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After being seriously injured in the mine collapse, Enon Lanfear and his family returned to Illinois.
The trip to California had been by a difficult and dangerous wagon train over the plains and mountains, but the return was by ship from California to the Panama Canal Zone, train across the 47-mile isthmus from the Pacific to the Atlantic, and another ship to New York. The date is still unclear, but it was approximately 1867 based on information supplied by Marshall McGraw, Archives and Special Collections Associate, Sonoma County History & Genealogy Library.
Their trip was before the Panama Canal was built. The railroad across the isthmus was opened on January 28, 1855. Construction between Aspinwall (later Colon) to Balboa had begun in August 1850. The work was plagued by tropical diseases, such as malaria and yellow fever. Heavy rainfall could raise the Chagras River by up to 32 feet. The summit in between the oceans had to be lowered. Pine used in construction disintegrated quickly. To build the railroad through the jungle was a gargantuan task.
Many of the people who had found gold in California returned to the East Coast this way. On a voyage of the ship called Cherokee, passengers carried $2,179,163 in gold.
Harvey Hanson was in California marveling at the majestic redwood forests only a few years after Lanfear found his gold mine near there. Harvey talked about the forest to his neighbors at Type, Annie and Louis Nelson. Harvey wasn’t able to take the shortcut through the Canal Zone. He was a Swedish seaman on a three-masted clipper-rigged bark on his seventh voyage around the world. For him and the ship to get to the Atlantic from California, the ship had to sail around the treacherous Cape Horn at the southern tip of South America. That voyage from California to New York would have been 8,000 nautical miles and months longer than crossing at Panama would have been. Of course, the canal wasn't built until 1914, almost a half century later. When Harvey's ship sailed around Cape Horn, they were caught in a storm and as many as 11 of his fellow sailors perished when they were washed overboard. That voyage was reason enough to leave the sea behind forever and to spend the rest of his life farming on the central Texas prairie.
When Enon Lansfear and his family arrived in New York, they traveled by train to his former home near Chicago. He wasn’t home long before his doctor advised him to seek a drier climate because of the serious damage the mine collapse had done to his lungs. They took a train to Austin, the farthest they could go by rail in the 1860s after the Civil War and before the H&TC Railroad was built through Elgin.
In the Austin area, they searched for a place to settle. They looked at Kerrville, but decided against it.
Then, a man named Kent showed them Hogeye/Young's Prairie, and they bought property from a Standifer son along what is now Monkey Road.
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. Charlene's writing will soon be available on her upcoming Patreon site.
