"The first mining camp on White River was Dogtown, about a mile and a half south of State Registered Landmark Number 413." -- Annie Mitchell
Coyote Hole Mine
“Almost every kind of mining was tried around here except hydraulic mining. At first, it was panning or sluicing. Then shafts and tunnels proved successful tho [sic] dangerous. Coyote mining was probably the most dangerous of any type. The need for water was recognized early and the White River Ditch Company was organized in 1857.” -- Annie Mitchell
10-Stamp Mill
“[The miners] soon found that this field was not a shovel and pan operation. Gold was here, but in quartz, buried in deep veins, and arrastras and stamp mills would be needed. The smaller streams dried up in the summer and sluicing was impossible unless dams and ditches were built. Thousands left, no richer than when they came.” -- Annie Mitchell
“[U]using an arrastra to crush the ore and separate out the gold . . . was . . . primitive . . . but effective. . . . Arrastras were much used around Tailholt as late as the ‘90s at the Eclipse Mine.” -- Ina H. Stiner
“For several years, most of the supplies for the new camp [White River] were brought in from Stockton by bull teams. It took three weeks to make the trip, with a relay of bulls along the line. . . . At that time, Porterville was only a trading post, and it was cheaper to go to Stockton than to trade with Royal Porter Putnam. ” -- Fred Guthree
Tailholt Saloon Interior
"Tailholt (White River) prospered, and miners, merchants, farmers, stockmen and teamsters made a good living. Over a million dollars in gold was mined out." -- Annie Mitchell
Tailholt/White River c. 1888
“Once there were enough people here to support 2 stores, a hotel, 2 boarding houses, blacksmith shop, saloon, 4 quartz mills, a school, livery stable, justice of the peace, constable, Sunday school, post office, literary society, . . . and a baseball team.” -- Annie Mitchell
Tailholt Schoolhouse
“The schoolhouse [built in 1874] served as a center for town affairs. Church services were held there by traveling preachers like Parson Dooley of Woody . . . Tailholt [also] had its own specialty – a singing school . . .” -- Ina H. Stiner
Hunting Party c. 1890 by Mitchell Store
"Life in White River had both its problems and delights. Drunkenness; fights; acts of discrimination and prejudice against Chinese and indigenous miners and workers; lack of doctors during a decimating diphtheria epidemic in 1877; and occasional destructive fires. But there were also dances, a baseball team, fraternal organizations, hunting parties, school programs, traveling ministers, picnics, and school programs." -- Annie Mitchell
“The drouths of the late 70s were hard on the miners as well as the farmers. Also, so much livestock died that the very air was poisoned and an epidemic of diphtheria swept Tailholt in 1877. Twelve children died, among them the two daughters of the Mitchell family. The most pathetic case was the Clinton Biggs family, where all of their five children died.” -- Ina H. Stiner
“With the 80s came wetter years: and mining at Tailholt revived: the period from 1884 to 1902 being given in statistics as the most productive years of White River mines ($70,000 in 1884).” -- Ina H. Stiner
New Dance Hall
“In the 90s a literary society was formed and plays were given. . . . In this way and the miners giving dances, money was raised and a hall built. They had been taking up the benches in the school house, but three times a year or so used a barn for dances. The new hall was 80 by 40 feet and . . . in quadrille dancing the floor would be filled . . .” -- Ina H. Stiner
"When the price of gold went down around 1900, the mines were closed. Tailholt gradually became a ghost town." -- Annie Mitchell
“One [White River cemetery] is on a hillside on the north side of the river. Natural deaths are buried there. The bodies were placed in a whipsawed pine box from lumber that came from the Jack Ranch area.” -- Fred Guthree
“The second cemetery is on top of a small hill south and across the river. Men who died with their boots on are buried there. They were rolled in blankets and buried without a box. . . ” -- Fred Guthree
Gold Prospector at Work, 1940
“During the depression of the 1930s many people came back and worked the tailings from the old mines and could pan out $3 or $4 a day and live.” -- Annie Mitchell
"In 1949 some three thousand people came to Tailholt to dedicate a memorial marker." Placed by the California Centennial Commission, with a base furnished by the Tulare County Historical Society, it was dedicated May 15, 1949. -- Annie Mitchell
Photos for this article by: Laile DeSilvesto, John Greening, Louise Jackson, and Laurie Schwaller; and courtesy of Bear State Books, Debe (Mrs. Mike) Mitchell photos and Mrs. Fanny Dent photo in Frank F. Latta, Tailholt Tales, 1976; findagrave,com; Alan Hensher, Into a Land Unknown: A Report on the Rush to the Kern River and Eastern California, Vol I:1854-1860, map of routes to the Southern Mines by C.A. Paul; Huntington Library Digital Collection/OAC, Frederic Monsen photo, 1900; Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division, John C.H. Grabrill Collection, Russell Lee photograph, Frederic Remington artwork; Oakland Museum of California, John Andrew artwork, 1856, public domain; Public Domain, artwork by L.C. McClure, 1850, and by Allen Carter Redwood, 1890; San Joaquin Valley Library System, Porterville Public Library, Local History Room/OAC; Tulare County Historical Society, Los Tulares #85, Debe Mitchell photo, Jeff Edwards Collection; Tulare County Library, Annie R. Mitchell History Room, Annie Mitchell files, Jeff Edwards Collection/Edwards Studio, and Strathmore Slide Collection; Tulare County Resource Management Agency; U.S. Postal Service, Weyle and Barber photo, ca. 1900; UC Berkeley, Bancroft Library, Robert B. Honeyman Jr. Collection/Online Archive of California; Wellcome Collection, Richard Tennant Cooper artwork, 1912, public domain
Key to Numbered Buildings in Photo to Right, Tailholt c. 1888
TAILHOLT
Environment: Foothills, traces of old mining town, California Historical Landmark #413 Activities: biking, birding, history, photography, picnicking (no facilities available) Open:Year-round, daily, for viewing and photography (no facilities). NOTE: Except for the highways, this is all private land; do not explore beyond the roadway without permission. Site Steward: Except for the highways, this is all private land Books: 1) Sites to See-Historical Landmarks in Tulare County, by Annie Mitchell (Panorama West Books, 1983) 2) Tailholt Tales, by Frank F. Latta (Brewer's Historical Press, 1976) 3) The Way It Was, by Annie Mitchell (Valley Publishers, 1976) 4) Into a Land Unknown: A Report on the Push to the Kern River and Eastern California, Volume 1: 1854-1860, by Alan Hensher (Alan Hensher Books, 2002) Directions: Map and directions are at the bottom of this page.
History:
Tailholt -- the Road to White River
by Louise Jackson
The old foothill stage road to White River hasn’t changed much in one hundred seventy years. It is paved now and widened a bit, but still winds like a writhing snake through the green and golden foothills of the southern Sierra Nevada. Miles stretch without a building in sight.
In the early 1800s, current Tulare County’s south borderlands were a virtual wilderness. There was little to draw settlers to the dry, summer-scorched area; only a few isolated Yokuts families and renegade outlaws called the southern Sierra foothills their home.
Even California’s 1848 gold rush passed the area by. The Forty-niners who followed an ancient Indian, Spanish, and emigrant trail north from Los Angeles through California’s Central Valley were intent on reaching the American River diggings 400 miles away. If any of the travelers saw possible mineral prospects on the hillsides or in the gulches and streams they crossed, they seem to have ignored them on their flight to more certain riches. But that would change.
As the easy pickings of the northern California placer mines played out, a few of the prospectors began heading back south, down the old Spanish trail, newly designated the Stockton-Los Angeles Road. Where it veered east to avoid the marshlands of immense Tulare Lake, they crossed the Kaweah, Tule, White, Poso, and Kern rivers and some paused to explore the foothill waters of each stream.
Few of their efforts bore fruit until, in 1853, De Witt Clinton Biggs and Andrew J. Maltby made a significant gold strike near White River. David James also claimed he had found gold farther south in the Greenhorn area. Then in spring of 1854, major finds of placer gold were discovered on Kern River.
As word spread, thousands of miners rushed south, and some stopped at White River. When they found placer gold in the river’s waters, a rough camp sprang up that they called Dog Town. It wasn’t long before the seasonal river dried and the easy river pickings gave out, but there were good finds in the dry hillside gulches of the White River Mining District. Finds that required significant investments, big mining equipment, and a good wagon road to haul it on.
California’s roadways were untidy affairs in the 1800s. They zigged and zagged around property lines, avoided ditches, led to private ferry river crossings, connected farms and ranches and were the lifelines of small towns. In the foothills, they also avoided cliffs and gulches, skirted granite outcroppings, curved around giant oak trees, and rose and fell at the whim of the mounded landscape; and they detoured or branched to every active mining district.
The road to White River was no different. It headed as directly as possible for the mining district, by-passing the shanties of Dog Town. Undaunted, almost overnight, a core of serious miners moved upstream to the road and set up a more permanent settlement that sported real houses, saloons, and a store. They gave it the name of Tailholt.
The name is shrouded in mystery. Passed down through generations, several stories have emerged. One claims the term originated as an identifying direction to the town’s original cabin where a miner (or the town’s first female occupant) had hung a cow’s tail on the front door to pull for entry. Another says it was in honor of an early miner who always took his faithful cow to town with him so he could hang on to her tail while she led him home from a hard-drinking night at one of the saloons. Yet another was of a screaming lady stage passenger grabbing the tail of her little dog when it jumped out of the stage, and the driver yelling back to her, “Get a good tail holt and hang on until I can help you!” Whatever the story, a general saying emerged that “a good tailholt is better than no holt at all.”
Life in the extensive White River mining district was somewhat primitive in the early 1850s. Although Tulare County had been formed in 1852, White River didn’t get its own voting district, justice of the peace, or constable until 1855. The mining processes were limited, too, with the major digs still using the South American arrastra or a small stamp mill to crush the ore and separate out the gold. Gradually, stores, hotels, saloons, a church, and two graveyards dotted the hills.
By 1862, Tailholt was a thriving community of perhaps 1,000 to 3,000 souls, and when an official post office was established that year, store owner and hotel keeper Levi Mitchell chose the more dignified name of White River for its postmark. It was a name the growing community could be proud of. But it was basically a one-purpose town, away from any major commercial route with little to sustain it beyond mining. This circumstance came from a decision made five years earlier.
After California achieved statehood in 1850, the need for good connections to the rest of the nation became paramount. Congress immediately set up a national overland mail service to the west coast, but it was a fragmented system and it could take months for a letter to arrive. So, in 1857, the government issued a $600,000 permit to John Butterfield for development of a 2,700 mile-long transcontinental stagecoach service that would deliver semi-weekly mail service to 139 stations along the route.
Speed, not passenger service or community connections, was the main criterion. The service began on September 15, 1858, and its route through Tulare County followed some of the old foothill road to Kern River. But it by-passed the foothill towns of White River and Woody to follow the more direct Los Angeles-Stockton route lower down. Gradually, the populations along the old Stage Road to the Kern diminished. Only during droughts and depressions did the mines see much activity through the years.
By the late 1890s and early 1900s, the town of White River had become a small rural hamlet whose citizens valued the preservation of the area’s history and uniqueness, even petitioning the county in 1903 for the creation of a local fish and game preserve.
Today, as we take the Old Stage Road to White River, we are following a drive through history: from the prehistoric route of what became the Los Angeles-Stockton and then Butterfield Road; along the 1854 miners’ foothill wagon road; to the remnants of the town of White River. Drive slowly, take a picnic lunch, relax and enjoy as side trips along the way and the continuing road to Woody and Posey beckon. It will be a day through rural California history to remember.
What to see in Tailholt/White River:
Visitors can still find intriguing traces of the old boom town, signed by a Tulare County Historical Marker: a couple of short dirt roadways leading off the well-maintained Old Stage Coach Road, sites and remnants of a few old buildings; a tall tombstone in the graveyard on the hill north of the road; some small tunnels; a smattering of rock tailings; and the remains of a reverberatory furnace—all sitting on private land. (Permission to explore can depend on the local residents.)
November, 2019
MAP AND DIRECTIONS:
DIRECTIONS: From Visalia, take Hwy. 198 east to Hwy. 65 south to Porterville. Exit east on Teapot Dome Avenue (Avenue 128), then turn right (south) onto Road 264. At Avenue 116, go left (south) onto Old Stage Road toward Fountain Springs. Stop there, at the junction with Avenue 56 (J22) and Hot Springs Drive, to read the historical markers about local landmarks and history. (Note that the actual Fountain Springs was about 1.5 miles northwest of this intersection; the junction of the Stockton-Los Angeles Road and the old road to the Kern and White River mines was there.) Then continue south on Old Stage Road (M109) to White River and the Tailholt State Historical Landmark.
Just after you cross the bridge over White River, scan the hill to the north until you see the white monument standing in the old "respectable" graveyard. Road M-12 goes south from Old Stage Road near the bridge. To see the unmarked and unmaintained site of the old Boot Hill cemetery, go just past the cattle guard on M-12 and look along the fence line climbing the hill to your right. The cemetery lies about 3/4 of the way up the hill.
Alternate Routes: Follow Hwy. 65 south from Porterville to Terra Bella and take Avenue 96 east to Old Stage Road south. Or follow Hwy. 65 south from Porterville to Ducor and take Avenue 56 (J22) east to Fountain Springs and Old Stage Road south.