THE ANDERSON GRADE
February 11, 1953
The Anderson Grade was an early wagon road between Yreka and the Klamath River. It follows along on the west side of Black Mountain, and it's a pretty crooked road. It comes to the Klamath River at the Lucuc Ranch, where in that area there was a ferry across the river.
The Anderson Grade was once owned by a man named Firm Anderson, Sr., and the ferry also, hence the name Anderson Grade and Anderson Ferry.
The road used in the early days before the railroad was built, by stage coaches and freight wagons and every other kind of travel. The old road is still used some, but the ferry however, has been gone for years.
I rode over the Anderson Grade several times on horseback before the highway came along, and remember very well the four and six horse teams, with bells on their names.
WILDCAT GULCH
February 11, 1953
Wildcat Gulch heads in toward the east branch of Hutton Creek. A ridge separates the two watersheds. Hutton Creek empties into Cottonwood Creek. Wildcat Gulch empties into Slide Creek near Spaulding's Camp.
It was a Spaulding's Camp that William A. Wright used his 50-70 Sharps carbine as a set gun for the grizzly bear, Reelfoot. The foxy old grizzly fired the carbine but the bullet missed him. Farther up in Wildcat Gulch, William A. Wright and Purl Bean later killed the huge Reelfoot in the spring of 1890.
ROBBERS ROCK
February 12, 1953
In following the old stage road from Hilt, California, northward one would find that it winds around among some trees as it approaches the top of the mountain. At the last turn before the road starts to level off at the top of the mountain, there is upon the hillside a couple of hundred feet or so, a big, lone rock, about the size of a one-room cabin. As the road goes around the turn the rock comes in sight at once.
This is a perfect place for a hold-up. I guess that's why three bandits picked that rock to hide behind, I believe sometime in the 1860's, and robbed the stage of a shipment of gold nuggets valued at seventy-five thousand dollars.
Officers later killed two of the bandits north of Pilot Rock and captured the third one. The one captured was sent to prison, where he died several years later.
From what I have gathered from the early settlers the holdup started the rock to be called ARobber's Rock, and in later years the rock was used to stage other holdups in the same way.
It seems that even in the old days crime didn't pay all the time.
