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Wolf Creek
Lodge Newsletter
Adult Cohousing in Grass Valley, CA
October, 2017
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Gold is everywhere but by some quirk of geology it is found in concentrated seams in Grass Valley. In the California gold-rush days Grass Valley offered both placer mining and, exceptionally, hard rock mining.
Josiah and Sarah Royce found their way to Grass Valley where their son Josiah Jr. was born in 1855. At this time there were ten times as many men as women. This represented an opportunity for one Lola Montez. Lola lived on Mill St. in the same neighborhood as the Royce's
Josiah Jr. became an eminent philosopher. He explored the significance of community - the "Blessed Community". 159 years later a group of people formed a cohousing community in the same town.
See below for more about Josiah and I fear, Lola.
There are
currently no homes available at Wolf Creek Lodge but there are homes that we know will come on the market. By the time you have properly investigated the Wolf Creek Lodge community and got your existing home ready to sell there will be a home available. See "Available Homes" below. Contact us if you are interested so we can be more specific.
Bob Miller,
Editor.
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Early Days in Grass Valley
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Josiah and Sarah Royce set off
from Iowa for California in 1849 a few years after the ill-fated Donner Party. Their journey was difficult. After passing Salt Lake they missed a turning and were lucky to be rescued by a United States Army relief party. They abandoned their wagon and continued on with their belongings packed on animals.
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The family moved from town to town including mining towns, Sacramento,San Francisco, Martinez and Folsom. After eight moves they arrived in Grass Valley and bought land at the junction of Mill Street and Neal. There Josiah Jr. was born in 1855, the fourth surviving child.
At that time Grass Valley was a rough mining town. It was more stable than many since it had hard rock mines rather than the more ephemeral placer mining.
In Josiah Royce's words:
"I was born 1855 in California. My native town was a mining town in the Sierra Nevada, - a place five or six years older than myself. My earliest recollections include a very frequent wonder as to what my elders meant when they said that this was a new community. I frequently looked at the vestiges left by the former diggings of miners, saw many pine logs were rotten, and that a miner's grave was to be found in a lonely place not far from my house."
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In 1866 the family moved again to San Francisco where Josiah attended the Lincoln Grammar School and then the San Francisco Boys' High School. He was somewhat of a prodigy. "The teacher informed Royce that his 'knowledge of mathematics far exceeded the teacher's, and that he need not do any further work in Mathematics'"
He attended the University of California and moved with it to the new campus in Berkeley. Graduating from Berkeley he was given money to go to Germany to study philosophy in Heidelberg, Leipzig and Gottingen.
After Germany he spent two years at the newly established Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore where he was awarded his Ph.D. His dissertation was entitled "Of the Interdependence of the Principles of Knowledge: An Investigation of the Problems of Elementary Epistemology."
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He returned to Berkeley as lecturer in the English Department.
After a couple of years he gained a temporary and eventually a permanent position on the faculty of Harvard where he remained for 34 years.
Royce's western roots were evident in both his manners and dress. He continued to wear a battered western straw hat.
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Joyce wrote extensively about the relationship of the individual to community. Here is a sample:
"But the true community, in our present restricted sense of the word, depends for its genuine common life upon such cooperative activities that the individuals who participate in these common activities understand enough to be able, first, to direct their own deeds of cooperation; secondly to observe the deeds of their fellow workers, and thirdly, to know that, without just this combination, this order, this interaction of the coworking selves, just this deed could not be accomplished by the community."
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"Josiah Royce, From Grass Valley to Harvard" by Robert V. Hine.
"The Philosophy of Josiah Royce" - edited and introduced by John K. Roth.
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Letter from #104
Suzanne Marriott
Whatever Lola Wants
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Another famous Grass Valley resident, perhaps a bit more colorful than Royce, was Lola Mondez, born in 1821. Almost scandalous from birth, this Irish lass ran away with a British Lieutenant at the age of sixteen and later was mistress to Franz Liszt and Ludwig of Bavaria, among others.
History tells us that she wrapped the hapless Ludwig so far around her little finger that he ended up abdicating his throne.
She was best known for the spider dance,
a version of the tarantella. Wearing flesh-colored tights and layers of multicolored petticoats, Lola played a country maid who discovered that spiders had gotten into her clothes. Her contortions exposed her shapely legs, to the delight of the mostly male audience but the moral outrage of others. One young girl who wanted to go see the show noted that "some thought she was obliged to look rather higher (for the spiders) than was proper in so public a place."
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She moved to New York and then to San Francisco where she married Patrick Hull, a local newspaperman, in July of 1853. The happy newlyweds moved to the Gold Rush town of Grass Valley in August. But her marriage soon failed, and a doctor named as co-respondent in the divorce suit brought against her was shortly after murdered
Montez remained in Grass Valley in her little house at 214 Mill St. for nearly two years. Lola served as an inspiration to another aspiring young entertainer, Lotta Crabtree. Lotta's parents ran a boarding house in Grass Valley, and Lotta soon attracted the attention of her neighbor Montez, who
provided dancing lessons
and encouraged Lotta's enthusiasm for performance. But that’s another story.
Lola left California in 1855 for Australia. She returned briefly, but the shipboard death of her last husband and the ravages of syphilis from which she had long suffered had saddened and sobered her.
She again moved to New York, embraced spiritualism and began writing and giving lectures. She died alone and in poverty at age thirty nine in 1861. But she lives on in memory here, in Grass Valley.
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Remembering Josiah and Lola
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Lola is commemorated by Mount Lola, the Lola Montez Trail and Lola Montez Lake.
Our "Digging in the Dirt" columnist, Claire, climbed Mt. Lola at 9,143 ft. on September 14th instead of writing the column.
To get to the trail head leave the Lodge and travel west on 20, join I80 and then, having past Truckee, take 89 north. There was still snow in sheltered north facing slopes left over from last winter.
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Josiah
is commemorated by Royce Hall on the campus of the University of California, Los Angeles,
and by the public library on Mill St. in Grass Valley. A library staff member enthusiastically provided us with a pile of books by and about Royce.
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Many members enjoy the annual Draft Horse Classic at the Nevada County Fairgrounds.
The stars of the show are the remarkable horses - sometimes as many as six hitched to a single wagon or carriage.
Here we see Marcia explaining the benefits of cohousing to one of the stars.
Does a draft horse comply with the Wolf Creek Lodge Pet Policy?
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There are no homes currently available at Wolf Creek Lodge. However, if you are interested in cohousing and Wolf Creek Lodge we encourage you to find out more. This should be a deliberate process.
By the time you have decided you want to join our community, have downsized your possessions and prepared to market your current home chances are a home will be available at Wolf Creek Lodge.
We try to keep the latest status on our website. By checking on these links to the website during the month you will get the latest updates. Here are the links:
Contact us: phone: (800) 558-3775
For details of Open Houses and much more visit our website at:
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Grass Valley and Nevada City
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Want to know more about
Grass Valley and Nevada City?
Here are some links we have found useful:
Down Town Grass Valley -
Grass Valley Chamber of Commerce -
Visit Nevada County -
Sierra Food Wine Art
Bear Yuba Land Trust
GIS Receational Viewer -
Go Nevada County -
YubaNet Calendar -
Grass Valley Travel Guide -
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