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"Enon Lanfear had a good paying gold mine, but it caved in and he was badly crushed — ribs broken and lungs punctured," according to his grandson, Dr. Vincent Wesley Lanfear.
The Lanfear gold mine, called a gold occurrence, was in Plumas County, California, near Spring Garden at an elevation of 4,800 feet. It's now in the Plumas National Forest. Plumas means feather in Spanish and it takes its name from the river by that name.
The park is large at 146,000 acres. It’s at the northern terminus of the Sierra Nevada Mountains with craggy peaks and dramatic canyons. The majestic trees include Douglas firs, sugar pines, incense cedars, ponderosa pines, quaking aspens and more. Groves of giant sequoias, the largest trees in the world, occur on the western side of the Sierra Nevada.
The Sierra Nevada mountain range runs north to south for 400 miles in northeastern California and into western Nevada. The name is Spanish meaning Snowy Mountain Range. It lies just south of the Cascade Range that includes Mount Lassen, an active volcano.
Argentine Rock is a 7,185 foot summit in the area.
Enon’s gold was a lode beneath the earth's surface. According to http://www.history.howstuffworks.com, miners like Lanfear had to drill a shaft, or an adit, into the ground to get to the ore. Then, they had to dig long vertical tunnels known as stopes that extend from the top of the ore block to the bottom. After this, they had to drill and load explosives into the ore block and detonate the explosives. This caused the broken ore to fall to the bottom of the stope where it was gathered and taken to the surface. Gold that is found on the surface is called placer gold. Normally found in deposits or lodes, weathering and erosion by rivers has carried fine gold nuggets away from the original deposit.
Enon's son, John Wesley Lanfear, was born in 1856. Frank Eugene was born in 1859 in Bodega, California, and Izora Lanfear was born in 1861. Bodega Bay is on the rugged and picturesque Sonoma Coast 68 miles north of San Francisco.
In 1860, the family lived in the Smith Ranch Community in Sonoma County.
Benicia, in the area, was the capitol of California for 13 months in 1854 and 1855.
It isn't clear where Lanfear and Coopwood met, but both of them lived in California before they became partners in the camel venture in Texas. Coopwood, born in 1827, was a native of Lawrence County, Alabama. His father, David Coopwood, was an early settler, planter and slave holder there. Bethel Coopwood came to Texas in 1846 and served in the war against Mexico. In 1857, he and two brothers left Texas for California, and he settled in San Bernardino in the Los Angeles area. He became a lawyer, married and had good paying clients. He and his brothers returned to Texas in 1861, and Coopwood served in the Confederate Army until 1863. He led the San Elizario Spy Company serving in the latter part of the ill-fated Sibley New Mexico Campaign. He was ill with smallpox during the Battle of Valverde. After the Civil War and fluent in Spanish, he lived and worked in Coahuila, Mexico, for a year after which he returned to Texas. He was an author, a judge, a historian and partner of Enon Lanfear in a camel venture in Hogeye.
The next article will describe the Lanfear family’s return to the East Coast by ship occasioned by Enon Lanfear’s injury in the mine collapse.
Charlene Hanson Jordan wrote the above narrative as part of her weekly column. Her newest book, “Notes & Recollections, Post Oak Island & Elgin, Texas,” is available at the Elgin Depot Museum where exhibits, photographs and books on local history are also available. The museum is open on Fridays and Saturdays from noon to 4 p.m. Watch for notices. Every Thursday from 4 to 7 p.m, “Notes & Recollections” may be purchased from the Niswanders at the Elgin Farmers Market in Veterans Memorial Park. The book is also available at the Elgin Courier office, 105 N. Main St. in Elgin or 512-285-3333 during business hours all week, or from Charlene directly at [email protected] or 512-856-2562.
