Clarence Cullimore Sr. (1885-1963) was a prominent Bakersfield architect who specialized in adobe buildings and homes that were both artistic and designed to withstand earthquakes. A Fellow of the American Institute of Architects, Cullimore taught architecture at Kern County Union High School and Bakersfield College. In his fabulously researched "Old Adobes of Forgotten Fort Tejon," the author not only provides the history and construction details of the fort buildings, which at the time of this writing no longer stood; he also covers a century's worth of history, from the elusive Peter Lebeck to Gen. E.F. Beale's ill-fated U.S. Camel Corps to the establishment and abandonment of the fort and the Indian reservation it was intended to oversee. Note that in the following transcript, the table of contents and footnotes have been moved to the end.

See also: Home movie of Cullimore leading his 1938-1939 high school class on a trip to Fort Tejon.

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By Alfred Harrel

In this volume on Old Adobes of Forgotten Fort Tejon, Mr. Clarence Cullimore, architect, of Bakersfield, has made a distinctive contribution to the history of Kern County and has linked it with that of California and of the nation.

Occupants of hundreds of thousands of cars that pass the site of Fort Tejon ruins on the Ridge Route connecting the San Joaquin Valley and Los Angeles, have wondered about the history of those adobe ruins. No satisfactory unified record has heretofore been made of the origin and use of the Fort and of the buildings that comprise it. Mr. Cullimore has accomplished this with skill as a writer and historian and with the expertness of an architect.

Fort Tejon was established August 10, 1854, and abandoned September 11, 1864. Its purpose was to guard the Pass and to control the Indians in the vicinity Once abandoned, the Fort fell into decay and the process has continued until the present.

With the passage of years, the buildings, their origin, and purpose have been largely lost in the mists of tradition. To establish authentic records of everything relating to this remarkable remnant of early California, Mr. Cullimore has made exhaustive research from documents, from information from early settlers, and, in addition, he has made plans of the original buildings, partly by reconstruction of their lines from the ruins and partly by old records. These sketches, plans. and photographs revive the Fort buildings as they originally stood and give a complete picture of it as it was in the days of its occupancy

This undertaking has meant much research and much special talent in reconstructing the history and the material aspect of Kern County's outstanding historic structures. Every incident connected with the Fort and its later unoccupied period has been collected, investigated, anal recorded when authenticated. The facts are as romantic as anything in fiction.

Kern County residents and Californians generally will be grateful to Mr. Cullimore for directing his industry and talent into this particular historic study His book is an enduring work that will inform and interest this and future generations.

One of modern California's most important traffic highways, the famed Ridge Route, that separates Los Angeles from Bakersfield 'by only two hours of moderate automobile driving, passes a most significant little bit of California in the "Fifties." Historic Fort Tejon, a stronghold of pioneer California, holds a fascination for numerous visitors intrigued by a consideration of its military past, linked with the paternalism of its founder, Edward Fitzgerald Beale.

In making this study of the early history, architectural character, plan, adobe construction, and details of old Fort Tejon, it has been the endeavor to uncover facts and some fanciful stories regarding the inception, construction, and operation of it. Only those facts that may have some bearing on the subject at hand have been included. Some of the colorful, although unauthenticated, stories that must play a part in establishing the romantic flavor of the old Fort have also been recorded here. Authentic references, pioneer lore, and hearsay are clearly labeled as such. And so this record should definitely fall within the limits of authenticity.

The purpose of the study. Such a scrutiny into the handling of these simple building materials, the constructional features, and architectural details, together with a general view of the architectural expression, has been made in order to herein set down a definite record of these things. Perhaps such a record may at a later time serve as a basis for a further comparison of how, in the light of modern engineering skill and the use of modern stabilization and waterproofing methods in the manufacture of adobe bricks, the structural shortcomings of Fort Tejon might be avoided in contemporary, well-built adobe buildings. In this connection, the thought arises that this study may also be of some benefit to those who at a future time may be entrusted with an architectural restoration of the Fort Tejon adobe buildings in part or in full.

The main factors to be considered. Those natural influences that are dependent on location, climate, and available materials, and which have ever been potent factors in establishing types of construction in isolated and pioneer communities, were important in regard to the building of Fort Tejon. The social aspects affecting the plan include military considerations of the Fort as a U S. Army post. Yet, in this particular military project the appropriation was granted in order that Lieutenant E. F Beale might put into operation his new plan for the conduct of Indian affairs in California.1 Beale 's plan was to set apart a piece of land as a military post and to provide subsistence for the Indians, as far as possible from their own labor Within the reserve, which was naturally selected near the mountains, in which the Indians already lived in the summer months, they would be protected by the government and their range might extend indefinitely into the low mountain country Such was the inception of Fort Tejon. If, then, its real reason for being was to protect rather than to fight Indians, it is not difficult to understand its lack of fort-like severity.

A second reason for establishing the Fort was that its selected location formed a strategic gateway to the southern San Joaquin Valley. Horse and cattle thieves for some years had been running stolen stock through this pass to the markets in the Southwest, and it was possible to stop much of this traffic by a fort at this point.

Sources of data regarding Fort Tejon. Jose Jesus Lopez, a former general manager of Tejon Rancho, possessed, perhaps, the greatest fund of information about Fort Tejon, which is closely linked with the Tejon Rancho holdings, and in general with the early days of California. His ancestry was of Castilian line, his forebears being among the first Spaniards to come to California. He was born at Boyle Heights in Los Angeles, October 22, 1853, and was a descendant of Claudio Lopez, an officer in the Spanish army who crossed the ocean to assist in quelling one of the disturbances in Mexico. The site of the old Lopez homestead at San Fernando was purchased for the last dam of the Los Angeles aqueduct. Claudio, the founder of the family in California, was mission superintendent &t San Gabriel.

The history of Fort Tejon has been rather widely delved into by local students of Kern County history. The files of the Bakersfield Californian have been a fruitful source of information. Thelma B. Miller's History of Kern County, California, 1929, contains several interesting stories of the old days of the Fort. History of Kern County, California, 1914, by Wallace M. Morgan, contains other pertinent details. Harris Newmark his Sixty Years in Southern California, 1916, makes several references to Fort Tejon while it was a military post. Newmark once owned the store at Fort Tejon. Charles F Saunders includes a description of Tejon Pass and the Fort in his Southern Sierras of Calif ornia, 1923. Saga of Old Fort Tejon by Philip Johnston appeared in the November issue of Touring Topics in 1933. It is a colorful account of life at the Fort.

In the nature of learned documents, Charles Berden Leonard presented a Doctor of Philosophy thesis, The Federal Indian Policy in the San Joaquin Valley, under the date of January, 1928, which is now deposited in the University of California library at Berkeley In this thesis Leonard gives a valuable contribution to the history of Fort Tejon. The Federal Indian Policy in California, by William Henry Ellison, as a partial fulfillment of study for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy at the University of California, and on file in that university's library under date of January, 1919, also presents Fort Tejon from a purely historical angle.

Stephen Bonzal, in his biography of Edward Fitzgerald Beale, 1912, tells of the establishment of the Indian reservation on Tejon Rancho.

The United States Office of Indian Affairs has given a typescript of extracts from the reports of the United States Commissioners of Indian Affairs, 1853-1864.

Mr. and Mrs. Charles E. Yates, present lease holders of the Fort property, have made accessible a number of copies of old documents, military orders and post reports that have materially helped in making this research.

Clark Wing, through the Historical Department of the California State Division of Parks, has assisted in uncovering much valuable historical and some architectural material used in this paper

Mae Saunders, in an unpublished paper on Fort Tejon, has provided valued material.

Roy W Loudon, president of the Kern County Historical Society in 1937-1938, has made helpful suggestions.

Limitation of architectural data. The above-mentioned sources of information on Fort Tejon approach the subject almost purely from an historical or chronological point of view and tell us very little about the actual construction or the architectural problems involved or the resulting details of construction. The late Edwin J. Symmes, in a report to the State Division of Parks, touches briefly upon the architectural character of the roof trusses and illustrates his paper with photographs.

A sketch map from the National Archives at Washington, which accompanied a report on Fort Tejon by Colonel J.K.F. Mansfield, Inspector General, U.S.A., L.A., March 5, 1859, to Major I. McDowell has assisted in the placement of the various buildings.

The Students' Architectural Association at Kern County Union High School has rendered valuable assistance in the actual measurements of the ruins and the location of old foundations.

Jesse D. Stockton has uncovered material regarding the source of lumber for the Fort.

Dean A. C. Weatherhead of the College of Architecture at the University of Southern California has by helpful suggestions assisted in the preparation of this study.

The need for this study. As so little has been found regarding the original specifications, actual construction, plans or details of the old Fort, it seems pertinent that this study, after having recorded a brief history of the Fort's inception and reference to the few meager descriptions of the details of its architectural appearance, take the most effectual way to discover and record the construction details of Fort Tejon. This is best done by actually giving an account of the Fort itself as it has been found by aid of pick and shovel investigation of the rock foundations, by analysis of the bricks as they now are, by sketches of the existing portions of the barrack buildings, and measured drawings made from still standing portions of these buildings. A collection of old, as well as recent, photographs has assisted in completing this record of the old Fort's appearance.

Indication of anticipated interest. An indication of the anticipated interest in the old Fort is evident from the following data The Automobile Club of Southern California selected Sunday, July 16, 1940, as a typical holiday, and Monday, July 17, 1940, as a typical week day, counting the cars on these days that passed Lebec during a sixteen hour period from 7 a.m. to 10 p.m. The findings approximate the travel past the Fort as follows:

Annual holiday traffic ... 689,852 cars

Annual week day traffic ... 1,126,476 cars

The total number of cars passing annually ... 1,816,328

Estimating three persons to each car, more than five million persons pass the Fort each year.

A traffic engineer of the Division of Highways gives the information that 1,750,000 automobiles passed over this route in 1939. This is slightly less than the figures given by the Automobile Club of Southern California for 1940.

The Pass of Cortes was the name originally given to the Canada de las Uvas which we now know as Grapevine Canyon. Don Pedro Fages, the first white man to pass this way, gave it the name. On his journey through the mountains to the Indian village of Buena Vista in the southern part of the San Joaquin Valley, in the year 1772, Fages probably crossed a grassy dell on which there stands a venerable oak now revered as an historical landmark. (See Figure 4.) It was in the shade of this tree that the remains of the French trapper, Peter Lebeck, were to be buried sixty-five years later, and which, seventeen years after his interment, was to become in 1854 a part of the federal reservation of Fort Tejon. In his diary, Fages describes the grapevines that grew in this region and later afforded a popular and descriptive name for the canyon.

The information regarding the discovery of the Tejon Canyon, which includes the site of the present Lebec Station and old Fort Tejon, was contained in an address, In the South San Joaquin Ahead of Garces, delivered before the Kern County Historical Society by Professor Herbert Eugene Bolton, and subsequently published by that society Bolton, who obtained his information from the recently uncovered diary of Don Pedro Fages, states in part that:

Before the somewhat recent discovery of Fages' diary, Father Garces, in his record of events in 1776, has generally been accepted as the first to have recorded a description of this upper part of the San Joaquin Valley. The Captain Commander, Fages, had, however, been credited with the actual discovery of it when he was hot on the trail of deserters from the Spanish military forces. Now, historians state that the matter has been considerably clarified by the actual description of this fair region in the words of Fages himself. Regarding Garces' description Bolton says:

Location on a Mexican land grant. The property on which the Fort was to be constructed was part of a Mexican grant and was said to be covered by this grant at the time the Fort was built.³ Lieutenant E.F. Beale surveyed fifty thousand acres of this grant when the Tejon Indian reservation was established.⁴ At a later period Beale acquired title to much of this property.⁵ The late J.J. Lopez, longtime resident on the Tejon Rancho, in an interview recalls hearing how Beale purchased the Tejon Rancho from Ignacio del Valle who had acquired it as a Mexican grant and named it Tejon (a Spanish and Indian word meaning badger.) On his first visit to the mouth of the canyon he encountered a badger This is the popular conception of the application of the word Tejon to this property.

Roy Loudon gives the following facts in regard to the Tejon land grant:

The price paid for the Tejon Rancho, as Lopez recalls the story, was $100 a league or about five cents an acre. Lopez also recalls hearing General Beale state that the boundaries of the rancho included the present city of Bakersfield and much valuable oil land. It was later that Colonel Baker took up his residence at the present location of the city of Bakersfield, and it was from Colonel Baker's field that the name Bakersfield originated.

The site of the Fort. The site selected for the army post was located in the Canada de las Uvas, about fifteen miles southwest of the Tejon Indian Reserve, and was among large oak trees that still stand. The approach from the present highway is lined by a more recently planted double row of poplars. A pertinent description of the site of the Fort is given by a railroad exploration report written previous to its inception as a fort.⁶

Pacific railroad route report. Of particular interest is the following selection from R.S. Williamson's account of railroad route explorations in 1853. He describes the exact spot where Fort Tejon was later to be built. The spot is unquestionably the same, due to the reference to the Lebeck tree which still stands on what was once the north edge of the parade ground. (See Figure 4.) In part, Williamson says:

Of particular interest in the foregoing report is the fact that mention is made of the nearby rock formation. Some of this was later to be used as material for foundations for the Fort buildings. The report also mentions the clay content of the soil which was later to be fashioned into adobe bricks. The report's mention of luxuriant grasses has its bearing also, as these grasses, if similar to those found there today, are of the meadow grass variety which are lush and green when fresh, and wiry when dried. Such tough, wiry, dried meadow grass might afford a fine reinforcement for adobe bricks.

The Lebeck Oak. (See Figure 4.) Blake's foregoing description of the Lebeck Oak may be supplemented by a quotation from Bishop Kip's diary of October 11, 1855, in which he states:

Peter Lebeck. (See Figure 4.) The French name, Peter Lebeck or Lebecque, now spelled Lebec as applied to Lebec Station on the Ridge Route, signifies in the minds of Kern County residents, the first pioneer of that region. Peter Lebeck was probably a trapper, perhaps a Canadian voyageur. Legend says that he was great among his associates. The care with which they carved his epitaph on the oak tree under which they buried him bears out this supposition. There is practically no authentic knowledge regarding the life of this almost mythical character. There are a great variety of interesting stories told about him. It is not known from whence he came or his interests in the Canada de las Uvas, his manner of life, or his associates. That he was killed: by "a X bear" is the statement carved on the large oak tree at the corner of the Fort parade ground.

Pioneers in this section of California tell us that the California grizzly was called the X Bear on account of a darkening of the hair along the spine and on the shoulders forming an X.

That Peter Lebeck's body was actually buried beneath this oak tree is proved by the exhumation of his skeleton by a party of campers who called themselves the Foxtail Rangers, in July, 1890. Their own account of the proceedings are in printed form in the Kern County Library in Bakersfield and are given here in part:

The following item in the words of H.A. Spindt, who has gathered much material of historical interest to Kern County, serves as a fitting postlude to this Lebeck exhuming.

Lieutenant Beale made superintendent. In the spring of 1853, Lieutenant Edward Fitzgerald Beale was made superintendent of Indian Affairs in California, and a little more than a year later, Fort Tejon, which was to be his headquarters for administrating Indian Affairs, was established. General Hitchcock, on approving Lieutenant Beale's plan, addressed the Secretary of War to the effect that it appeared to him that the choice of the government lay necessarily between accepting Lieutenant Beale's plan or giving the Indians over to rapid extermination.¹ Lieutenant Beale, who figures prominently in the history of Fort Tejon, was later a brigadier general and also minister to Austria under President Grant.

Topography. A study of the topography of the location of Fort Tejon makes it evident that the selection of the site for the Fort was made with complete disregard for any strategic advantage that a fort might possess as a result of its location. The lack of defense terrain emphasizes the unusual purpose for which this particular fort was built.

Fort Tejon was established on August 10, 1854, at a point in the Tejon Pass, where the Coast Range meets the Sierra Nevada, and about three miles north from the present Lebec Station.

The old Fort records. A letter under the date of March 6, 1940, from Vernon G. Setzer, Acting Chief Division of Reference of the National Archives, reads in part as follows:

Army orders relative to the establishment of the Fort.

(B.L. Beall, referred to below, should not be confused with E.F. Beale.)

Reference to the map on Figure 5 shows the arrangement of buildings and their locations relative to the parade ground as compiled from the evidence at hand.

The bronze marker now placed on the northeast wall of the barrack building No. 1 reads as follows:

Butterfield Overland Mail Station. Fort Tejon was, in 1858, made for a time one of the stations on the famous Butterfield Overland Mail route, whose six-horse stages covered the distance from San Francisco to St. Louis in twenty-three days.¹ Foundations, still in evidence, mark the probable location of the stage station. The ruined adobe building, several hundred yards northwest of Holland's Summit on Highway 99, is sometimes referred to as the Butterfield station. This reference is probably incorrect. The map in Figure 5 shows the approximate location.

Although the actual occupation of the Fort was short-lived, there are a number of interesting incidents that mark that period.

The store. John Philbin, an Irishman, had a small store at Fort Tejon during the 1850s, and was aided by Newmark to amass about $20,000 in eighteen months. Newmark bought the business, but had a new clerk who gambled the funds away. Kasper Cohn then took charge of the store and erected a store building at the cost of $3,000. Newmark bought out Cohn in 1859 prior to Lincoln's election. The store sold for $50 when the troops were withdrawn.²

A band concert. That Fort Tejon boasted of a brass band in 1855 is evidenced by Newmark's reference to music furnished to Los Angeles citizens on July 4, 1855, by a brass band from Fort Tejon.³ The map in Figure 5 shows the location of the adobe building for the band.

By mule team to the Fort. Bishop Kip tells of his trip to Fort Tejon starting from Los Angeles on October 8, 1855, in a large wagon drawn by four mules. The driver was a man well acquainted with the country. All of the members of the Bishop's party were armed, for it was reported that the countryside was infested with bandits and occasional unfriendly Indians.

The journey had hardly begun when, in descending a gulch, the harness broke, frightening the mules, who turned about and snapped the pole. In spite of the delay occasioned by this mishap, the party reached the Mission San Fernando before nightfall. They found that establishment in a sad state of neglect. Don Andreas Pico entertained the Bishop and his party on this occasion.

The next day the travelers reached San Fernando Pass where it was necessary to make a show of arms when, passing through a deep defile, they were stopped by two Indians on horseback who demanded money. That night, camp was made in a small valley near a house which formerly had been the rendezvous of two American outlaws. It was here that these two Americans and four Mexicans had not long before been hanged by lynch law.

The third day the party passed into Antelope Valley. Near Elizabeth Lake there was a settler's hut. Antelope and other game were plentiful. Not far from here several wagons of Mormons were met, going from Salt Lake to their new settlement at San Bernardino.

About noon on the fourth day the Bishop's wagon ascended the Tejon Pass and from there the road to the Fort was an easy one, the party reaching the Fort that afternoon, October 11.⁴

The last day of the journey is described in Bishop Kip's own words as follows:

An Episcopal service. As an official duty of an eminent churchman the Episcopal Bishop Kip visited the Fort, and in his diary of the date October 14, 1855, he not only describes the buildings but tells of conducting the first church service probably ever conducted in this region. The service was held in the then-incomplete barrack building No. 1 which still stands. (See Fig. 6.) All of the officers and many of the men joined the Bishop's party in the service. That afternoon, children of two of the officers received baptism, and on the following morning burial service was read at the grave of a soldier who had died the day previous.⁶

Lieutenant Castor's Grave. The present broken marble slab that once marked the grave of an officer at the Fort was recently patched together and mortared into a small monument located in the old Fort burial ground southwest of the parade ground.

The inscription reads as follows:

Lieutenant Castor, a Pennsylvania youth, was a graduate of West Point and had many distinguished persons as classmates including Stonewall Jackson. His military record is also an enviable one. He served in the war with Mexico, 1847-1848, was engaged in the battle of Cerro Gordo, April 17-18, 1847, the battle of Molino Del Rey, September 8, 1847, and assisted in the capture of Mexico. He was a scout in Illinois in 1853 where he participated in an Indian skirmish, was in Oregon in 1853, at Benicia in 1854 when he was ordered with Company A, Dragoons to Fort Miller and Fort Tejon. His remains are no longer at Fort Tejon. They were removed to his old home in Frankfort, Pennsylvania.⁷

The following two poems, by the late Judge Erwin Owen of the Superior Court of Kern County, were read by H.A. Spindt at a Memorial Day Service held near Lieutenant Castor's monument at Fort Tejon.

Kern County Indians. The Indians found by the first Kern County settlers were not a particularly high type. As late as 1874 these Indians wore few clothes, and lived principally upon squirrel, acorns, berries, wild fruits, and edible roots. The county is well marked by signs of Indian habitation, burial mounds, mortars for grinding corn, and other evidence of village sites.

After the secularization of the California missions, roving Indians from these establishments occasionally came to the interior valley bringing with them a knowledge of the ways of the white man and often introducing to the local Indians a primitive knowledge of agriculture and some of the arts and crafts that had been taught them under the mission system. To these so-called Mission Indians considerable credit may be given for their later contribution towards the actual mechanics of laying the bricks of some of the first buildings at the old Fort.

Indian Tribes. More than a dozen tribes roamed the county. The Indians were, no doubt, happy in their tribal quarrels until the advance of the white man, and matters came to a general climax in 1850, when the Indians of White River made an attack on the white miners and settlers. A peace commission investigated conditions and reported that the Indians had been justified in protesting against being driven from their hunting and fishing grounds.

A somewhat mythical and unrecorded battle between the Piutes and the Diggers is described in the paper by Mae Saunders who states that the story in the following form was told by W.J. Graham in The Bakersfield Californian on March 1-9, 1915.

The Sebastian Indian Reserve. The history of Fort Tejon and that of the Sebastian Indian reservation are so definitely associated with each other that a consideration of one must lead to a consideration of both. A great deal of human interest centers around the Indians who live in the beautiful little Tejon, or Crocker Canyon, which was in the former Sebastian Indian Reserve, about fifteen miles southeast of Fort Tejon, for more than a century and who are now merely tenants of the present land owners. The transfer of their property rights is just one more injustice added to the long list of claims to which our federal government has become callous. This last original tribe of Indians of Kern County is now clinging to its soil in this Tejon Canyon.

Kit Carson. Kit Carson, on his visits to California in 1829 and 1854, came through the Tejon Pass and on his last trip visited Fort Tejon. It is stated that Carson noted a striking decrease in the number of Indians on his latter visit. Alexis Godey, a Kern County trader, was pilot to Kit Carson on his last trip through this region.

The Indian Dog Feast. Again we are indebted to Bishop Kip, who on his journey towards Visalia from Fort Tejon, describes his stop at the Sebastian Indian reservation, where the Indians were holding their annual Dog Feast. He says in part:

Order to suspend building operations. In November, 1855, orders were received to suspend building operations of the Fort, for the present. The barracks for the officers and men were very nearly completed at the time. Quite a number of employees were discharged and the rumor became current that a removal of the Fort was contemplated.¹⁰

Police duties. Excerpts from old newspapers tell of various police duties to which the dragoons were assigned during their occupancy of the Fort. A record of events of this nature taking place between June and December, 1859, indicates the frequency of these occurrences.

In June of that year, during Indian trouble on the nearby Sebastian Reservation, a man named Tomas killed two Indian women, a mother and daughter, and the Indians were intent upon slaying the murderer, when a detachment of dragoons under Captain Davidson and Lieutenant Chapman escorted Tomas to Fort Tejon under guard.

In July of the same year Sergeant Fritz and another trooper went out to seek the murderer of John Sylvester at Colton Wood, six miles from the mail station, fifteen miles from Tejon. The body of Sylvester was found by Sergeant Fritz and Private Crowley, Co. K, 1st Dragoons, and Deputy Sheriff W C. Warren, one hundred yards from the road at Oak Flat on Tejon cutoff. Jose Olivas was arrested for the murder.

The following December, George Hodges stabbed to death John M. Gray, employee of Colonel Vineyard of the Sebastian Reserve, in a drunken brawl in the trading post of Joseph Rice. Gray, who was a pioneer '49er, came to California with Generals Denver and Estell. Hodges was sent to Fort Tejon in irons.

Proximity of an earthquake fault. Mae Saunders, through an interview with a pioneer, Mrs. Withrow, tells that two years after the Fort was completed it suffered severely from earthquake shocks, which destroyed chimneys, threw down walls, and caused inmates to take refuge in tents. The stories of these earthquakes recount that the ground actually opened and closed again, leaving the evidence of an earthquake fault.¹¹

An earthquake fault map, compiled from the data of the American Seismological Society, shows the relationship of the Tejon fault to the well-known San Andreas fault, which runs through the present Gorman station only a few miles distance from the Fort.

From the Post records it would seem that Mrs. Withrow's statement may somewhat overestimate the severity of the earthquake shocks. It is probable that the early settlers here did not know of the proximity of a major earthquake fault, yet they were aware that earthquakes frequently visited this region. This may be evidenced by the name given to the nearby rancho, San Emigdio. Saint Emigdio is a Roman saint who suffered martyrdom under Diocletian and who is invoked for protection against earthquakes.¹² Father Geiger, of the Santa Barbara Mission, has suggested that the name San Emigdio may have been applied to that locality for the reason that one of the early exploring padres passed that way, or stopped there on the day set aside in the Saint's calendar for San Emigdio.

The Post Return gives the date of the most severe earthquake, probably the one referred to by Mrs. Withrow, as January 9, 1857, and records the following brief statement regarding it.

Arthur Woodward, of the Los Angeles Museum, makes the following statement regarding this earthquake:

Aid Given to the Los Angeles Safety Committee. To Los Angeles in January, 1857, fifty soldiers from Fort Tejon were sent to aid the committee of safety in that city in its search for outlaws.¹³

Bear paws, a delicious tid-bit. In November, 1857, it is reported that several of the officers at the Post went hunting for bear and killed two glorious specimens in one day. The paws, weighing about two pounds each, were cooked in the ground under the campfire, where they were left all night. When they were taken out and skinned and served, it was found that the bottom of the foot was a mass of delicious marrow, only more delicate.¹⁴

The coming of the camels. Canoas (troughs) canyon, near the Fort was so named on account of the camel feeding troughs hewn out of oak logs. It was thought by the late J.J. Lopez that General Beale traversed the road from San Vicente ranch through Soledad and Desert Springs via Tejon Rancho to Fort Tejon when he conducted the first and last United States Army Camel Corps to Fort Tejon in the fall of 1857, having brought these camels overland from San Antonio, Texas. The story goes that General Beale persuaded the War Department to establish a camel corps for transportation in the arid sections of Arizona, New Mexico, and California. In art old San Francisco paper, the Southern California Historical Society tells us that a Los Angeles correspondent wrote the following item:

Truxtun Beale, the son of General Beale, recalled riding to Los Angeles from Tejon with his father, in a sulky drawn by a tandem team of camels. It is stated that the General, when necessary, could carry on a conversation in Syrian with these animals.¹⁵

Jefferson Davis favors a camel corps. When, in 1853, Jefferson Davis became Secretary of War in the Cabinet of President Pierce, he came more intimately in contact with the troubles of military transportation in the West, and resolved to give the camel an opportunity to lessen these difficulties. It was partly through his efforts that the camel corps was established.

The birth of a camel. By his intelligent and energetic care, Lieutenant Porter, who had charge of transporting the camels to this country from their native habitat, kept his charges in excellent health, and landed thirty-five safely at Indianola, Texas, May 14, 1856. There was a gain of one on the voyage, and all were apparently in really better condition than when taken from the sandy wastes of their native deserts.

After some days of rest, the herd was marched by easy stages to San Antonio, Texas, about one hundred and twenty miles, where Major Wayne set about making arrangements to establish a camel ranch and to attempt the breeding of the animals.

Beale in charge of camels. During the summer of 1857, the camels were used sparingly in carrying supplies and on short trips. In the fall of that year, Lieutenant Edward Fitzgerald Beale was employed to open a wagon road from Fort Defiance, New Mexico, to the eastern frontiers of California, and a part of the herd of camels was put at his disposal for this expedition. The journey occupied forty-eight days through an unexplored wilderness of forest and plain and desert. Lieutenant Beale spoke in the most enthusiastic terms of the work performed by the camels on this arduous trip. He said that they saved the members of this expedition from hardships, and excited the admiration of the whole party by their ability and willingness to perform the tasks set them. He started with the determination that the experiment should be most thorough, and subjected the camels to trials which he stated that no other animals could possibly have endured. On the desert they carried the water for the mules, traversed stretches of country covered with the sharpest volcanic rock without injury to their feet, climbed with heavy packs over mountains where the unloaded mules found it difficult to go, even with the assistance of the dismounted riders, and, to the surprise of all the party, plunged into rivers without hesitation and swam them with ease. The Lieutenant concluded that he would rather have one of the camels for such work than four of the best of his mules.

Camel efficiency. During this time the animals rendered efficient service and were so well cared for by Lieutenant Beale that in 1861, with the coming of a new administration and a new Secretary of War, he turned over to the Government Quartermaster in California a herd of twenty-eight, all in good condition.¹⁶

A Los Angeles news item has this to say of the camel corps:

A mortal combat. Thus, after a checkered official life of eleven years, the camels passed finally into the hands of private owners. Of the two shiploads of animals, the government retains nothing except the bones of one of the beasts, which stand in a case at the National Museum at Washington, illustrating to students the peculiar framework of the "ship of the desert," besides serving as a souvenir to those acquainted with the story of the attempt to transplant these ancient drudges from their homes in Africa and Asia to the western world. The camel whose bones are thus preserved was killed at Fort Tejon by one of its mates that got loose during the night. The animals were rutting and consequently intractable. The soldiers relate that the combat was most furious, the beasts striking each other resounding blows with their ponderous feet, while the drivers dared not interfere. The bones of the defeated animal were forwarded by Lieutenant Sylvester Mowry to the Smithsonian Institute.

Inspector General Mansfield's report. In a report to the Assistant Adjutant General, Irvin McDowel, under the date of March 5, 1859, Inspector General J.K.F. Mansfield made a number of pertinent statements, some of which are included here. In reference to the earthquake of January 9, 1857, he writes:

In regard to the source of supplies for Fort Tejon he states:

In the following paragraph regarding the dragoons of Company K, he tells us that the enlisted men at the Fort are comfortably housed and equipped.

Speaking of the Quartermaster Department he makes an interesting statement regarding a sawmill:

Telegraph line installed. In October, 1860, a telegraph line was completed from Visalia to Fort Tejon and from Fort Tejon to Los Angeles. The telegraph poles were square and of redwood. They were shipped into Wilmington and from there teamed by Phineas Banning to their location. The population of Tejon Reserve and Fort Tejon was estimated at about one thousand persons at this time.¹⁸

Dr. Letterman assigned to duty at the Fort. Dr. J. Letterman, U.S.A., arrived in Los Angeles bound for Fort Tejon to relieve Dr. Ten Braech, who was ordered east.¹⁹

A horse thief. About this time several citizens at Fort Tejon wrote a letter concerning a horse thief at large near Fort Tejon, who stole a mule from the corral where the camels were kept by Greek George. George let Watson, the thief, have the animal on false order. Lieutenant Colonel Beall sent a detail to round up the thief.²⁰

Wagons repaired in Los Angeles. In April, 1860, about sixty wagons arrived in Los Angeles from Fort Tejon for repairs as well as harness for six hundred horses. A large purchase of horseshoes was taken back to the Fort with the repaired wagons and harness.²¹

Scathing criticism of Indian Affairs. A correspondent of the Visalia Delta, who had spent several days at Fort Tejon, gives information concerning the Indians thereabouts:

Discussed abandonment of Fort.

The Lost Padre Mine. One of the most persistent legends that has grown up around the old Fort and its surrounding mountains is the story of the Lost Padre Mine. W.J. Graham, in The Bakersfield Californian from March 1 to 9, 1915, presents this convincing story which contains much colorful descriptive matter of the early days at the Fort. The legend describes a fabulously rich gold mine, which was discovered by three Spanish Padres, the location of which was known to no one except the Padres and the Chief of the Tejon Indian tribe, who was sworn to guard its location with his life, passing the secret on to his successor only on his deathbed. Many incidents of Graham's story have been corroborated by the pioneers, among them no less an authority than the late J.J. Lopez. There are many persons who still believe in the existence of the Lost Padre Mine, while others declare it to be pure myth. Seasoned and amateur prospectors still search for it. There is in existence a map purporting to have come from the three Padres who discovered the mine. It shows the exact location, but the map does not check in the slightest particular with the government map of this region.

Abandoned.

After the abandonment of Fort Tejon it became a part of the extensive Tejon Rancho, originally purchased as a part of a Mexican grant by E.F. Beale. In 1878, J.J. Lopez was employed to raise sheep for the Tejon Rancho by R.S. Baker, then a partner of Edward Fitzgerald Beale. The ranch was, for a time leased to the Hill Rivers Company for sheep and cattle raising. From 1886 to 1927 Lopez took complete charge of the sheep raising there. Lopez has recalled the Fort buildings as they were in 1878, then consisting of about twelve long, rambling adobe structures, surrounding the parade ground in a U-shape with the burial ground in the canyon in the rear. Earthquake shocks in the early days seriously damaged these buildings, five of which were taken down and many of the bricks used for construction at the rancho.

The ranch house at the Fort was originally officers' quarters.

Fire destroyed this building in 1935.

Fort begins to decay. The condition of Fort Tejon in 1874 was pathetic. The buildings were rapidly going to decay; the parade grounds were turned into a sheep corral, and the officers' quarters were used as sheep herders' houses.²⁴

When the Fort was abandoned as a military post, the buildings were sufficient for a fair-sized town.²⁵

Soldiers march at Fort again. The Coast Artillerymen made camp at Tejon while on the way to Sequoia in 1934. Cannon and measured tread of soldiers again sounded in the historic grounds of Fort Tejon, one of the military strongholds of the state in early days, as three hundred members of the Sixty-third Coast Artillery made camp there for a forty-eight-hour stay before resuming their trek from Fort MacArthur to Sequoia National Park.²⁶

Camels carry mail in philatelic fete. From the Los Angeles Evening Herald and Express of November 4, 1935, the following excerpts of an article by Lyle Abbott are taken.²⁷

Fort recently deeded to State of California. Somewhat recently announcement was made through public press and verified by a communication from Newton B. Drury of the Department of Natural Resources, Division of Parks of the State of California, under the date of January 24, 1940, that "the State of California, through its Park Commission, has acquired a deed to five acres of property on which Fort Tejon is located. The deed is, however, subject to stipulations of a ten-year lease which is at the present time in operation."

It was largely through the efforts of the late Miss Ralpha E. Sanders, working with Newton B. Drury, H.A. Spindt, the local chapters of the Native Sons and Daughters of the Golden West, the Kern County Historical Society and others that the State acquired the property in 1939. The recent action of the State was hailed with approbation by the local press and many prominent citizens, who have long urged this step.

The following news item verifies the acquisition of the Fort by the State:

A sketch map of the arrangement of the Fort buildings accompanied a report sent by Colonel J K. F Mansfield, Inspector General, U.S.A., to Major I. McDowell, on March 5, 1859, has proved of assistance in locating the buildings on the compiled map. (See Figure 5.)

Written description of buildings. Bishop Kip's mention of the appearance of the Fort buildings is one of the few references to be found regarding the size and general appearance. (See Figures 6 and 7.) He states:

The Los Angeles Star, under the date of January 24, 1857, gives a description of the damage done to the various buildings at the Fort in the earthquake of January 9, 1857, naming each building separately in the report as follows:

The foregoing description has proved of value in naming the different buildings located on the compiled map. The following paragraph has also materially assisted in locating the position of the Fort buildings as shown on the map.

Mrs. R.J. Garner, who as a child played at the Fort many times, gives her recollections of the Fort buildings to Mrs. Charles E. Yates in a personal interview, stating that:

Examination of present buildings and ruins. From an examination of the adobe brickwork of the walls of the present barrack building No. 1, it is quite evident that the adobe walls of this old Fort building were very well built. The bricks themselves are, after a period of more than eighty-five years, quite firm and well mortared into the structure. The mortar was probably the same adobe mix as the bricks. In several places, however, large structural cracks have occurred. These considerably weaken the structure and have evidently caused the owners of the property to introduce iron tie rods at various points to strengthen it. (See Figure 6.)

The builders did not know that they were building the Fort almost directly over an earthquake fault, and but three miles from the now well-defined and occasionally active, San Andreas fault. Realizing this fact, we may wonder how this barrack building has so well withstood the several major earthquake shocks that have rocked it.

No conscious provision for earthquake resistance. With heavy timber plates serving as bond to cap the adobe walls, yet, with perhaps no conscious consideration of lateral stresses in the design, the old barrack has indeed stood up well. High adobe walls, two story in one portion, are less apt to withstand earth shocks. Perhaps the roof structure which consists of adequate, well-designed, timber trusses has served a double purpose by also transmitting horizontal forces and holding the adobe walls in place. (See Figure 11.)

Rain and snow take their toll. The elements of rain and mountain snows, in spite of the wide over-hanging eaves, have taken their toll of the unprotected, unstabilized adobe brick wall surfaces. There have been some repairs, some remodeling and filling of cracks as the occasion demanded. One natural phenomenon and menace to the adobe walls is the action of woodpeckers that infest the district. They pick out little holes, and in the fall of the year carry acorns from the nearby oaks and place them with evident forethought in these crevices. In the spring, many of these same acorns, warmed by the sun, serve as the hatching place for small grub-like worms, which the birds return to claim as tasty morsels, and the others are consumed merely as acorns.

The Mission Indians may have laid the bricks. After the secularization of the California Missions in 1834 many of the Indians who had come under the influence of the mission system found their way into the interior valleys of California, so that the Indians of the San Joaquin Valley, as elsewhere in California, were not entirely without contact or knowledge of the ways of the white man when American settlers began to arrive. The Mission Indians retained and passed on to their fellows definite knowledge and skills acquired under the tutelage of the white man at the mission establishments.

It was so among the Indians gathered together at the reservation and military post at Tejon. Here there were a number of the so-called Mission Indians, familiar with various agricultural pursuits and practices common to the Mission system, but there were also some proficient in the arts and crafts connected with building construction, especially those crafts based upon the use of sun-dried adobe blocks as a building material, according to the mission practice.

The first adobe houses in this region. We are told that prior to the establishment of the reservation at Tejon and the Fort at Tejon Pass, a white man by the name of French had built himself an adobe house on the Mexican grant which was to become in part the Tejon reservation. Upon the actual establishment of the reservation a number of sizeable adobe buildings were constructed. Mention is made of a granary, a mill, the superintendent's house, and the headquarters building. As these buildings were all built of adobe brick, it is quite natural that the operation of actual construction should fall upon those Indians who had previously acquired some skill in this work, and so the Mission Indians were undoubtedly here engaged in the building trade. As several adobe structures on the reservation were built prior to the actual commencement of construction of the Fort buildings, it is reasonable to believe that the same crews of brick-makers and brick-layers who built the reservation buildings also constructed the Fort buildings. It may be borne in mind that the Fort was only fifteen miles distant from the reservation and for a time under the same management. It is evident by a careful inspection and thorough study of the two remaining adobe buildings in the old Fort group that the adobe work there was of a very satisfactory order of craftsmanship and shows in no detail any evidence of adobe brickwork having been done by unpraticed workmen in this field.

No official plan. (See Figure 5.) Can it be possible that the War Department of the United States Government caused Federal Fort Tejon to be constructed without having made and retained a precise record of its architectural plans and specifications? Perhaps, in the case of Fort Tejon, complete reliance on Lieutenant E.F. Beale and his new policy regarding Indian Affairs in California prompted General Hitchcock and the War Department to waive the customary drawings and allow the new Indian Affairs superintendent in California to proceed carte blanche in the construction of Fort Tejon. If there is a builder 's plan of this fort, it will be a most interesting discovery in connection with the architecture of the Fort.

In lieu of such a plan or other definite written descriptions defining the original arrangement of buildings on the site, their number and purpose, it has been possible from a sketch map made in 1859 by Colonel Mansfield, letters, diaries, news accounts, documents, an old picture or two, together with mounds of earth on the spot where adobe walls once stood, and the recollection of "old timers" to gain a fairly good idea of the lay-out of the Fort Tejon establishment. The map in Figure 5 is a result of such a study. Several authorities have stated that the parade ground was the center of a quadrangle or U-shaped grouping of the Fort buildings. The present standing barrack building was southeast of this parade ground. The Peter Lebeck Oak, now marked with an historical marker, was on the north side of the parade ground. The old hospital building was at the northwest edge of the parade ground and matched in design the present standing barrack building. J.J. Lopez has stated that the old hospital building was taken down, brick by brick, and removed to Tejon Rancho to be built anew into a ranch building. Lopez has called the building that occupied the southwest end of the quadrangle the officers' quarters. This structure burned in 1935 after having been used for a number of years as a ranch house. Southwest of the former officers' quarters there are two small unidentified buildings.

Leonard tells that the Fort was nearly on a line with the present recently changed position of the Golden State Highway No. 99. He tells us, also, that the stores and other civilian enterprises grew up adjacent to the Fort. The finding of Lieutenant Castor's broken tombstone in the valley southwest of the officers' quarters has led to the establishment of this as the burial ground where thirteen soldiers were said to have been buried during the time of the Fort occupancy.

The buildings possessed an early California flavor. The details of the barrack building, with its deep-beveled and wood-faced reveals on the inside of the window openings, its two-feet-wide window stools and the entire inside of the opening trimmed with neat mill work over the plaster, are reminiscent of the similar details and trim that finished such notable adobes as the De la Guerra house in Santa Barbara and the Estudillo house in San Diego. During the vogue of building adobe homes in California, between the years 1820 to 1850, at Monterey, Santa Barbara, San Juan Bautista, Los Angeles, and San Diego, the double-hung window, muntined [sic] after the American Eastern Colonial precedent, was a characteristic of this particular California architectural trend. It is this similarity in windows that is noted in the old hospital building at the Fort, long since taken down but easily distinguishable from an old photograph of about 1888. Although there are no remains of the actual window sash in the barrack building, it is presumed that they corresponded with the sash in this picture. The window jambs may readily be reconstructed from the remaining parts of the jambs of the barrack building. It is evident that these buildings possessed an early California adobe flavor, perhaps more noticeable through the employment of the same simple building material built into an honest expression that fell naturally into similar forms to other adobe buildings of about the same period. (See Figure 1.)

Meager description of Fort Buildings.

A sketch of the end room of the second barrack building, popularly called the blacksmith shop, on account of its service as such during the ranch regime, shows the natural deterioration characteristic of the uncared-for old buildings. (See Figure 7.)

Shape of foundations. The foundation walls investigated are three feet and four inches in height and' are from one to two feet above the present grade. No footings have been found, the walls extending down in uniform thickness. The foundation was stepped up at three stages in the barrack building No. 1, in order to conform to the general slope of the site.

The material for the foundation is a rather firm variety of quartz schist, or quartz-hornblende schist, cut into pieces of varying dimensions up to three feet in length and approximately six inches thick. This rock is soft enough to be readily split into the proper thickness for courses and to be broken into usable shapes to match joints, yet when mortared in place, it has afforded an adequate bearing for the adobe walls. By carrying the rock foundations well above grade, the walls were better able to withstand much of the eaves drip and water splash which would have done damage to adobe bricks if laid close to the grade. The menace of melting snow was also greatly lessened by bringing the rock foundation well above grade. An outcropping of rock of this nature has been located on the side hill north and about 30° east of the Fort site. As there has been considerable excavation here, it seems possible that this may have been the source of this foundation material. Most of the rock outcropping in the vicinity is a hard granite, not so easily worked for foundation purposes.

This type of rock foundation is typical of the Fort buildings that are standing and also of those that are distinguishable only by the mounds of melted adobe bricks that, for the most part, conceal their foundations except for an occasional protruding rock. The same variety of rock foundations remain to indicate where there once stood other adobe buildings of the Fort group, buildings that have been removed brick by brick to be built anew into ranch structures at the headquarters of the Tejon Rancho.

Mortar. The mortar used in laying the foundations is an adobe clay and loam, and adheres poorly to the rock, serving only as a filler of crevices. In spite of this inadequacy of the mortar, the general stability of the rock work is good, due to the care and precision with which the blocks are fitted and laid. This masonry work was evidently done by masons trained in this trade.

Adobe brick masons were skilled. As has been mentioned previously, it seems highly probable that the same crews of Indian brick-makers and Indian brick-layers, who constructed the Tejon Rancho buildings, prior to the commencement of construction of Fort Tejon, were employed on the Fort Tejon adobe construction as well. A statement by one William Hamilton to the effect that he came to Fort Tejon in April or May, 1855, where he had a contract for making adobe bricks for the government, and resided there until October or November of the same, year may be authentic, yet it must be remembered that construction of the Fort was ordered to begin in June of the previous year.²

The fact remains that the adobe masonry work at the Fort was well done and not the work of persons unskilled in either making or laying adobe bricks. (See Figure 10.)

From an examination of several of the original bricks from the barrack building, it has been definitely determined that a binder of dried grass or straw was used in the brick mix. It is interesting to note that this dried grass, small roots, and occasional chips of wood, have, in some instances, been very well preserved in the clay mixture, which, when dried, has kept them from the air and elements for more than eighty-five years. The proportion of straw is less than is customarily thought good practice today in unstabilized adobe brick making. A test of samples of four-inch cubes, cut from some of the barrack building adobe bricks, shows a compressive strength of 302 pounds per square inch. This is below the 350 pounds per square inch which is considered good practice in modern adobe construction. The water absorption of similar samples from the old bricks is higher than desired in modern adobe work. Should a restoration of this adobe work be contemplated, it would seem advisable to use an approved waterproof stabilizer with the soil to be used for brickmaking, thereby waterproofing and, at the same time, increasing the compressive strength.

Size and type of brickwork. Adobe bricks used in the Fort construction are approximately 4x12x18 inches, and were laid common bond in 24 inch thick exterior walls and 18 inch interior walls. A header course was placed just above the rock foundation and another header course directly under the timber plate upon which the floor joists rest, and thereafter header courses every ninth course. Special sizes of bricks or cut bricks were used as necessary or advisable to conform to the requirements.

Probable method of making bricks. (See Figure 9) There are many recipes for making adobe bricks, and it is uncertain which was used at the Fort. The one used was, probably, similar to the one in vogue in Los Angeles at the same period, somewhat like a recipe for baking powder biscuits without the baking powder. A little water was allowed to run into the adobe pit, where Indian laborers, with the aid of hoes, mashed the dry adobe, tramped it to a dough with their feet, working in a small quantity of dried meadow grass as a reinforcement. When a batch had been sufficiently worked, two men with a litter would stand by. As a cook sprinkles the bread board with flour before depositing the biscuit dough, so the litter-carriers sprinkled their litter with very fine and dry manure, and upon this deposited the adobe batch, which, in turn, they carried to the brick-makers. The makers worked with wooden forms like biscuit cutters. The adobe batch was placed and pressed by hand into the forms until full, then the forms were immediately removed and the bricks left to bake in the sun. After several days of good drying weather, the bricks were stood on edge and scraped free from dirt on their underside and then allowed to stand in rows, herringbone fashion, to dry from both sides. In a few more days these bricks were stacked in piles to cure. In such mild climates as at Fort Tejon, bricks might well be made at least two or three months before they were built into the walls. In the hot dry valleys of the interior it is quite safe, in the hot summer months, to use bricks in construction that have been made two weeks previously. (See Figure 9.)

Probable manner of laying bricks. The mortar used in laying the adobe work at the Fort is quite similar to the material from which the bricks were made, yet in many places it has a different color from the bricks between which it is laid. This may be accounted for by a slight difference in color of material of bricks themselves in various portions of the buildings, the source of soil supply varying from one adobe mixing pit to another.

The adobe mortar for the brickwork was formed into a solid bed about 3/8 inch thick for each course. This would indicate that the adobe masons used the slush-and-slide method of laying bricks. The end joints were completely filled, thus making a solid wall with all joints completely full. The exterior walls were probably built plumb and true on the outside, in which event the interior surfaces would be slightly irregular, due to varying amount of brick shrinkage in drying. This irregularity and the unpointed joints inside served as a somewhat better surface for a plaster base and better key than if the inside of the walls had been worked over to make them smooth before plastering.

The source of lumber is uncertain. The lumber used for the roof trusses of the barrack buildings is a firm, tough variety of cypress, rough-sawn with saw marks still showing. (See Fig. 11.) As there were no local forests that afforded the type of lumber used in the building of the roof trusses in the barrack buildings, it is assumed that this material was hauled in. Other lumber may have been milled locally. There was, in the early days of the Fort, the first steam operated saw mill in this region, Mill Potrero, located on the west fork of San Emigdio Creek near the head of the arroyo. It was here, early residents tell us, that Joseph Gale milled lumber for Fort Tejon and other neighboring improvements. In 1858, Gale settled on a homestead near the present Grapevine Station. A news item in the Southern Californian, a weekly newspaper published in Bakersfield and under the date of March 14, 1875, states that the sawmill in San Emigdio Canyon was being moved to the other side of the mountain, near Cuddy Place to the same location where lumber was sawed for the construction of Government buildings at Fort Tejon. There are other reports that the lumber was teamed in from San Pedro or freighted in from Santa Barbara.

The roof sheathing is remarkable for its toughness and the width of boards. They are 1 inch thick, random width, ranging from 12 to 18 inches wide. These are secured to the trusses with square-cut nails, effectively but sparingly used. (See Figures 10, 11.)

Philip Johnston, in the November issue of Touring Topics in 1933, makes a rather bold statement when he says, in an article entitled, Saga of Old Fort Tejon, that:

A study of the sketches and measured drawings of carpenter work gives a clear idea of the excellence with which this trade was plied at Fort Tejon. (See Figures 10, 11.)

Carpenter work. The floor framing, with its occasional mortise and tenon joints, and the roof truss carpentry shows a precision and accuracy and expert craftsmanship that is remarkable. A dovetail joint is pegged with two square pegs at the bottom of each queen post. Lap joints in the bottom chord also secured by pegs, and the truss heel, which is adequately designed and expertly executed, are shown here. (See Figures 8, 12.)

Millwork. Adding credence to the supposition that the rough lumber came in by freighters from Santa Barbara or San Pedro is the fact that the millwork, which includes the baseboard, dado strip, door frames and doors, window frames and sash as pictured in the hospital building (See Figure 1) is an especially refined product which closely resembles the type of millwork that was being used in Santa Barbara, Los Angeles, and other well-established communities at that time. The two remaining doors of the barrack building, although they may have been added at a later time, are the typical four-panel doors of the period. The window sash have all been removed, but old pictures of the hospital building and the officers' quarters show a double-hung type of window, with two vertical muntins and one horizontal in each sash, which we may assume was also characteristic of the windows of the barrack buildings.

Lathing and plastering. (See Figure 11.) The ceilings of the rooms in the barrack building were stripped with 1⅛x2¼ inch rough-sawn pine strips, nailed 12 inches on centers, to the bottom chord of trusses and to intermediate ceiling joists or beams placed half-way between trusses, thus affording a support for the strips every two feet. The nails used were 2 inch square-cut iron nails. The lath were split pieces of mountain cedar, &frac1; to ¼ inch thick and approximately 1 inch in width, and were spaced about ¼ inch apart at their greatest interval.

The adobe walls were left unpointed on the interior as the protruding adobe mortar and partially unfilled joints were of advantage in securing greater plaster adherence and key to the adobe walls.

Examination of pieces of plaster from the barrack buildings indicates that it was applied to the walls in three coats. The first, or scratch-coat, was about ⅜ inch thick and contained a meager amount of brown and black hair, resembling that obtained from cowhides. A second or brown coat, a little lighter in color, was applied to the scratch-coat. The finish, or skim-coat, was a thin coat of lime putty hardly more than a sixteenth of an inch thick. The samples of plaster show that a coat of whitewash was applied to this skim-coat. This, however, may have been done at a later time.

Trim set in plaster. The baseboard, window and door trim, and dado strip were installed by nailing them to the nailing blocks built into the adobe. These were installed before the scratch coat of plaster was applied. In this way, crevices caused by irregularities of the surface were eliminated.

Mrs. P.J. Garner, whose father assisted in building the Fort, makes the following statement regarding the plastering:

The statement regarding the use of whey may not be entirely accurate, as it would seem to be a very difficult ingredient to obtain, and, at the same time, quite unnecessary.

Preliminary steps leading to the formation of a state park. When the State of California, on January 4, 1940, closed the matter of taking title to the five acres of the Fort site, which includes the parade ground and the ruins of several buildings facing it, hope was aroused that the California Department of Natural Resources, working with the California State Park Commission, might follow the plan proposed by Senator J.I. Wagy and adopted by the State Legislature, when, on May 10, 1937, that body passed a resolution directing the Department of Natural Resources, through the Park Commission of the State of California, to restore old Fort Tejon as a memorial park and historical museum.¹

There are two important considerations that stand in the way of putting this resolution in effect. The first is that the property is subject to the provisions of a lease which will not expire for ten years. The second is the matter of acquiring funds for restoration purposes. When the Park Commission is able to adjust these matters, work will undoubtedly begin with a view to the development of this historic spot as a state park.

An historical museum hoped for. Bakersfield and Kern County residents have long looked forward to the establishment of an historical museum at Fort Tejon. Here, it is stated, many relics and documents of the early days of this region might be gathered together and placed in a fire-resisting structure under the custody of a qualified curator. Such an establishment not only would serve well the needs of an historically-minded community, but also would be a matter of early California interest to the hordes of strangers, who, each season, pass the gateway to the Fort as they travel the Golden State Highway.

With the passing of the years this bit of California in the "Fifties," if preserved, not only will grow richer in tradition and romance, but also will continue to bear evidence through the mute testimony of its roof trusses alone, of the excellent craftsmen who practiced carpentry in those pioneer days. Joints, mortised and tenoned, lapped or dove-tailed, pegged securely together with square wooden pegs, speak eloquently of the hours of meticulous labor that were necessary to accomplish what, with metal strap and bolt, are so hastily done today.

In such a museum, the name of Peter Lebeck would be perpetuated. General Edward Fitzgerald Beale, whose plan for protecting the Indians from extermination, caused the building of the Fort, would be revered. Lieutenant Castor, who lost his life in service at the Fort, the early settlers, the famous persons who sojourned there, all would add to the historic interest of the spot. Joaquin Murietta [sic], the notorious outlaw and traditional Robin Hood of California, would find mention as having frequented the Tejon Pass before the inception of the Fort in 1854. Recalcitrant Indians, stealing horses, drew their posse of dragoons, as did banditry in the confines of the city of Los Angeles. The strange episode of the United States Camel Corps fires the imagination, but more picturesque than all this is the scene that may be conjured up of dragoons and marching blue-clad soldiers, a part of the martial life that ebbed and flowed about the Fort in the early "Sixties" when the great drama of the West was in the making. All these and many more highlights in the life of Fort Tejon might well intrigue the passer-by to consider its historical heritage.

Authentic architectural restoration anticipated. Before a museum could be well and appropriately housed at old Fort Tejon, one of the former adobe buildings, studied with sympathy and understanding, should arise again to lend itself to an authentic restoration. It might be reconstructed of stabilized, waterproof adobe bricks after the best modern practice. It should be designed with all structural considerations to enable it to withstand to-be-expected lateral stresses. All of this could be accomplished economically, and, at the same time, in perfect accord with the early California flavor and pioneer spirit that was a part of the old structures. Adherence to the known details of the old work would restore for posterity another rare old adobe landmark about which there might cluster anew much history and pioneer lore of those early days of California.

(Suggested plan of restoration)

January 30, 1949

It is the purpose of the undersigned authorized representatives of interested groups in Kern County to analyze briefly the existing status of the Fort Tejon project and urge a policy of progressive steps in the restoration of the Fort. It is suggested that a research analyst with both historical and architectural interests be assigned to the project, that interviews with old-timers be recorded, and that a new attempt be made to pry the official records from the Army archives. A proposed acquisition of additional property as outlined in a map prepared by the Kern County Planning Commission is imperative, as the sites of all the Fort buildings should be owned by the State. The County of Kern has expressed its willingness to share with the State of California the expense of this acquisition.

The ideal goal is to restore the original buildings and environs, to furnish the structures with the type of equipment they formerly possessed, and to equip them with adequate personnel. But to proceed with systematic reconstruction, it is necessary to establish immediate and intermediate goals which will be flexible, depending on the funds available and the historical research done.

Past and present status of Fort Tejon:

Located 36 miles south of Bakersfield and 77 miles north of Los Angeles, in Kern County, California, and on Highway 99, Old Fort Tejon possesses tremendous possibilities for informing the visiting public on the historical aspects of the intriguing mid-nineteenth century and on historical and geographical aspects of this region.

The Fort, established by the United States Army on August 10, 1854, for ten years occupied an exciting and unique position in the annals of California history Since its abandonment on September 11, 1864, the buildings have been used as residences, stables, or sheds, or have remained unused. A few repairs have made some of the buildings adequate as ranch structures. Extensive bracing was installed by the Native Sons of the Golden West in the fall of 1916. Nevertheless, the deterioration of the buildings has continued through the years.

In 1939 the State of California, through the Division of Beaches and Parks, acquired title to approximately five acres of land which contains only a portion of the original Fort buildings. During the winter of 1947-48 a curator was placed on the Fort grounds, and the work of gathering the readily-available historical data for the use of the State commenced. Artifacts discovered during this period have been saved and their points of discovery recorded. Detailed measurements of Barrack No. 1 and its millwork were taken, a study of the stability of the walls was made; and plan for immediate work was prepared. Adobe studies revealed the source of suitable brick-making soil, and the weakened portions of the walls were rebuilt. Internal reinforcement to resist possible earthquakes was placed. Floor joists were procured and installed. Exterior doors, sash, and frames were nearly all installed, and much of the trim was milled. The flooring is on hand. One of the fireplaces has been rebuilt to the plate line and another has been started.

Construction has frequently been ahead of research, and the crews were required to change schedules pending decisions necessitating architectural research. A great many details are still undecided, and, as a result, together with bad weather, work on the restoration is almost at a standstill. Some of the unanswered questions involve the original use of the large foundations near the southwest outside doors of the middle two rooms, the treatment to be given the apparently unused stairwell in the northeast room, and the type and location of steps and landings, both inside and outside the building. There is uncertainty about the extent of furring, lathing and plastering, and type of roofing. Preservative treatment of exposed adobe walls demands attention.

When research does not keep pace with construction, difficulties arise, as is illustrated by the recent discovery of an old photograph showing the walls of Barrack No. 1 to be approximately two feet higher than at present. This same picture shows the northeast end wall to be adobe up to the roof line and to be pierced by two attic windows. This old picture is the one that should be followed in the restoration.

Valuable collections of data have been presented to the State for its guidance. Much time has been unselfishly donated by Kern County citizens to further the progress of this monument and to help with technical problems involved. Without such generous participation the restoration of the old Fort would be seriously handicapped.

The development of the Fort Tejon project is not only a challenge but also an opportunity. Highway 99 bears a large part of the north-south traffic through this section of our state. The historical aspect of California adds a tremendous impetus to the ever-expanding tourist resources. Being located at the top of the steep portion of the Grapevine Grade, this monument is a natural stopping place, and will be welcomed by travelers.

The completed monument, as well as the operations of reconstruction, will give the Division of Beaches and Parks and also Kern County's participating agencies an unparalleled opportunity to inform a great mass of people of the fine work that is being done to serve them through the restoration of our cherished historical areas.

Restoration policy:

The organizations here represented by the undersigned, wish to suggest the following restoration policy: The establishment of the period of restoration as of the time when each building was first constructed. Such a reconstruction will not show earthquake damage, but should show any modifications made at the time of the repair necessitated by earthquake damage. The buildings, in other words, should be presented as they appeared to the soldiers assigned to the Fort.

The master plan should include not only the immediate restoration of Barrack No. 1 but also the reconstruction, as funds are available, of the other main buildings, chief among them is the Hospital and Commissary Building that once stood southwest of the Lebeck Oak. In the opinion of the undersigned, this building should be reconstructed following the restoration of Barrack No. 1. Now is the time to prepare plans for the rebuilding of this Hospital and Commissary Building, basing them on historical research.

While the over-all plan for restoration should include the entire Fort, it is suggested that those buildings now in ruins which will necessarily await their turn for reconstruction, be preserved in their present state of ruin by the use of approved preservatives or by the erection of protecting structures.

The impact of Fort Tejon on the history of California has probably not been vital enough to preclude a disturbance of the "sanctity" of the area. It appears that the opportunity of serving a great number of people by helping them gain an insight into the historical background of the Fort indicates a preference for an interpretive treatment. The undersigned recommend the living museum idea as of great dramatic and forceful educational value. It is quite thinkable that the State Guard of California might welcome the privilege of using the old Fort as a training ground during the summer period, activating it in conformity to the times when the dragoons occupied it. Provided with mounts, uniforms of the period and authentic equipment, the colorful traditions might be reenacted for a few days in the training period of each member of our own State Guard.

Signed by

CLARENCE CULLIMORE, Chairman of Recommendations Committee

RICHARD BAILEY for Kern County Historical Society

F.F. LATTA for Kern County Museum

CHESTER JAMES for Kern County Planning Commission

R.W. LOUDON for Native Sons of the Golden West No. 42

MRS. R.B. SANDERS for Native Daughters of the Golden West, El Tejon Parlor No. 239.