French Camp, Amador County Ghost Town

Of we make perhaps three-quarters of a mile of northing from the locale of the . vanished adobe at Camp Union traveling in the same ravine, we will be at the center of French Camp. Here it is evident that much more has survived and the ruins cover a much wider area. Huge chimneys still standing to a height of four or five feet dot the landscape. Stone-walled enclosures that were once houses thrust their way up to three to five' feet above grade.

Centering the ruins in a small flat at the bottom of the ravine is a stone struc­ture, the purpose of which it is difficult to determine. It is square. The stones have been cut to present a smooth surface outward. In dimensions it is, at a guess, twenty feet on each face. It rises ab'ove grade level to a height of approximately five feet. No trace whatever exists of any window or door opening, or indeed of any aperture whatever. Its interior is filled with earth, which rises higher than the sur­rounding walls. The elements have eroded it to an angle of retention, which leaves the center three or four feet higher than the perimeter.

To guess the purpose we may perhaps make headway if we associate it or even integrate it with a building that formerly stood immediately to the north. This was a handsome two-story edifice of burned brick, said, by the older people thereabout to have once been a bank. This theory is well supported-at ground level there was a very large safe, the door wide open. We played there when quite small.

Just possibly this stone work at the rear might have housed individual storage vaults, access being had from the floor above. We have not done too badly thus far. But how do we account for its being filled with earth? Here now is presented a quite logical question. In all of these references to brick structures, how come there is not a scrap of one surviving?

Quite simply really. At a date beginning about forty years ago their dismemberment started. They were all coursed in lime mortar. This permitted the buildings to be taken apart with ease. The lime cleaned from the brick readily. They then became beautiful building blocks for walks, barbecue pits, garden walls and innu­merable landscape projects. As late as the early 1940s, Olde Muletown, to jump ahead a bit, contained twenty or thirty old brick chimneys and houses. Not a scrap or vestige of any of these remains, not even one brickbat.

If any brick structure whatever survives in a ghost town in the Mother Lode­and I do not know of any such-there will be found in close proximity a citizen with a twelve gauge in fine serviceable condition. The said citizen being obdurate of temperament will have the will, at need, to do his simple duty. So far the two­legged pack rats have scored a one hundred per cent victory.

This now may well be an evaluation that is entirely too harsh. The bricks were-and are if still obtainable-tempting to an unbelievable degree. The old hand molds and more than a century of erosion gave them a texture that noth­ing around can even approximate. For their color-to envision it mentally-try throwing upon the palette a bunch of fireweed, a stick of cinnamon, and a dab of Chinese vermillion. To resist these one must be entirely unresponsive to color, or possessed of a lofty ethical nature. I am uncertain as to how many of us might pass the test.

French Camp deserves to be noted for its preeminence in having two hornos or ovens of the type mentioned in the prologue. The larger, under an oak tree, could be put into operation with about thirty minutes of work on the door arch. The lime plaster encasing both has long since eroded. Not a trace remains.

Information, photographs courtesy of the Amador County Archives, The Historical Marker Database, The Chronicling America Database, and Larry Cenotto, Amador County's Historian