Murphys

The Murphy Brothers’ Camp

A state marker at the intersection of Main and Jones streets calls Murphys one of the principal mining communities in Calaveras County and says it was named for the man who discovered gold on the flat in 1849.² A marker erected by E Clampus Vitus names John Murphy, 1824 to 1892, as the founder of Murphys and dates the founding to 1848.¹ He and his brother Daniel set up a trading post and hired Miwok Indians to mine gravel, paying them in merchandise.¹ The camp was first known as Murphys Diggings, then Murphys Camp, and later Murphys.¹ The 1939 guide says John and Daniel Murphy were the first to discover gold at Murphys, while the state marker for Vallecito says the Murphy brothers found gold there in 1849 and that Vallecito was first called ‘Murphy’s old diggings.’^3,4 According to the marker, John Murphy left camp in December 1849 with $1,500,000 in gold, returned to San Jose, married Virginia Reed of the Donner Party, and served as mayor of San Jose and sheriff of Santa Clara.¹

Twenty Million Dollars from Murphys Flat

Many immigrants crossing the Sierras by Ebbetts Pass made Murphys their objective, and the state marker credits Murphys Flat and the surrounding mines with 20,000,000 dollars in gold.² Early regulations limited a claim to 8 feet square.² The miners carried water across Murphys Creek on a suspension flume and cut a drainage race to drain the flat.² The town has its own Joaquin Murrieta legend: he is said to have dealt three-card monte here in 1851 and to have begun his bloody career after his brother, unjustly accused of horse stealing, was hanged and he himself was flogged.⁴ The Calaveras Light Guards organized in Murphys on May 4, 1861, to recruit for the Civil War.²

After the Fire of August 20, 1859

Fire destroyed the business part of town on August 20, 1859.² Peter L. Traver’s building of 1856, which the state marker calls the oldest stone building in Murphys, came through the fires of 1859, 1874, and 1893 because of its iron shutters and the sand on its roof, and it served as a general store, a Wells Fargo office, and later a garage.³ In 1862 the tinsmith Louis Robinson put up a brick and stone building to replace the frame store he lost in the fire, and from 1869 it served for 40 years as a bakery and store.⁵ Adam Magers baked there until he died in 1874, John Heinsdorff took over soon afterward, and Isabelle Bishop Dibble bought the run-down building and restored it in the 1950s.⁵ After the 1859 fire, Freeman Dunbar and Company built the Union Saloon and Bowling Alley, which later became Frank W. Fisk’s general store and held the post office from 1902 to 1939, with Fisk as postmaster.⁶ A marker names the house that Charles A. and Catherine Caswell Curtis built in July 1853 as Murphys’ oldest wooden home and says it survived the fire that destroyed much of the town in the late 1800s.⁷

The Sperry Hotel on Main Street

The state marker says James L. Sperry and John Perry opened the Sperry and Perry Hotel on August 20, 1856, while the 1939 guide says John L. Sperry built it in 1856, when Murphys became the gateway to the Calaveras Big Tree Grove.^3,4 The hotel was renamed the Mitchler Hotel in 1882, and the McKimins family renamed it the Murphys Hotel in 1945; a College of the Pacific group bought it in 1963.³ In 1939 the Federal Writers’ Project guide recorded a town of 600 people at 2,200 feet, with its store, saloons, and business houses spread along the main street in the shade of elms and Chinese heaven trees.⁴ The guide also saw men in blue jeans and broad felt hats lolling in front of those buildings in the evenings, their chairs tilted back against the walls.⁴ The guide noted bullet marks in the hotel doorway from the time a stranger shot the town’s current bad man, and an iron safe behind the bar holding ledgers signed by Charles E. Bolton (Black Bart), Ulysses S. Grant, and Will Rogers, who made a movie here in 1934.⁴

The Schoolhouse, the Pokey, and Buena Vista

The Murphys Grammar School, a wooden building, has been used as a school since it was built in 1860.⁸ Its National Register nomination calls it the oldest continuously used school building in California and records that the slate chalkboards and pine floors are original.⁸ According to the nomination, Albert A. Michelson, the first American to win the Nobel Prize for Physics, received all of his elementary education there and later measured the speed of light.⁸ Around 1915, Tom Burrow, Frank Kaler, Price Williams, Frank Segale, and Frank Forrester built the town jail of hand-mixed concrete, and it is said that one of the builders got drunk and rowdy celebrating its completion and became its first inmate.⁹ At Buena Vista Cemetery, which its marker calls the earliest official burial place in Murphys, the oldest grave marker belongs to a six-year-old boy who died on June 26, 1855.¹⁰