CHAPTER XIV
About Millerton and its protecting appendage, Fort Miller, the first of these for a decade and a half after county organization, the social, political, governmental and population center, cluster most of the memories of the long ago. No more alluring natural spot than the fort site could have been selected. It was on the shelving, grass-grown, south bank of the river at one of the widest reaches, so that it was never in danger of flood such as twice visited Millerton, the last on a Christmas eve washing away nearly half the village and causing a property loss from which it never recovered. In that flood the water in the river rose a full twenty-four feet, maintained with little appreciable fall for as many hours. Fort site was a garden spot in spring and autumn, but in summer because in a pocket of sheltering, surrounding low hills, a perfect bake-oven.
Fort Miller was located at the highest practical point on the river, all things considered. Above it and Fine Gold Creek, the stream is impassable, rushing out of a mountainous precipitous gorge. It was to place it with.in easy reach of the hill country beyond, and especially to afford protection to the miners at Cassady's Bar, across the range and due east and south of the fort on the river bend, that the ancient trail, traversable to this day, was laid out across the hills back of the fort. At Millerton the river runs due east and west, the fort facing the stream to the north. Its northern edge was built up to and partly hung over the river bank in early days. It is not to say either that the river at the fort was always confined to the present bed. The fort is at the mouth of a long and serpentine ravine running far above and back into the foothills and mountains beyond.
The site was originally thickly covered with oak trees. These were felled for the logs in construction, as well as to leave a clearing as a military prerequisite. The fort enclosure was a quadrangle, surrounded by a stone and adobe wall, five or six feet high, and faced the river. From Millerton, the fort is not visible, the western view being shut of? by a rocky promontory which projects to the river bank about halfway between fort and village, which are a mile or more apart. The nearest courthouse cave-corner is barely discernible from the fort. The latter was not unlike many another.
The guardhouse was long ago razed, leaving only the rock-walled, iron-barred, ventilation-holed excavated dungeon. It stood at the northwest corner of the quadrangle and near it was presumably the main fort entrance from town. Facing the parade ground and at the upper edge, with the flag staff in the center, was the roomy, one-story headquarters and commandant's residence with veranda, and on the line to its left two smaller adobe officer's quarters. The parade ground was enclosed on the right by the long, low, wooden barracks shed and on the side backing the river were the stables and the quartermaster's department sheds in continuation of the barracks. In rear of headquarters, the sloping hillside was dotted by the post garden, the smithy, the bake-oven, powder magazine, the two-story, sunny hospital, and nearly on top of the hill spur the little post cemetery.
The ancient blockhouse, the oldest standing building in the county today, in the construction of which not a nail entered as the logs were dovetailed and mortised, stands outside of the quadrangle. A group of military and farm structures clustered on the blockhouse side at one time, so that the fort surroundings had the appearance of being quite a pretentious settlement. Blockhouse, standing now in solitude, is often overlooked by sightseeing visitors. Indeed many labor under the delusion that Millerton and fort site are one and the same thing, and that the courthouse was a jail instead of a general county government building, jail included in the basement.
The post had accommodations for a garrison of two cavalry troops or two batteries of artillery serving as infantry, with detachments in charge of light field pieces. Its military history is brief and comparatively speaking uneventful.
The kitchen addition to headquarters, and connected with, the dining room at the eastern angle, is a blockhouse of hewn timber, held in place by uprights and the interstices filled with mud to make solid walls. Under roof protection, the soundness and preservation of these oaken logs showing the marks of the hewer's ax are worthy of note. In the garden in the rear of headquarters are umbrageous and prolific orange trees, which in earlier days were a seven day's wonder, to see which people travelled miles. They were, so it is said, the first orange trees set out anywhere in the valley, this side of Stockton.
The blockhouse was erected in 1851 as a temporary defense in advance of the actual construction of the fort. At about the height that a man within would hold a rifle in the act of aiming the weapon on a rest, runs around the building a thick plank pierced with loopholes, each about a foot square.
All the habitable reservation structures have, in their day, been used as private dwellings, even to the barracks and hospital, for Millerton never had a building boom and accommodations for the visitor or newcomer were often at a premium. After abandonment of the fort it became the home of Judge C. A. Hart, was so occupied for years, and there he died. Having all been in almost continuous occupancy, fort buildings are fairly well preserved, though the boards protecting the adobe outside walls have been punctured by generations of wood-peckers for the storing of acorns. The blockhouse, sad to tell, is relegated to the base use of a cowshed.
The enclosing wall has long ago disappeared, so have the stables and quartermaster's sheds. The cemetery graves, with a few exceptions where no one came forward to make claim, were emptied long ago also, and the military dead removed to the national cemetery at the San Francisco Presidio on final evacuation of the fort. The disinterments were principally among the later graves in the newer portions of the cemetery nearest the fort buildings. The last exhumation was that of the remains of the old-time sheriff, J. S. Ashman. The grave of the little Stiddam girl is the only marked sepulch.er left in the burial ground — the rust eaten, iron fenced sunken grave of an infant. Frances E. Stiddam, who died October 21, 1861, and concerning whose kin all trace or knowledge has been lost.
The fort is used now as the farmhouse of the 14,000-acre cattle ranch, including townsite, of the W. H. McKenzie estate, taking in land on both sides of the river and in two counties as the San Joaquin is the boundary with Madera on the north.
THE PICTURESQUE WAS NOT LACKING
The picturesque was not lacking at Millerton in the mining days. Indians were a common-place sight in times of idling peace, to fill out the picture, what with one rancheria below the village and another on the bare bluffs on the other side of the river, facing the town. They begged for food, pilfered small things, did chores for money or a meal, or came to sell salmon speared in the stream, or small game snared or shot in the hillsides, while the squaw with papoose strapped on back in chokoni (canopied basket) came to barter her handiwork in beaded belts or moccasins, or woven reed baskets.
The rough and sun-blistered miner was of course very much in evidence in flaming red shirt, whatever the thermometer, heavy water-proof top-boots with pantaloons tucked in them, and ostentatiously displaying pistol and bowie knife in belt, whether arriving new comer with pack on burro looking for a prospect, or whether one already located and at the village with pack animals to stock up provisions, and never forgetting a goodly supply of aqua fortis for snakebites, or as a sovereign preventive against chills and colds as the result of working in the wet slush about rocker or cradle on river or creek bank.
The swarthy Sonoran was there in his wide sombrero, gaudy colored neckcloth and often in serape covering his shoulders, gliding about furtively because he was not always looked upon with favor. The meekest, most docile and unobtrusive was the blue-bloused, cow-hide booted, bowl-shaped, bamboo-hatted Chinaman, working over the tailings that others had abandoned after winnowing the surface "color." A few Chinese women there were also, and never did one amble down the village street from Chinatown at the upper end of it beyond the later courthouse but she attracted general notice, even admiration, for woman was yet a curiosity. And last but not least during the days of the fort occupation, there were the off-duty soldiers killing dull time and not looking the trim and natty men at arms as of the days long after the war. The Indians regarded them as veritable demi gods though, sober or not.
The arrival in dust cloud of freight team, mounted express or passenger stage was always an event that assembled the villagers. Steamers later