A couple of letters from the editor relating to the Mariposa County Sign Ordinance is interesting. Tolley Gorham’s letter describes the ordinance pretty well but the devil is in the details. For many years the ordinance was not enforced against existing signs. The ordinance calls for the removal of signs from closed business within one year of closing. That allows for the sale of the business and the continued use of the sign. The first it was enforced was the forced removal of the Gold Coin sign quite a few years after closure. I am not sure what precipitated the action except the owner was an irritant to the Planning Department. Other signs stayed up much longer with no removal. Maybe the stimulus was a citizen complaint. As you may or may not know many ordinances, mostly planning, are not enforced until someone complains. Then the county acts. Maybe.
Perhaps the greatest and longest discussion about enforcement has been related to how the complaint becomes initiated. It is not difficult to understand why the county wanted the complaints to be citizen initiated. First, the county did not have, for many years, an enforcement officer. Once one was acquired, it was a part time position and on top of that, the inspector was not trained in the legal aspects of inspection and compliance control. Only a few complaints were investigated, and for the most part, dismissed.
One complaint concerning a mineral extraction process that got out of control, was followed through. Involved were state air quality issues. Compliance issues concerning construction projects were handled by the Building Dept. Projects without building permits very often skated until permits were required for establishment of PG & E service. However, those who provided their own power often got by. It is the building permit that triggers many other department interest, such as assessor. During major fires some of these issues are discovered.
The county sign ordinance, among other development ordinances, have been unevenly enforced. Part of the problem relates to the lack of an advisory committee in the town of Mariposa for the TPA. There are some fundamental problems related to the formation of such a committee. For example, a high percentage of the residents are renters and often transient.
Another is that most of the business owners do not live in the TPA. Two county supervisors represent parts of the TPA and have other obligations that may conflict with the best interest of the town. Next problem is that planning is also a political process. Supervisors who do not receive even a large percentage of their vote at election time from inside the TPA, feel pressure from their fundamental political base and thus, are easily persuaded by the Planning Department that there are higher priorities from the planning and perhaps the political standpoint.
So what are the compelling reasons to for an advisory committee to update the now 20 year old plan, far past the 10 year review. The number one reason would be to provide a document that has met the test of community standards, that everyone can understand and abide by, and to allow rational change to occur. I will not go into detail of what needs review as the issues come up almost all the time. But it is fair to say that it is way over due for review and more importantly badly needed. Many years ago we adopted this planning model. To ignore the process established tells me that we are not serious about our community plans. Otherwise, they should be abandoned.

CARLETON E. WATKINS (1829-1916)
Photographer of the Emerging American West
Watkins was born and grew up in the rural village of Oneonta, New York, the eldest son of John Maurice Watkins and Julia Ann Mc Donald. Being of Scottish decent, he had a stubborn streak that caused him to be determined in the pursuit of excellence in photography. Some time in 1854, at the age of twenty two, he came to California with friend Collis P. Huntington and his brother landing in Marysville. Huntington started a general merchandise store and hired his friend Carlton to help run the operation. First a fire and then a flood sent both of them to Sacramento, and a flood sent them on to San Francisco. Huntington moved on to become the railroad magnate of the west while Watkins joined Robert Vance, a photographer, who worked in the daguerrean process.
The Daguerreotype was an early photographic process in which a plate is coated with an emulsion which is light sensitive. The plate is then placed in the back of a box with a light focusing lens that transfers the image of the person or persons sitting in front of the box (camera), to the sensitive plate. The plate is then processed in chemicals which fixes (make reasonably permanent) the impression of the image on the plate. Because there is no negative (in the context of our current understanding) one image on one plate is made and dried and the operator has thus made a picture. If one wished a second and third and on, then another plate would have to be exposed. The length of time needed to make the light sensitive plate accept the image might be quite long by today’s standards,(on the order of minutes not seconds) and thus the subject had to remain quite still. Thus theses early photos appeared as those the subjects had already passed on. The blinking of the eyes were not recorded because the sensitivity of the plate was not sufficient to record the blink. That is why once in a while one will view a Daguerreotype finished picture and everything except the eyes seemed to be sharp or in perfect focus but the eyes seemed to have a slight blur.
At the age of twenty five, Mr. Vance sent Watkins to San Jose to sit in for an operator who had left his studio. He was instructed to greet the customers who usually came on Sunday. He was, however, to sham taking a picture, take the customers money and make an appointment for the following Sunday when a skilled photographer would be present. Vance went to San Jose on Friday or Saturday with the news that no new operator was available and took a few minutes to train Watkins in the process. The brief training was the only that Watkins received but it was enough.
Advances in photographic processes came rapidly and soon Watkins was making his exposures on a glass plate which was coated with collodion containing a silver salt, usually silver nitrate and/or bromide, suspended in the coating or emulsion. These glass plates were coated usually in a dark tent and exposed while still wet. While the glass negative was still wet it had to be processed or would become unsensitized upon drying. Once dried, the negative on glass would be exposed using sunlight, to a paper coated with sodium chloride thus making the positive print. These prints are referred to as “salt prints”, and thus those that he made for the Fremont mining company in Mariposa County in 1860, and Yosemite the following year were thus characterized.
The advantage of the wet plate process was that multiple salt print could be made from the glass negative. Watkins, and other photographers of the time, liked to expose their prints in the San Francisco area because the foggy mornings presented an even soft light. Thus, even when he was photographing in Yosemite at later times, he would pack away his dried plates and take them to the Bay Area for final printing.
Because of the difficulty with the Daguerreotype process, photography was usually confined to a studio where light could be controlled by window shades. Watkins was probably not the first to photograph the landscape but was quite early. His first experience photographing on glass plate was creating images of the New Almaden mercury mines near San Jose for a court case. In 1859, Vance sent Charles Weed, using the same wet plate process, to the mines of the American River to record their activity, and in the process Weed went to Yosemite and made the first images of natures grandest establishment. Watkins soon followed but only as the result of being hired by Treanor Park, Fremont’s partner, to record the assets of the Grant.
Watkins found Mariposa in 1860 to be a well developed town. It had a proper court house, yet to add the clock tower, multiple newspapers, a concert hall, hotels restaurants, saloons, churches, harness shop, blacksmith,
a sash and door maker, all the things that a mining community would need. Much of this would disappear in a few years in fire. But mainly he was here to photograph the mines and mining areas on the Las Mariposas Grant. By 1860, deeply in debt, Fremont had to either raise capital or sell the properties.
Lengthy legal problems over the section of the grant given to him by the courts that contained properties developed by Merced Mining Company, had cost him dearly. Never a proper manager in the first instance, Fremont had failed to develop what was called a very wealthy holding. The towns of Mariposa, Princeton and Bear Valley were well developed with miners families living and working at his or leased mines. Fremont essentially gave away many parcels within the grant hoping to attract permanent families and investors, The main mines were leased to other operators representing stockholding companies and they were not always operating at all profitably. The mining properties that he acquired by way of the court actions turned out to be developed improperly. A Irish mining engineer hired by the Merced Mining Company caused the mill for the area to be built at Mt Ophur, at the far south end of the section. It was soon discovered that the bulk of the gold was at the north end, at the Pine Tree and Josephine north of Bear Valley. So what had been given to Fremont, and he later paid the Merced Mining Company for, was of little use to him. He embarked on building a major mill at Ridley’s Ferry (Bagby) and constructing a road from the mill to the mines on the hills above. The 1860 Watkins pictures clearly show this development.
As well as the other mills, saw mills and homes scattered through out the Grant.
We have gathered together this collection of photographs which represent the finest and most complete body of work by one of the most recognized landscape photographers of the west. No other area of the Mother Lode had such an extensive coverage as Watkins.
His photographs of Yosemite taken in 1861 helped President Lincoln to grant Yosemite Valley and the Mariposa Grove of Big Trees to the State of California to form the basis of a State Park. Eventually we will have a show of the Yosemite scenes that were so instrumental in the saving of Yosemite Valley and the Park for the people of the United States.
Windows on the World-Books and Art in the Mariposa Hotel Inn Building, is growing to include this gallery, dedicated to fine art regardless photography or other disciplines. This gives the town of Mariposa a number of fine art gallery venues downtown. The Mariposa County Arts Council, Sierra Artists, The Market Place, and Shockley’s Designs Un-Limited all represent the artists of our community. In the case of Windows on the World Books and Art, the addition of the gallery in a separate space gives Mariposa a adequate space for small community meetings, book signings and other events so badly needed. In a few weeks we will have a grand opening and working together with our neighbors, letting the world know that coming to Mariposa to enjoy art and other fine amenities, is well worth the drive.

INTRODUCTION TO MY BLOG
It is amazing that I can now write what I want, when I want it and not have to rely on someone or something else to publish the words. Words that can penetrate the ether and spread around the world for anyone to see or consider. This is a major responsibility as I see it. I will tell you what I know, if it is important or not, has value or substance. I do not attempt to entertain you for there are better sources for entertainment. I will continue to write for the SUNTIMES because it is an important avenue and frankly I like the editor/owner and his wife. But the important thing to me is that if he decides that he doesn’t want to publish my musings, then I will not be left with no avenue to express or explore.
The new blog is attached to a new website: yosemitemariposahistory.com and has a separate address also of:
yosemite history.com. What does this mean. It means the my favorite subjects are and will be Yosemite, Mariposa, History and Photography of which there will be as much of as I can muster. I have been very fortunate to have lived my life in Mariposa, known the people I have known and be next to the greatest natural feature combined on the face of the earth.
It also means that sometimes if I become controversial that it will not reflect on the editor and his wife of the SUNTIMES. I have no time to waste on attacking individuals who I know or have known because I have come to realize that in properly exploring history, at least my version of it, I will offend someone who thinks I don’t know what I am doing or saying. But the beauty of this blog and webpage will be that I can put ideas and memories out there for you to choose to read, and perhaps respond, or not.
I intend to examine western history as it applies to Mariposa and Yosemite, family history as it applies to a remarkable family of whom I am now the oldest, and a art/craft that became the first step in the mechanical recordation of instants in time. Think about how long the world has existed and short a time we have been able to view a snippets of that time which can enlighten, explain or entertain us about the past, no matter if it was one hundred and fifty years ago or this last second that just went by.
The more enduring features of our lives are related to objects that define our moments in time. I just finished the dismantling of the lives of two people who gradually had lost the ability to communicate. One was a lady who I knew very well, at 90 years of age she passed away and I oversaw the scattering of her life through the objects that she gave various levels of importance to. The same may be said about a gentleman who I knew less well but who’s possessions demonstrated a love of travel, learning and a close relationship to God. Perhaps somewhere in all of this I can explain why I have a great attraction for photography of the past. How the conveyance of information about past lives and times seems important. Why would humans want to scratch a bison on the wall of a cave in Spain. Maybe because it is a demonstration of the attempt at immortality. But it was not the artist that is immortalized by the drawing of a bison, but the communication of the figure of the bison. For it is a conveyance of life around us at any point in time that is important, not our presence in it.
Quite soon a new art gallery will open in conjunction with Windows on the World Book Store in the Mariposa Hotel Building downtown. The first show will be a collection of the photographs of Carlton E. Watkins taken in l860 when Mariposa was only ten years old. Mr. Watkins of San Francisco was hired by Treanor Park, a partner of John C. Fremont, to photograph the assets of the Fremont Grant, Las Mariposas. The purpose was to show the world this wonderful 44,386 acres of mining property, looking for investment in it’s activities or sale. The fifty or so views did much more than act as a real estate promotion. It opened to all who would see a bit of time and history for us to examine and understand. Associated with this gallery will be opportunities for group examination of these scenes to try to uncover the real value of their content. We will have receptions for these opportunities.
Some years ago I became acquainted with the biographer of Carlton E. Watkins, Peter Palmquist, now diseased. Through his research and writing I came to know Mr. Watkins as an extraordinary man who pioneered landscape photography on the west coast. He was not the only one, but one of a very few who took the time to study the early invention of photography and it’s application. He saw taking the scenes of the Fremont Grant as evidence for communication, just as he had taken pictures of the New Almaden Mines near San Jose before l859 for a trial. In this case, his pictures were intended to explain the activities and give substance to the inventory of the Grant, be it buildings, towns, mines and landscape. What makes these photographs remarkable is the artistic skill which Watkins possessed. He somehow knew instinctively the “best angle, light, and view of his subjects”. How did he learn this? In subsequent articles I will review his life for the experiences that shaped his skill.
So, this is my quest. Even if you do not want to read what I write in this space, there will be another. And even if no-one is interested at least what I know and love will be exposed in the ether for you to capture. My only task is to keep paying the phone bill.