all
the way into the valley. It 1878, Tom Fowler, a rancher and
politician in Tulare County, bought the Empire Mine. He created
the Empire Gold and Silver Mining Company, sent a crew of men
to work it, and bought a stamp mill in Grass Valley to crush
the ore. He needed a way to transport that mill and other mining
equipment up to the mines, and a stock trail would not do the
job. The Mineral King Wagon and Toll Road Company was formed
and in March of 1879, work was begun on its construction.
Once
again, the route was changed. Instead of continuing up the
south side of the canyon, it plunged to the East Fork River
and crossed the river over a bridge. It then climbed up the
north side of the canyon on the difficult River Hill Grade to
Oak Grove and on up the canyon into Mineral King. Its route
from Oak Grove up to the Mineral King Valley is essentially
the same one used today.
The
current lower route below Oak Grove was built in 1915. It was
carved along the lines of John Meadows' original stock trail,
but instead of continuing up the south side of the canyon to
Lookout Point, it crossed the Kaweah to the north side just
below Oak Grove.
Ownership
of the Mineral King Road has had a varied past. During the
inception of the first trails, the stock men considered the
right-of-way theirs. In 1873, permission was granted by Tulare
County for construction of the privately owned Visalia and Inyo
Wagon Road. In 1877, Tulare County took over the access road
from Visalia to Three Rivers, but the toll road and trail on
up the East Fork remained in private ownership. In 1879, a
new county franchise was granted to the Mineral King Wagon and
Toll Road Company to realign and complete the road into Mineral
King. The roadway remained a private enterprise for five years.
In 1882, Robert McKee was granted a deed to it as compensation
for his unpaid salary as toll gate keeper. Two years later,
McKee deeded the road to Tulare County for the sum of $1,573.
The
Mineral King road remained in county hands until portions of
it became part of Sequoia National Park in 1890. However, its
entire length was maintained by the county for over 50 years.
After Mineral King was included in Sequoia National Park in
1978, the National Park Service took over full management of
the roadway from the park boundary below Lookout Point into
the Mineral King Valley.
(CREDITS:
: "History of Three Rivers Roads", Mary Bronzan papers
on the history of Three Rivers; "Three Rivers Historical
Time Line", Tulare County Historical Library; letter to
Judge Wallace from Orland Barton, Aug. 22, 1905; various papers
from Tulare County files; The Way It Was by Annie Mitchell:
The Silver Rush at Mineral King by Samuel Thomas Porter;
Beulah: A Biography of the Mineral King Valley by Louise
Jackson. Compilation by Louise Jackson. Webmaster, Jillaina
Brown)
www.MineralKing.org: Last updated May 24, 2003
