Soledad Mines, Part I

I found an extensive article in my mother, Marion Deaver's files, about two sisters who traveled in 1970 to visit their old home, by then located at Tropico Mine and Gold Camp.

The two sisters were Viola White Jennings, from San Bernardino, and Marjorie, from Buena Park. When they first looked for their home at Soledad Mountain they thought it had been torn down, but later learned that it was located in Rosamond at the gold camp.

Visiting the old home and other old buildings at the camp brought back many memories from their childhood that they wrote down for the article and for the Kern Antelope Historical Society bulletin.

Jennings recalled that the White family moved from Los Angeles to the Soledad mining area near Mojave, in 1912. It was summer and her father took a job at the White Elephant Mine and worked as a hoist man, Jennings said.

He also helped run the mine for his friend John Withers, who with his partner Mr. Cudahy, had just opened the mine.

Jennings said that she and her family were "city bred" and were sure they would find a snake under each bed, or some other wild animal that would attack them, but they didn't.

"The evening was a balmy one and Mother opened all the windows in the house located near the Queen Esther Mine." Jennings said the wind kept slapping the shades on the windows and she and her sister could not sleep.

Jennings said she was 12 years old, her sister Marjorie 10, brother William 15, little sister Francis was 3 and the baby, Riley ("bud") was a year old when they came to Soledad.

In the summer time, the girls sat on the porch and played cards with the light from "heat lightening."

Jennings' mother was in poor health when they moved to the desert with stomach trouble.

An old miner told her to drink a tablespoon of peroxide in a glass of water twice a day, and she soon was better.

The family also rented a house nearby for the grandparents, Mr. and Mrs. Riley Williams. "Grandpa was a blacksmith," Jennings said, "and sharpened all the drills for the White Elephant Mine, working where he lived."

The mine prospered, and Jennings' father went to Mojave each week to ship one of more gold bars to the U.S. Mint.

Jennings remembered a Chinese cook who worked at the mine, his name was Charley. The girls liked to see him when they took their father lunch, because the cook always had a piece of cake or some other treat for them.

On their way to the mine they would stop and pick wild tomatoes and wildflowers for Charley. Jennings said she had never seen the wild tomatoes grow anywhere else, and thought maybe the Native Americans had planted them since they heard that they had a settlement there.

Christmas came and the girls got a croquet set. "After the snow melted we would carry the set over to where the Native American settlement had been and play the game, because the ground was hard and flat."

They started school in a little wooden cabin near the foot of the hill. "We went barefoot, and we loved that," Jennings noted. The other children who attended were the four Wegman children, four children from the Reel family, and the Williams family.

"My brother took the eighth grade twice because there was no high school nearby."

The teacher's first name was Lydia, but Jennings could not recall her last name. The Wegman children's father was the school superintendent and that made the other children jealous, because he thought his children were perfect.

"They were perfect," Jennings said, noting that they were devout Catholics, "They taught us the 'Holy Mary' and the 'Our Father' when we played school."

Jennings said they had many memories from life on Soledad, including one time when they ran into two rattlesnakes while taking their father his lunch. "It scared us stiff," she said, so they ran to the mine and got someone to come and kill them.

"That was the last time we got to take father his lunch, and we missed Charley. We played all over those hills and in the mines but never saw another snake."

Next column I will finish Jennings' tale, including stories of other miners who resided in the area.