"Boys, when I go, I want you to plant me on the top of that
hill." And "planted" he was, with a ten-thousand-dollar monument on top
of him!
The poor old fellow died in poverty at Kelsey, near Coloma, August 10,
1885, at the age of seventy-five. It is a sad reflection that a tithe of
the money spent on the monument would have comforted him in his latter
days; for the blow to his pride by the withdrawal of his pension, still
more than the actual lack of funds, hastened the end.
Mr. Hooper intimated that the population of Coloma diminished
perceptibly after the termination of Marshall's pension. To common with
the majority of the old miners, be saved nothing and never profited to
any extent by the discovery that will keep his memory alive for
centuries to come.
Coloma in its palmy days had a population variously estimated at from
five to ten thousand souls, with the usual accompaniment of saloons,
dance halls and faro banks. There was a vigorous expulsion of gamblers
in the early fifties and an incident occurred which quite possibly
supplied the inspiration for Bret Harte's "Outcasts of Poker Flat." A
notorious gambler and desperado, and his accomplice, demurred. Whereupon
the irate miners placed them on a burro, and with vigorous threats
punctuated by a salvo of revolver shots fired over their heads, drove
them out of camp. They disappeared over the hill upon which the monument
now stands, and were seen no more.
Coloma suffered severely from fires. Little of the old town remains but
ruins of stone walls, and here and there an isolated wooden building.
The ruins, however, are not only exceedingly picturesque, being half
buried in foilage of beautiful trees, but hold the imagination with a
grip that is indescribable. I could willingly have tarried here for
days.
But while old Coloma is dead, there is a new Coloma that furnishes an
extraordinary contrast. It is a sweet and peaceful little hamlet,
situated on the lower benches of the canon, well up out of the river
bottom, and is entirely devoted to horticulture. One has read of birds
building their nests in the muzzles of old and disused cannon; even that
does not suggest a more anomalous association of ideas than the
spectacle of a vine-clad cottage shaded by fig trees, basking peacefully
in the sun, so close to what was at one time a veritable maelstrom of
human passions. So far as the new Coloma is concerned, Marshall's
discovery might never have been made. Nowhere else will you find a spot
where gold and what it stands for would seem to mean so little, Coloma!
It is passing strange that a name so sweet and restful should forever be
linked with the wildest scramble for gold the world has ever seen!
