SURVEY OF BUILDING STRUCTURES OF THE SIERRAN GOLD BELT, 1848-70 HEIZER AND FENENGA 



95 



windows of buildings whose walls were of rough stone. A few towns, 

 located where good brickmaking lateritic clays were available, were the 

 centers of the brick industry. In particular, Columbia, Grass Valley, 

 Georgetown, and North San Juan are noteworthy as places in which 

 brick is virtually the only fireproof building material employed. 



The first brickmaking in upper California was done in 1847 at the 

 kiln of G. Zins established at Sutterville, just south of Sacramento. In 

 1847 Zins burned 40,000 bricks, and in 1848 his yard produced 100,000. 

 It seems probable that some of the earliest brick buildings in the Mother 

 Lode were made of Zins brick. Bekeart's store in Coloma, built in 1853, 

 was made of Sacramento brick. J. Doak had a brickyard at Stockton 

 in 1850, and in that year turned out 700,000 bricks, some of which were 

 sold in San Andreas and Coulterville. The local supply, however, did 

 not meet the demand, for in 1849 a shipload of brick from Plymouth, 

 Massachusetts, sold in San Francisco for $60 a thousand, and in 1851 

 an editorial complaint in the Daily Alia Calif ornian warned its readers 

 of the dangers of fire, bemoaned the expense of imported brick, and 

 commented that California brick, when available, brings from $36 to 

 $80 a thousand, but "has no good glaize." The disastrous fires through- 

 out the Mother Lode and the brick building boom of the 'fifties forced 

 an expansion of the industry. Placerville and Shaws Flat had brick- 

 yards in 1853. An advertisement by Stout and Wall, contract builders, 

 in the Columbia Argus in 1854 offered brick at the kiln for $8 per 

 thousand, $10 delivered, and $20 per thousand laid in the walls. By 

 1856 the Sutterville kilns were selling brick for $7 per thousand at the 

 kiln and $8 delivered. In 1858 the Sacramento brickyards produced 

 1,500,000 bricks for the San Francisco harbor defenses. In 1854, two 

 years after the great fire in Sacramento, the city had over 500 brick 

 houses. Less than a year after the Nevada City fire of 1856, 25 fireproof 

 brick structures had been erected. These examples illustrate the trend 

 toward fireproof construction at the height of the Gold Rush. 



Brick never became cheap enough to use for retaining walls, corrals, 

 or farm fences. It appears always to have been a structural material 

 which carried considerable prestige, since it was used for the facades of 

 stone structures in many towns. The stucco covering of stone and adobe 

 buildings was frequently grooved and painted to simulate brick (cf. 

 Fig. 130) . Building in stone and brick gave rise to one quarrying activity, 

 for brick must be set in lime mortar. Early lime kilns in which lime- 

 stone was burned were situated at Shaws Flat, lone, and Cool. Most of 

 the stone buildings seen on our survey were built with mud mortar, or 

 a mixture of mud and lime. Lime must have been scare and expensive, 

 and when available was used to plaster the outside and interior walls 

 of rough stone or adobe buildings. Information on the early utilization 

 of concrete is difficult to obtain. Columbia had, in 1855, a brick reservoir 



lined with cement, and in 1856 Columbia had a building which was 

 then unusual, if not unique for the Mother Lode, made of aggregate 

 (concrete and gravel). It was destroyed in the 'sixties in order to mine 

 the gravels on which it stood. In Coulterville a large concrete foundation 

 may be seen which is surely very old, but we were unable to obtain 

 information on when it was built. 



Adobe construction was first introduced to California from Mexico 

 by the Spanish in the late eighteenth century during the Mission period. 

 It was in general use throughout the occupied areas of California at the 

 time of the gold discovery in 1848, and the impulse to build with adobe 

 bricks in the Mother Lode almost certainly derives from Americans 

 and Mexicans living in California before 1848, who went to the gold 

 regions of the Sierra. Adobe buildings are of two fundamental forms ; 

 those with walls of sun-dried bricks laid up dry or with mud mortar 

 (cf. Figs. 14, 80), and those with walls formed by ramming or pound- 

 ing stiff earth or clay between molds similar to the molds we now use 

 for pouring concrete. Both methods are common in Spanish countries, 

 and the latter is referred to as pise or iapm. Only three examples of the 

 pise technique were noted by us; two at Virginiatown (Fig. 152), and 

 one at Fiddletown (Fig. 114). Adobe brick structures occur at Mormon 

 Bar, Mt. Bullion, Bear Valley, Hornitos, near Bagby, Coulterville, 

 Quartzburg, Sonora, Knights Ferry, San Andreas, Calaveritas, Jenny 

 Lind, La Grange, Drytown, Fiddletown, and Mokelumne Hill. Others 

 are reported from Salt Springs Valley, Old Gulch, and Mountain Ranch 

 (Calaveras Co.), Shawmut and Jamestown (Tuolumne Co.), Dutch 

 Flat (Placer Co.), and Frenchtown (Yuba Co.). In general, adobe build- 

 ings occur frequently along the western margin of the gold belt, and 

 are most concentrated in the south. Less rainfall along the low-altitude 

 western foothills may have encouraged mud-brick architecture, and in 

 the south the greater Mexican-Spanish influence was doubtless largely 

 responsible for the large numbers of adobe structures. Adobe buildings 

 are often ascribed to Chinese builders, but it would be incorrect to so 

 attribute all such structures. The Chinese were frugal people, and lumber 

 and brick were expensive. The lateritic clays of the western Sierra slopes 

 bind well, and offered an inexpensive and relatively durable building 

 material. Therefore, adobe buildings may reflect, as for example at 

 Hornitos, either a common pre-1848 California!! architectural technique 

 which was practiced by Mexicans through traditional preference, or 

 they may have been built by underprivileged minority groups such as 

 the Chinese for reasons of economy because they were cheap and easy 

 to erect. 



The usual practice was to coat the exterior walls with a lime plaster 

 about one-half inch thick. This was then whitewashed. So long as the 

 overhanging eaves and roof kept in good condition, the plastered adobe 



