UPPER SODA SPRINGS

On a hot July day in 1853, a young woman bounced along in a covered wagon on the Oregon Trail.  She was going to meet her husband in California, whom she hadn't seen for years.  But she was facing a more serious and immediate problem.  In the back of her wagon, her father lay dying.       The story of this young woman is an extraordinary tale of adventure and bravery, and it is a part of the extraordinary tale of the place where she would wind up, Upper Soda Springs, California.

Long Ago ...

The story of Upper Soda Springs begins long ago, before the arrival of humans to California.  Much about Upper Soda Springs from that long ago time would look familiar to us, but much would look different.

Wooly mammoths, mastodons, saber-toothed tigers, and giant tapirs roamed the hills and woods of California, along with the more familiar grizzly bears, mountain lions and beavers.  (More about this megafauna, click here.)

Mt. Shasta loomed over Upper Soda Springs, but Shastina hadn't formed yet, and the mountain had another surprise coming.  Monstrous walls of very liquid lava poured from the base of Mt. Shasta, and rolled down the Sacramento River canyon for 40 miles.  Once this lava flow cooled and hardened, cold water springs began bubbling up, and the water was flavored by the minerals through which it had passed.  One of these mineral springs was later to be called "Upper Soda Springs."  (More about this lava flow, click here.)        While no one is sure exactly who the first humans were to see Upper Soda Springs, many believe that the first people arrived in California about 10,000 -12,000 years ago.  Some of these first humans may have started living at or near the site of Upper Soda Springs.  (More about these early people, click here.)

Likely different waves of early humans moved through California, and later arrivals displaced the earlier arrivals.  By the early 1800's, a tribe known as the Okwanuchu tribe lived in the area of Upper Soda Springs, part of a collection of neighboring tribes known as the Shasta tribes.   (More about the Okwanuchu, click here.)        It is impossible to know who the first Europeans or Americans were to visit the Upper Soda Springs site.  The first recorded visit in the vicinity was by a party of Hudson's Bay Company trappers and hunters to the nearby McCloud River in 1829-30, and it is possible that other European or American trappers and hunters wandered through at about this same time or earlier. (More about early hunters and trappers, click here.)        The first known visit by Americans to Upper Soda Springs appears to have been in 1834, when some enterprising Americans purchased and drove a herd of 150 horses and mules from Mexican-controlled California to settlements in Oregon.  This monumental drive came up the Sacramento River canyon and recorded a visit to a mineral springs that was likely Upper Soda Springs. (More about this 1834 drive, click here.)           An exploring party of the celebrated United States Exploring Expedition also came to Upper Soda Springs.  The U.S. Ex Ex, as it was known, sailed with six ships between 1838 and 1842, exploring the Pacific from Hawaii to Antarctica.  In 1841, it visited the west coast of North America, and sent an overland party from Portland, Oregon south to San Francisco.  This exploring party came down the Sacramento River canyon and passed through the site of Upper Soda Springs.  (More about the U.S. Exploring Expedition, click here.)         During the California Gold Rush (beginning 1848), Forty-Niners spread out throughout the state, including panning for gold in Siskiyou County.  The first known inhabitants of the Upper Soda Springs site were the Lockhart brothers who, in about 1851, set up a rustic stable and waystation at the Upper Soda Springs site for prospectors and mule train drivers traveling between the Central Valley and Yreka, California.  (More about this earliest development, click here.)       Among the Forty-Niners was a man named Ross McCloud who had come to California in the early 1850's.  McCloud operated an inn in the mining settlement of Portuguese Flat (about 40 miles south of Dunsmuir, California), where he w00as joined by his wife, Mary Campbell McCloud, after her tragic trip on the Oregon Trail (described above) in 1853.  Together, they purchased the rights to Upper Soda Springs in the mid-1850's, and within a few years had built a more substantial inn and a "springhouse" for the mineral water springs.  They also built a toll bridge across the Sacramento River and improved the trails and stagecoach roads leading to Upper Soda Springs. (More about the McClouds' inn, springhouse, and bridge, click here.)         About this same time, the Tauhindali clan of the Wintu tribe were forced out of their ancestral home on the Trinity River, and fled over the mountains to the Sacramento River.  By this time, the Okwanuchu were in decline, and the Tauhindalis found a safe haven at Upper Soda Springs, protected from attack.  For more than 100 years, the descendants of the Tauhindalis and the McClouds were friends and neighbors.  (More about the Wintu and the Tauhindali clan, please click here.)         The character of life at Upper Soda Springs changed dramatically in the 1880's, when the Central Pacific Railroad built a railroad line between California and Oregon, with a stop at Upper Soda Springs.  The original small inn had substantially expanded, had become known as the Upper Soda Springs Resort, and was owned and operated by Elda McCloud Masson (the daughter of Ross and Mary) and her husband, John Masson.  These next 30 years were the height of the Upper Soda Springs Resort, as fashionable travelers came to "take the waters" of the mineral springs at Upper Soda Springs. (More about Upper Soda Springs Resort, click here.)            By 1920, however, with the development of the automobile, tastes and fashions in taking vacations changed, and the old Resort closed.  The original 160 acres owned by the McClouds was subdivided and sold for development of private homes and businesses.  A large section of what is now North Dunsmuir (from the old Dunsmuir Ballpark to south of the River) was part of the original Upper Soda Springs Resort property.

Today ...

Through a combination of  private and public efforts, the City of Dunsmuir and the State of California have been acquiring parcels of the original Upper Soda Springs property, and have been converting the property to parkland.

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