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Road Trip August 2008 The Old Caspar Mill

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Caspar was first settled in 1857 by by German farmer Siegfried Caspar, who later sold the land to Jacob Green Jackson, one of the founders of the Caspar Lumber Company, which turned Caspar into a significant logging town in Northern California. Today, there is not much left of this past glory. Only some remnants of the old mill can still be found at the mouth of Caspar Creek.

Here is what local writer and environmentalist Richard H. Tooker once wrote about the mill and the little town it belonged to:

"As a lumber company, it was large enough to last over 90 years in the business, but small enough to be owned by one family. It was large enough to be a typical redwood lumbering operation, but small enough to be the subject of a comprehensive photographic documentary. It was large enough to run a logging railroad with a variety of motive power, but small enough to depend on water transportation to get the lumber to market. As a town, Caspar was small enough to be taken in almost at a glance. Yet it was large enough to have a brick building for the company store and office (one that survived the 1906 earthquake), and to have a church, its pastor being the best-known minister on the coast. It was small enough to be hard to find on the map, but large enough to be well known on the banks of the Ottawa River(a number of Canadians settled in Caspar). And as a seaport it wasn't overlooked. It was smaller than a port like Fort Bragg, but larger than the usual coastal landing. And Caspar ships usually had a home guard as the backbone of the crew. One of these crewmen during the first decade of this century was Caspar Charlie Carlson. Captain Charles Carlson summed it all up for me one evening during his last years: "Caspar meant so much to me in my memory that in later years as I ran up and down the coast as a captain, I always blew the whistle when we passed the place, no matter what time of day or night it was. I didn't care what anybody thought: that's just how I felt about it." The steamship Caspar being loaded from the headlands via the wire chute. Passengers embarked by the same means, riding in the "Pullman" visible at right. Photo by Richard Tooker Collection © National Maritime Museum The March 1939 National Geographic celebrated the completion of the Golden Gate bridge and the opening of the area of California north of the Golden Gate to exploration by automobile. Prior to that time, roads into the area were crude or non-existent, and most folks traveled by dog-hole schooner or, later, steamer.

Caspar lumber mill around 1890 The mill crew in 1904 Photo by Miles Brothers © National Maritime Museum The Mill in 1938 Photo by B. Anthony Stewart © 1939 National Geographic Society The "big splash" is the result of a log hitting the millpond after sliding down the chute.

The mill is only a mile away from the town of Caspar and the house where Judy was born. Click the left turn signal to return to the start page or the right turn signal to move on to Judy's first house in Caspar. XXXXXXXXXXXXXX

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