Passing Strange (50 page)

 

CHAPTER 2: KING OF THE WEST

1
W. W. Bailey, “Clarence King,”
Hartford Courant,
Jan. 3, 1902, 14.

2
King’s orders reproduced in Goetzmann,
Exploration and Empire,
437.

3
Quoted in R. W. Raymond, “Biographical Notice of Clarence King,”
Transactions of the American Institute of Mining Engineers
33 (1902) (New York: Published by the Institute, 1903): 631.

4
S. F. Emmons, “Clarence King,”
American Journal of Science
(March 1920): 224.

5
Raymond, “Biographical Notice,” in Hague,
Memoirs,
335.

6
[ JTG], “Clarence King’s Boyhood,” 2, King Papers, HEH. Humphreys had directed the Office of Pacific Railroad Surveys in the 1850s.

7
Wilkins,
King,
101-2. “Provided, That the same can be done out of existing appropriations,”
U.S. Statutes at Large
14 (1867): 457. Renewed by
U.S. Statutes at Large
15 (1869): 318, which authorized the secretary of war to have prepared and published reports on the results of the Fortieth Parallel survey. Citations courtesy of Clifford M. Nelson.

8
Hague, “Memorabilia,” in Hague,
Memoirs,
385.

9
Goetzmann,
Exploration and Empire,
433-35. For more on O’Sullivan, see Joel Snyder,
American Frontiers: The Photographs of Timothy O’Sullivan, 1867-1874
(Millerton, NY: Aperture, 1981); Robin Kelsey,
Archive Style: Photographs & Illustrations for U.S. Surveys, 1850-1890
(Berkeley: University of California Press, 2007); Rick Dingus,
The Photographic Artifacts of Timothy O’Sullivan
(Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1982).

10
Wilkins,
King,
103.

11
On the stability of King’s staff versus the staff of the competing federal surveys of the period, see Clifford M. Nelson and Mary C. Rabbitt, “The Role of Clarence King in the Advancement of Geology in the Public Service, 1867-1881,” in
Frontiers of Geological Exploration of Western North America,
ed. Alan E. Leviton et al. (San Francisco: American Association for the Advancement of Science, 1982), 31-32.

12
General background information on the so-called Great Surveys can be found in Goetzmann,
Exploration and Empire,
and Richard A. Bartlett,
Great Surveys of the American West
(Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1962). Bartlett revisited the history of the surveys in his “Scientific Exploration of the American West, 1865-1900,” in
North American Exploration,
vol. 3,
A Continent Comprehended,
ed. John Logan Allen (Lincoln and London: University of Nebraska Press, 1997), 461-520.

13
See Nelson and Rabbitt, “The Role of Clarence King,” in Leviton,
Frontiers of Geological Exploration
; Clifford M. Nelson, “Toward a Reliable Geologic Map of the United States, 1803-1893,” in
Surveying the Record: North American Scientific Exploration to 1930,
ed. Edward C. Carter II (Philadelphia: Memoirs of the American Philosophical Society, 1999, vol. 231), 51-74.

14
JTG to mother, 2 Mar. 1867, Gardiner Collection, NYSL.

15
Wilkins,
King,
104-5.

16
William Whitman Bailey, “To California with Clarence King” [memoir recounting 1867 trip], 23, HM 39965, HEH.

17
Charles Loring Brace,
The New West, or California in 1867-1868
(New York: G. P. Putnam, 1869), 14-15.

18
Ibid., 15-16.

19
Wilkins,
King,
106-9.

20
Hague, “Memorabilia,” in Hague,
Memoirs,
391.

21
Raymond, “Biographical Notice,” in Hague,
Memoirs,
345-46.

22
George C. Parke to CK, 31 Aug. 1868, reproduced in Moore,
King of the 40th Parallel,
335.

23
Hague, “Memorabilia,” in Hague,
Memoirs,
392.

24
Raymond, “Biographical Notice,” in Hague,
Memoirs,
346.

25
Hague, “Memorabilia,” in Hague,
Memoirs,
392.

26
See the entries for James Marryatt, 1880 U.S. Federal Census, City of San Francisco, County of San Francisco, SD 1, ED 14, 54,
http://content.ancestrylibrary.com/iexec/?ht
x=View& r=5542 & dbid = 6742 & iid = CAT9_73-0 098 & fn = James & ln = Ma rr yat t & st= r& ss rc=&pid=43567686, and James Marryatt, 1880 U.S. Federal Census, Town of Eureka, County of Eureka, Nevada, SD 81, ED 16, 66,
http://content.ancestrylibrary.com/iexec/default.aspx?htx=View&r=5542&dbid=6742&iid=NVT9_758-0417&fn=Jas.&ln=Marryatt&st=r&ssrc=&
pid= 43459628 (accessed Jan. 10, 2007).

27
See the entry for Florence Marryatt, 1880 U.S. Federal Census, City of San Francisco, County of San Francisco, SD 1, ED 14, 54,
http://content.ancestrylibrary.com/iexec/?
ht x = View& r = 5542 & dbid= 6742 & iid= CAT9 _ 73 - 0098 & f n = Florence& l n = Marryatt &st=r&ssrc=&pid=14356364 (accessed Jan. 10, 2007).

28
Clarence King,
First Annual Report of the United States Geological Survey
(Washington, DC, 1880), 4, cited in Wilkins,
King,
117-18.

29
“Clarence King’s Boyhood,” 8-9, King Papers, HEH. This is Emmons’s piece of the manuscript.

30
CK to James D. Hague in J. D. Hague, “Clarence King’s Notes for My Biographical Sketch of Him . . . ,” box 1, A1, King Papers, HEH.

31
JTG to mother, 26 Dec. 1867, Gardiner Collection, NYSL.

32
On the intense male friendships so characteristic of mid-nineteenth-century American life, see E. Anthony Rotundo,
American Manhood: Transformation in Masculinity from the Revolution to the Modern Era
(New York: Basic Books, 1993), esp. chap. 4.

33
JTG to mother, 26 Dec. 1867, Gardiner Collection, NYSL.

34
Mark Twain, “Letters from Washington,” no. 9,
Daily Territorial Enterprise,
Mar. 7, 1868. On Twain’s time in Nevada, see Effie Mona Mack,
Mark Twain in Nevada
(New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1947).

35
“Lively,”
Daily Territorial Enterprise,
May 7, 1868, 3.

36
The Virginia City
Daily Territorial Enterprise
documents the community’s rich social life.

37
S. F. Emmons, Diary, 1 Jan. 1868, box 1, S. F. Emmons Papers, LC; William Whitman Bailey, “Diary of a Journey in California and Nevada (1867-68),” 2 Jan. 1868, New York Botanical Garden Library.

38
Bailey, “Diary of a Journey,” 3 Dec. 1867, New York Botanical Garden Library.

39
JTG to mother, 26 Dec. 1867, Gardiner Collection, NYSL.

40
Wilkins,
King,
120.

41
See the entries for January and February in Emmons, Diary 1868, box 1, S. F. Emmons Papers, LC.

42
Emmons, Diary, 13 Apr. 1868, box 1, S. F. Emmons Papers, LC.

43
CK to William Brewer, 10 June 1868, group 100, series 1, box 4, folder 100, Brewer Papers, Yale.

44
Ibid., 27 Aug. 1868.

45
“Married,” Virginia City
Daily Territorial Enterprise,
Sept. 8, 1868, 2. J. W. Rogers, in whose home the wedding occurred, is identified as Josephine’s father in 1860 U.S. Federal Census, Township of Downieville, Sierra County, CA, 94. The 1870 census identifies J. W. Rogers as a mining engineer in Grass Valley, CA.

46
Emmons, Diary, 7 Sept. 1868, box 1, S. F. Emmons Papers, LC.

47
Ibid., 4 Dec. 1868.

48
Clarence King, “Misc. Notes 1869” [leather-bound daily diary], D17, King Papers, HEH.

49
Ibid., entry for May 24.

50
JTG to mother, 16 July 1869, Gardiner Collection, NYSL, cited in Moore,
King of the 40th Parallel,
192. Harry Herbert Crosby asserts without documentation in “So Deep a Trail: A Biography of Clarence King” (Ph.D. diss., Stanford University, 1953, 146) that King brought Dean back to Newport in the fall of 1869 to meet his mother. As Gardiner’s letter suggests, however, any meeting happened well before that. No record of it survives.

51
Hague, “Memorabilia,” in Hague,
Memoirs,
413. I’ve been unable to find any trace of Ellen Dean in the census records or to trace her subsequent fate.

52
FKH to JTG, 2 Apr. 1869, Gardiner Collection, NYSL.

53
See the entry for Florence K. Howland, 1870 U.S. Federal Census, Third Ward, City of Newport, Newport County, RI, 30-31.

54
FKH to JTG, 2 Apr. 1869, Gardiner Collection, NYSL.

55
Ibid.

56
CK to George Jarvis Brush, 7 Apr. 1869, cited in Wilkins,
King,
132.

57
King, “Misc. Notes 1869,” entry for May 19, King Papers, HEH.

58
CK to Mr. Davis, 9 Apr. 1880, quoted in Patricia O’Toole,
The Five of Hearts: An Intimate Portrait of Henry Adams and His Friends
(New York: Clarkson N. Potter 1990 ; New York: Ballantine Books, 1991), 31. Citations are to the Ballantine edition.

59
J. D. Hague, with geological contributions by Clarence King,
Mining Industry,
vol. 3,
Report of the U.S. Geological Exploration of the Fortieth Parallel
(Washington, DC: GPO, 1870). The Fortieth Parallel survey’s eight volumes and two atlases make up
Professional Papers of the Engineer Department, U.S. Army, No. 18.
They are cited in
USGS Bulletin
222 (1904).

60
Wilkins,
King,
139-40 ; Bartlett,
Great Surveys,
179.

61
CK to Humphreys, 10 Oct. 1870, King Survey Letter Book (R.G. 57, National Archives), cited in Wilkins,
King,
143.

62
Wilkins,
King,
55-56, 143-47.

63
Ibid., 147-48.

64
CK to Whitelaw Reid, 29 Jan. [1879], reel 153, Whitelaw Reid Papers, Ms. Div., LC.

65
Wilkins,
King,
148.

66
CK to James T. Fields, 24 Feb. 1871, tipped into CK,
Mountaineering in the Sierra Nevada
(Boston: James R. Osgood, 1872), copy held in Special Collections and Archives, Frost Library, Amherst College.

67
[Clarence King],
The Three Lakes: Marian, Lall, Jan, and How They Were Named
(n.p., Christmas 1870). Reproduced in Francis P. Farquhar, “An Introduction to Clarence King’s ‘The Three Lakes,’ ”
Sierra Club Bulletin
24 (June 1939): 109-19.

68
Wilkins,
King,
154-55. He triumphantly reached his goal, or so he thought. Back in San Francisco later he rechecked his barometric reading and to his embarrassment discovered that in the dark and swirling clouds he had surmounted a peak a few hundred feet lower than the true summit. Two years later he returned and rectified his mistake, but by then he could not claim to be the first white man to stand on the great mountain’s peak.

69
Adams,
Education,
311. David Dickason suggests that Adams and King actually met very briefly, a few weeks prior, in early July when they crossed paths in a Cheyenne dining room, as King headed back east. See David H. Dickason, “Henry Adams and Clarence King: The Record of a Friendship,”
New England Quarterly
17, no. 2 (June 1944): 231-32.

70
Adams,
Education,
309.

71
Ibid., 311-12.

72
Ibid., 312.

73
Ibid., 311.

74
Ibid., 312, 313.

75
Ibid., 313.

76
Cheyenne Sun,
Oct. 24, 1877, cited in Wilkins,
King,
231. On King’s involvement with the ranching industry, see ibid., 230-42, and Bronson,
Reminiscences,
28-30 and passim
.
In Cheyenne, King put up some $8,380 of his own money to form a partnership with his former field assistant N. R. Davis. Davis would manage the ranching operations, while King would be a hands-off partner. Over the next decade, the industry thrived, and King not only set up his secretary, Edgar Beecher Bronson, with a ranch but drew in his friends as investors. Emmons and Gardiner put up money, as did King’s New York associates Congressman Abram S. Hewitt and Edward Cooper, the mayor of New York City. Only an occasional visitor to Wyoming, King nonetheless took pleasure in the paid-up membership that Bronson and Davis maintained for him at the elite Cheyenne Club. In 1877 the editor of the
Cheyenne Sun
imagined that King might become a real rancher: “We could not see why he should not grow up with the country and become one of Wyoming’s cattle kings.” When King finally sold off his ranching shares in 1882, he reaped some $120,000 (the equivalent of more than $2 million today).

77
Moore,
King of the 40th Parallel,
221.

78
Wilkins,
King,
167-70 ; Bronson,
Reminiscences,
326.

79
Henry Adams, “King,” in Hague,
Memoirs,
172.

80
“Mountaineering in the Sierra Nevada,”
New York Times,
Mar. 14, 1872, 2.

81
[ JTG], “Clarence King’s Boyhood,” 8, King Papers, HEH.

82
Ibid.

83
King,
Mountaineering,
293.

84
Ibid., 293-94.

85
Ibid., 100.

86
Ibid., 165.

87
Clarence King, “The Biographers of Lincoln,”
Century Illustrated Magazine
32 (Oct. 1866): 861.

88
King,
Mountaineering,
122-23.

89
Ibid., 122.