Yeomet - Calaveras, Amador, or El Dorado County?
It has been reported that Yeomet is in Calaveras, Amador, or El Dorado County at different times, and it is true. Yeomet means "sounding rock" and is the Native American Maida and/or Miwok name for a waterfall located near the present day California Route 49 crossing of the Cosumnes River by the confluence of the North Fork and Middle Fork of the Cosumnes River. Yeomet refers to both the original Indian "Sounding Rock" and to a mining town just south of a bridge located about 1 mile upstream from the Indian location. Today the Consumnes river divides El Dorado and Amador county, so Yeomet sits in both counties. Prior to 1853, Amador county was part of Calaveras county, so Yeomet was accurately described in all three counties depending on the time frame and the side of the river. Today the nearest landmark is the Nashville Store and a trailer park very near the site of the old bridge.
Sounding Rock:
"Falls on the Cosumnes." Daily Evening Herald, 26 October 1853, col. 2 col 3.
Notes: vol 4, no 69 Abstract: (from Placerville Herald) "About a mile below the forks of the Cosumnes there is one
of the most magnificent water-falls in this state... This spot is called by the Indians
'Yomet' or sounding rock where a sound given is echoed and returned ten different times."
The "forks" is about Lat.38^33"24" by Lon. 120^50'51"
via Google Earth.
The "Ghost Town": Here is the story of YEOMET as described in The Ghost Towns of Amador by John Andrews, 1967- my edition is the Valley Publishers, Fresno CA 1978
"It is difficult to comprehend how a town-of the size that the old records assert occupied this space-could have been squeezed into the scant dimensions at the bottom of the gorge formed by the confluence of the north and middle forks of the Cosumnes and Big Indian Creek. The large mercantile establishments of Simpson Beebee &Co., Broman and Co. and others handling all kinds of merchandise were housed in the usual masonry structures, massive in form,
iron-doored and iron-shuttered of window, and constituted a solidly built downtown area. This whole space was attached and ground sluiced, as returns from the outlying gulches diminished. They buildings were demolished and their footings worked to a depth of many feet.
The printed page makes reference to a large Mexican population in the mid-fifties, and of a sticky period of great tension and stress at a time just subsequesnt to the Rancheria massacre and the ensuing riots and disorders. Fortunately, very few overt acts of violence are reported and the tensions were gradually lessened.
In a sort of incongrous balance or counterpoise, we are informed that the other population group was composed in a large part of miners from Pennsylvania and mainly from the area of Pittsburgh. They were said to be struck by the fancied resemblance of the place to the confluence of the Alleghany and the Monangahela, where the Ohio takes its begining. Their imaginations must have really been working overtime if this be so. Were any of them around now it would be most interesting to see where they would park even a scale model of the Golden Triangle.
The town Yeomet is asserted to be taken from the Miwok toungue and is, by translation, rocky falls, this in reference to the up-stream rapids of the Cosumnes. This must have been the extreme northern extension of the Miwok language and culture, as by all anthropoligists' reckonings the Consumnes is placed as the line of demarcation between Miwok and Maidu.
Of this town we have left just one thing: a cemetery. When last seen it was quite impressive in its live oak shaded isolation at the bottom of the canyon. A perimeter wall of cut, neatly fitted and mortared stone, topped by lacy black English ironwork, gives it definition and aptness. The marking gravestones are in good taste and charming in their quiet simplicity. Some date back to the fifties but a surprising number are in the 1870's and 1880's and many of them bear the crest of the Masonic Order. Even at this period of time, which is far back in our thinking, the town, as such, had long since ceased to be.
This illustrates a practice that is by no means abandoned right in our time. These old cemeteries outlived their towns and many of them are still in use. Many persons, then and now, and doubtless will in the future, express a wish which is often carried out, that their mortal remains return to the good earth of the scene of their trials, triumphs, and tribulations.
Within the decade ahead the Nashville Dam is scheduled to be built just below the confluence of the streams. The cemetery will of course be moved to higher ground. Its site and that of the town will be the most deeply immersed of any to which this fate has been assigned. At low water it will be more than four hundred feet down".
From: carolyn feroben Funfifty@pacbell.net
The Huse Bridge:
Isolate1852 Huse, * Yeomet, California, USA (Cosumnes River) E.P. Bowman
Use: Vehicular, Status: Removed, Main cables: Wire (iron)
Yeomet was located near the present day California Route 49 crossing of the Cosumnes River by the confluence of the North Fork and Middle Fork of the Cosumnes River. Yeomet was once known as "Forks of the Cosumnes." The location coordinates provided here are only to show the approximate location of the confluence and should not be considered the exact location of the bridge. This inventory entry represents the suspension bridge for which a photograph exists in the Lawrence & Houseworth collection titled "Suspension Bridge over the Cosumnes River, At Yeomet, El Dorado County". This image exists in several online archives. The clearest image I have found exists in the California Pioneers archive. Reviewing all of the information bites available for 1850's suspension bridges over the Cosumnes River, there were likely more than one suspension bridge.
Barry Parr, consulting Erwin Gudde’s California Gold Camps (University of California Press), writes that Gudde notes the bridge is located "at Yeomet and says it was marked on the County Map in 1866, and was owned by S.E. Huse for a decade.
Of Yeomet, Gudde writes: 'Amador County. At the junction of the forks of Cosumnes River, formerly in El Dorado County'. Gudde says the camp developed in 1849 or 1850 and prospered for a number of years, but says nothing further about the bridge." Barry also notes that some sources cite Yeomet as located in Calaveras County, but this is because Amador County was created in 1854 from Calaveras County. Barry continues: "The California Division of Mines Bulletin 141, Geological Guidebook along Highway 49, mentions the Highway 49 bridge across the Cosumnes as also known as the Huse Bridge."
The October 14, 1976 edition of The Mountain Democrat Times (Placerville, California) has an article about the Huse Bridge (from the Heritage Association of El Dorado) describing Huse's Bridge:
+ "E.P. Bowman, an early motel keeper in Yeomet had a ferry across the Cosumnes and by 1852 had built a bridge there (J.M. Watrous had a ferry there also). Traffic was heavy and... [the tolls were] as much a 'gold mine' as most of the nearby river claims which ran for miles above and below the town. (Yeomet falls was below the bridge). The famous Mother Lode crossed the river in the vicinity of the town. Samuel Huse bought the bridge at Yeomet in about 1862 and owned it until his death. His widow Laura sold the wire suspension bridge and the exclusive right to collect tolls to John Ballard and W.H. Martin in 1883. William Miller purchased the property in 1887."
It is unclear if the 1852 E.P. Bowman bridge was the same structure as the suspension bridge purchased by Huse ten years later, but I have assumed so pending additional information.
o An obituary for in the August 28, 1949 edition of the Oakland Tribune for Lilian Williams presents a stronger tie between E.P. Bowman and S.E. Huse: "With her foster parents, the E. P. Bowmans, Mrs. Williams spent her childhood in Oakland, San Francisco and Yeomet, between Plymouth and Placerville. Bowman and her foster uncle, S.E. Huse, owned a hotel at Yeomet. They also built and operated a toll bridge there on the Cosumnes River, over which most of the heavy machinery and mining equipment was transported to the old Mother Lode mines."
o See 1852 Wilson's - Cosumne, California, USA.
Hamrick McMurry's family history:
Yeomet was in Calaveras County, but its 'site' is now in Amador County. There are other sources which list Yeomet in El Dorado also. I am attempting to compile information on Yeomet in order to document if this is the gold mining camp my Pioneer family came to in 1850, when they originally arrived in California by covered wagon, their story is extremely captivating. In my great great aunt Cosumnes California Hamrick McMurry's family history, called, The McMurry Family it states that "Cosumnes was born on the fork of two branches of the Cosumnes River, in 1850." And in my cousin Harold Hamrick's manuscript entitled, "The Hamrick Family History" it states that "they settled in a little mining camp on the Cosumnes River." When I asked my 83 year old aunt if she knew where her great grandparents lived she said on "the forks of the Cosumnes River."
Yeomet is either Miwok or Maidu language, and in 1853 was known as "Forks of the Cosumnes River" and called so by anyone nearby. The name Yeomet does mean 'sounding rock' and was called so for the upstream waterfall. At one time a dam was proposed, the Nashville Dam, and it would of obliterated this area, so one should still be able to locate the old cemetery and maybe the ghost of an old 49'er.
Hamrick Family History
link.
If you know anything about Yeomet, please contact me, so that I can include the information on this website.
Jill O'Neall Ching
To all California Gold Country Researchers:
I am interested in the now gone town of Yeomet. Yeomet was a Native American village, perhaps Miwok?, on the bank of 2 branches of the Cosumnes River, and in 1850 was a bustling gold mining camp. Anyone know anything else about Yeomet?
All that was left in the 1960's was a cemetery, and then some dam flooded the area, and it is now underwater? Is this true? Which dam? Where did they move the cemetery? Perhaps it was north of Amador and Jackson Valley.
Is there any chance that anyone has records of this place, Yeomet? Or a cemetery listing? In my cousins book it says my pioneer family came to nearby Amador in 1850 and "on the banks of 2 forks of the Cosumnes River" my aunt Cosumnes California Hamrick was born, almost the minute they arrived, November 1, 1850. Her little sister Sarah is my 2nd great grandmother. And it says they lived in a mining camp which had been near an "indian village".
The family had a newborn and 2 toddlers with them in 1850 in this place, you would think someone would have written that fact down somewhere, in a diary or such. The children were called Jimed, (James) Vina, (Lavina) and little Cosy(Cosumnes). I am trying to figure out where they lived, which camp near which Native American village?
If that place is not Yeomet, then where did they live? Anyone know enough about the Gold Country, north of Amador to have an educated guess?
Query asked by Jill O'Neall Ching Here are some of the answers I received: "In the book. "Historic Spots in California," by Mildred Brooke Hoover, Hero Eugene Rensch, Ethel Grace Rensch, William N. Abeloe and Revised by Douglas E. Kyle. Printed 1995. This is the Fourth Edition and was originally revised and printed 1990. This book originally was printed in three volumes. The Southern Counties (1932), Valley and Sierra Counties (1933) and Counties of the Coast Range (1937). Yeomet is mentioned under Plymouth.
"In the Northern part of Amador County numerous minning camps were located on the Consumnes River and it's branches................"The richest location in the district was situated on the river bar on the main forks of the Consumnes, and was called by the Indian name Yeomet."
It was located four or five miles north of Plymouth which was largely known for the quartz mining."
From--Betty Reeves rbr@inreach.com
Jill:
Yeomet is in Calaveras Co. See my page at:
Calaveras County Web You will find the text citation there.
Good hunting,
Lewis
From: Alden Tagg artagg@woodside.k12.ca.us
California Gold Camps, 1975, E G and E K Gudde, Univ of Calif Press, page 379 says,
"Yeomet(Amador Co.) At the junction of the forks of the Cosumnes River, formerly in El Dorado County."
According to Hutchings Magazine(II,p208) the name is derived from the waterfalls which are a half mile downstream called yomet, 'sounding rock' by the Indians. The place was also known as Forks of the Cosumnes and as Saratoga. The camp developed in 1849 or 1850 and prospered for a number of years Knight's Scrapbooks,I, p.91;
El Dorado County History,1883,p.198). From 1854 to 1861 it had a post office with the name spelled Yornet. A number of mines and mills are shown in the vicinity on the Amador County Map of 1866. See Huse Bridge."
Page 165, "Huse Bridge (Amador County) At the confluence of the North and Middle Forks of Cosumnes River; on the site of Yeomet.
Shown on the County Map 1866. It was named for S E Huse, the proprietor of the bridge for a decade (El Dorado Co. Hist,1883,p.199)
Shown on the Placerville 1931 quadrangle."
Name Yeomet is not on the USGS/GNIS CDROM. Is this because it was buried by lake water?
More information from Alden:
In my previous message on the Yeomet subject I referred to the Official Amador County map. I gave the wrong date for it -it should have been 1866. That perhaps tells why it shows Yeomet and the Huse Suspension Bridge. By the time of the USGS Placerville map, Yeomet was gone. The Fiddletown map I referred to was the USGS 7.5' quadrangle map, dated 1949, updated 1973 and originally from photos made 1946 and field checked 1949.
My guess of the way things are now is that Highway 49, ex-Placerville Road has been moved a little. Hwy 49 now crosses the Cosumnes River immediately south of Big Indian Creek which would be about 0.2mile south of the Huse Bridge location. The Huse Bridge would have been immediately below the confluence of the two branches. The town would have been south of the Huse Bridge, north of the creek, east of the Cosumnes and west of the hills. Highway 49 is now west of the river at this location, whereas the Placerville Road seems to have been east of the river. It would be fun to poke around there. The Huse Bridge location and maybe even some of the town might be findable. Where is the cemetery?
I looked in my copy of Logan's Alley by Larry Cenotto and found a description of Yeomet in Volume II.
Page 142 states " You cross the Cosumnes on the highway 49 bridge, gently curve northeasterly along the El Dorado side of the river, and speed by the spot where the north and the middle forks join, and Indian creek enters 300 yards below.............Circa 1881, historian Jesse D. Mason wrote, ' Some of the cabins built in 1850 maintain a tottering standing, with the aid of props and braces. Inside you may see gold pan and pick as of yore, but the men, weary and worn with a quarter century of unsuccessful search for gold, seem waiting for the last act of the play.......' The earliest account of the place the writer has seen is Jeddo's, appearing in the October 12, 1853 issue of the Placerville Herald........the place was 'Forks of the Cosumnes' or Saratoga Village as it is now being called. He and later observers agreed that the camp was not only naturally beautiful but tastefully beautified by the residents and merchants there with trees, fences, shrubs and fountains."
The article in Logan's Alley also relates that the name Yeomet means "sounding rock." A merchant by the name of Bowman operated a hotel, a store and the bridge from 1853 til 1857 at least. Another successful merchant by the name of Simpson ran a large store, and in 1863 Simpson was elected assemblyman for Amador.
Additionally in Logan's Alley on page 268, Yeomet is listed as operating a post office from July 14, 1854 til 1861, when it was discontinued. E. Bowman is listed as postmaster.
Note: The Nashville Dam has not been built to date, so the old cemetery is in existence. If anyone has additional information on Yeomet I would be glad to add it to this compilation.
Thank you. Jill O'Neall Ching
