This post is part of a series of editorials written by Bert Walsh during his tenure as president and past president of the Shasta Historical Society. Readers are advised that his humor is often irreverent and rarely politically correct.
Click here for the table of contents for the entire collection of his editorials.
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???Puzzlement??? The record tells us that in 1932 a bronze tablet commemorating Major Reading's discovery of gold was set on a boulder at the northwest end of the old Highway 99 bridge across Clear Creek.
Imagine our surprise when we located this monument well south of the creek at the intersection of Canyon Road and the entrance to the Wintu Indian Bingo Facility. There have been some fascinating geological aberrations in our county's history: Outhouses have been overturned--tombstones, survey markers, fences and roads have occasionally shifted positions. But never a 5-ton boulder. Could this be the work of extraterrestrial beings, or perhaps gangs from Southern California?
Actually this puzzlement is due to random displacement along the Market Street Geological Rift. This will also explain why Highway 299 West enters town on Eureka Way and 299 East leaves town on Lake Boulevard a mile or so to the north.
--BTW
Note: Turns out there were two monuments, and our source mixed up their locations. The one on the northwest side of Clear Creek commemorated Bell's Bridge and was removed when a new building on Eastside Road dislocated it. The monument for Reading's gold discovery was and is southwest of the creek as described. A new plaque and monument is to be dedicated at the discovery site five miles upstream in May, 1998, during the California Sesquicentennial celebration.
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