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Shannon Wray

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In June 1892, the Los Angeles Herald and the Los Angeles Times were at war. The cause of this conflict? Mount San Gorgonio. In an era when the Southern Pacific Railroad and other land speculators waxed poetic about sunny Southern California, what could be more exotic than a glacier? Yes, that's right, a fabled glacier on Mount San Gorgonio. As the Herald told it, "The existence of an active glacier in Southern California of such heroic proportions as to justify comparison with the minor continental glaciers of the Alps, Andes, and the Himalayas – in fact, the largest if not the only glacier in the confine of the United States – is one of the wonders which the inhabitants of this marvelous section, from a geological standpoint, can add to the local category of stupendous works in the economy of nature here to be found in sub-tropical California."

The story of their journey reads like a Jack London tale with travails and "impossible" terrain as they made their way to the headwaters of the Santa Ana River and across "The Devil's Slide" with a four-minute trip down a 1,500-foot shale field. When they arrived on the mountainside, they began their observations. "The snow at the crest of the gorge at the top of the mountain lay in strata, there being one deposit in an immense cup-like fissure, hundreds of feet in depth. On one side of this fissure, the strata are sharply defined, each representing the accumulation of a single year, the lowest and most dense approaching the blue color of ice."


Gus Knight

After more struggle to attain the 10,000-foot level suffering severe altitude sickness and awed exclamations over the immensity of the gorges filled with ice, the team reached the summit of the peak. "On reaching this point, the instrument indicated an elevation of 1302 feet." The expedition party made their slippery way down the mountain to an elevation noted by their aneroid barometer to be 10,000 feet at the great glacier's baseline, where they made a somewhat odd choice, hoping to find prehistoric fossils in the glacial mass. "A stick of giant powder was placed in a crevice and exploded, and immense fragments of ice and stone torn away, revealing ancient ice, of a dark blue color, almost verging into black. Tasting fragments of this old ice, they were found to be bitter, and permeated with a fine silt-like sand." Alas, however, no dinosaurs or giant mollusks. The team, flush with the excitement of discovery, made several pronouncements. First, they proclaimed that they discovered a glacier a mile long and two hundred feet in depth. They named it the Herald Glacier.

Next, they estimated that the ice moved at a rate of forty-seven feet per year. Viewing a small river at the base of the ice that disappeared a short distance away, the men also declared that the glacier was the source of a vast underground river that flowed to the Pacific. Finally, the explorers proclaimed the Herald Glacier the only glacier of its kind in the continental United States and a new wonder of the state of California. The party swiftly relayed their findings to the editor of the Herald. Such was his excitement that on June 15, 1892, he published the announcement of the Herald Glacier under the headline and sub-headlines: THE ONLY ONE! The Herald Finds a Glacier. An Ice River in Southern California. The Trip of the Herald's Exploring Party. A Mountain Gorge Packed With Snow and Ice. The Glacier Fully Two Hundred Feet Deep," etc.


Well, the Los Angeles Times had something to say about this story on June 29, 1892. The writer is identified only as "Neve," but the quality of his humor is akin to that of Mark Twain. The Times article was headlined: "A 'Times' Explorer Tells About That 'Glacier.' The Old-Time Mountaineers Call it a Snow Bank. There are Two of Them, Such as They Are, And They are Good Enough, What There is of Them. But as to a New Discovery, Oh, My!" The Times correspondent noted that in the blistering heat of a Southern California summer the idea of "a nice cool place where one can sit on a snowdrift during the day and lay wrapped in a sheet of ice at night," was a compelling one. "The Santa Ana country is just such a place as this, and also bears the distinguished honor of being possessed of a real live 'glacier.' (So the Herald says.) Having in aggregate spent two or three years in the region adjacent to Grayback, I may be able to write some items of interest about the 'glacial' region without bathing it in the reflected glare of a 'maiden' trip to the region of eternal snow. He goes on to talk about the two ways to get to Old Grayback. The choices were to take the new toll road to the mountains out of San Bernardino or the stage to Thurman's in Mill Creek Canyon where "steerage passage can be taken on the hurricane deck of a burro. Before the end of the first mile, you will understand why I say 'steerage.'" The writer takes on the Herald team's most startling assertion. "There are as many different opinions regarding the height of Grayback as there are lawyers in Los Angeles. The last trip I made up there, the aneroid marked about 9,000 feet at Dry Lake and 10,500 on top of Grayback. The Herald aneroid made it 13,02 and must be correct as the figures are so exact, but I am inclined to think that the aneroid was on a 'high lonesome.' The Government survey is said to be 11,500, and I am sure that I do not know how high the thing is." He goes on to say that it's a well-known fact that there is snow on Mount San Gorgonio pretty much every summer with two big snowbanks, one on the north side and one on the east side of the mountain. "The top of Grayback presents a vastly more interesting field of study to me than does the great 'glacier' which has been well-known so long under the nom de plume of 'snowbank.'" Descriptions of the Herald team's trek is flowery in the extreme. However, the deep love of a true mountaineer is in the language of the plain-spoken Times writer. "Usually there are snow banks on top of the peak, and in August 1888, there was a miniature lake in a small depression on the summit, and a big snowbank shoved its nose into the water at one side. The water was blue, although not more than a foot deep, and it was so cold that it was impossible to take more than a spoonful at a swallow. We saw the moon set in a sea of clouds and the sunrise (in a horn), and soon after the sun had risen and begun its reign, the clouds began their rain, so we gazed at the distant landscape, which looked like the famous painting of London in a fog. Then we descended, slid down a 'glacier,' only we did not know it was anything but a snowbank. I am so sorry that we did not know that it was a 'glacier,' which also might have been moving at the rate of forty-seven feet per annum. We could have camped on it, and by this time, we would have been quite a ways down the hill and wouldn't have had to walk as far as we did. Truly this life is made up of disappointments and trials. I have been up to the 'glacial regions' several times since, but I never knew what it was that lay so quietly in that deep cañon." Finally, the writer rounded off his comments in response to the Herald's great discovery with a joke that Mill Creek mountaineer Sylvanus Thurman copyrighted in 1888. "It is quite a job to mount Mt. Grayback, but I would rather climb half a dozen Graybacks than have one grayback climb me."

The Herald editor was hopping mad and wrote an editorial under the headline, "Denials Versus News." He fumed, "The editor of the Times is at his old tricks again. Whenever the Herald, as frequently happens, develops some matter of important news exclusively, the provincial contemporary, on temporarily recovering from the blow, immediately proceeds to an indulgence in vehement denials of the authenticity of the news exploited in the columns of its more enterprising and energetic contemporary, the Herald. In this manner, it seeks to lull its readers into a state of paresisical somnolence and square itself for lack of energy by general denials. When the Herald exclusively published the news of the discovery of the

Sylvanus Thurman

Salton Sea, when the whole country outside of the Times office discussed this phenomenon of the desert, the Times glibly persisted in denying its existence until the master of the establishment returned and gave the "force" a shaking up for blindly ignoring a palpable news item of national importance. Again, when the Herald exclusively let the light in on the comprehensive plans of the Southern Pacific at Santa Monica, including the construction of an immense pier at the mouth of the cañon, they again pursued the policy of denial, and ridiculed the whole matter as a wild vagary of reportorial imagination. Now comes the third denial."


It's interesting to see how time and history sort out controversies. One hundred and twenty-eight years later, we know that the Salton Sea does exist, and a giant pier stands in the sea at Santa Monica. Now, we seldom see deep snow in the summer on Old Grayback.


The Los Angeles Herald, founded in 1873 and purchased by William Randolph Hearst in 1922, merged with the Examiner in 1962. At one time, it was the largest circulation newspaper in the U.S. On November 2, 1989, it officially ceased publication. The Los Angeles Times, founded in 1881, continues to publish the daily news.


Copyright 2020, Shannon E. Wray. All Rights Reserved. No reprints in whole or part without permission.

www.shannonwray.com

Writer's pictureShannon Wray

Updated: Dec 21, 2020

Shannon Wray

Author


In June 1901, the few residents of Mill Creek Canyon and some campers were terrified. Something wild and strange was moving around at night and sometimes glimpsed during the day. No one knew what it was, but Dave Wixom, a San Bernardino firefighter who had a small ranch in the canyon, called in Constable Koehler from Redlands to investigate. Koehler and a posse spent a few days tracking what some people had started calling a wild man, someone more animal than human. Ladies were particularly distressed by this naked apparition.


It was reported that "It appears that Frank Satello's mind has become unbalanced and he has peculiar hallucinations, and as his mind wanders, he visits Heaven and then takes a drop to Hades, where His Satanic Majesty rules. Yesterday while seated in the sheriff's office waiting to be taken to the County Hospital where he is to be held until examined for insanity, he became quite talkative and commenced to tell how Heaven looks. He described the beautiful driveways, the green trees, and the general appearance of the place, and then spoke of the people.

'I saw my mother and father in Heaven,' said Satello. 'All the people up there are small except Jesus Christ, and he is a great big gray whiskered man.'

To change the subject, Sheriff Rouse asked Satello if he had ever been in hell.

'Oh yes,' said Satello, 'I just came from there.'

'Well, did you see anybody you knew?' asked Sheriff Rouse.

And just here comes the interesting part of the story. Satello thought for a moment over the sheriff's question and then said: 'Why, yes, I saw George Brazelton and Charlie Martin there. George pulled me out of a pot of fire,' Satello kept a straight face, but the crowd laughed."


Charlie Martin, who owned the section of land where Angelus Oaks, California is now, ran for a time with the McHaney Gang, (the full story of the McHaney Gang is in Pioneers of Mill Creek Canyon) and was tried for the murder of a miner named Frank James but got off on a self-defense plea. He did time in prison for other crimes, and perhaps not too ironically became Chief of Police in San Bernardino in 1917.


Copyright 2020, Shannon E. Wray. All Rights Reserved. No reprints in whole or part without permission.

www.shannonwray.com

Writer's pictureShannon Wray

Updated: Dec 21, 2020

Shannon Wray

Author


Mill Creek Canyon in the San Bernardino Mountains of Southern California is one of the most dangerous places to live in the state. Catastrophic floods, rock and mudslides, avalanches, earthquakes, fires, and a deadly waterfall frequently feature in headlines. But it is also a uniquely beautiful and hidden corner of California.


Situated near Mount San Gorgonio, the highest peak in the southern part of the state at 11,503 feet, the canyon also boasts Southern California's highest year-round waterfall. Many seasonal waterfalls also grace the 12-mile length of the dead-end box canyon.


This small, beautiful valley was also the scene of many firsts in the history of the lower part of the state. Before the 1830s, the construction of most sailing ships on the Southern California coast was with salvaged materials from shipwrecks. Trapper William Wolfskill arrived in California in 1831 via the Old Spanish Trail and decided to hunt otter along the coastline. During the summer of that year, he and a crew went to Mill Creek Canyon to cut and saw lumber for a schooner. Abundant, quality timber was available there at lower elevations than elsewhere. His ship, El Refugio, was the first ship built with virgin timber in the southland to sail the coast. The canyon's tall pines figured in another first in July 1847 at the close of the Mexican-American War. A detachment of soldiers traveled from Fort Moore in Los Angeles to Mill Creek Canyon to cut two trees and haul them back to the fort. There, the soldiers fashioned the trees into a 100-foot flagpole, lashing them together with rawhide. They raised the Stars and Stripes on that pole for the first time over Los Angeles during their July 4th celebration. Notably, Mill Creek, which flows down the canyon's center, powered the very first sawmill. It was built in the 1840s and milled oak casks for French vintner Jean-Louise Vignes' famed El Aliso winery in the Pueblo de Los Angeles. However, Mill Creek's greatest fame is the generation of the world's first three-phase AC power transmission on September 7, 1893, for the Redlands Light and Power Company. Three-phase AC power continues to light much of our world.


Copyright 2020, Shannon E. Wray. All Rights Reserved. No reprints in whole or part without permission.

www.shannonwray.com

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