There was gold in those hills.
Hidden in the rugged Sierra Nevada, amid vast pine forests, Havilah was once a bustling mining town where stamp mills pulverized rock from the area’s mines and prospectors searched for precious metals in the late 19th century.
In its heyday, the town’s main street featured saloons, dance halls, inns and gambling houses. According to Los Angeles Times archives, residents witnessed midday shootouts, manhunts for murders and stagecoach robberies, and they bet gold on horse races.
But for nearly a century, long after the frantic search for gold had ceased, Havilah was considered a kind of ghost town, with only 150 residents. The foundations were all that remained of most of its historic buildings when fire ravaged the town on July 26.
The fast-moving Borel Fire, which burned nearly 60,000 acres Friday, destroyed some of the last remnants of Havilah in just 24 hours, including a replica of the courthouse, which served as a small roadside museum for decades.
Aggressive, hard-hitting reporting on climate change, the environment, health and science.
Roy Fluhart, whose ancestors had farmed in the area during the Great Depression, had tried to preserve the town’s rich history. As president of the Havilah Historical Society, he and his relatives helped preserve the courthouse with historical documents and photographs, old mining tools and other artifacts from the area’s past.
“We lost everything,” Fluhart said. “The sad thing is, the museum was an archive, and now it’s gone. Son of a bitch… We didn’t really have time to get anything out.”
It is not only the city’s history that has been lost.
Bo Barnett, a Havilah resident wearing the same clothes he wore when he fled, describes how he managed to escape the Borel fire. (Robert Gauthier / Los Angeles Times)
Bo Barnett, whose home was destroyed, managed to escape with his dogs and the clothes on his back. Barnett, whose wife died a month ago, expressed regret that he did not have time to retrieve her ashes.
“Fire was raining down on us,” Barnett said, tears filling his eyes. “I didn’t really know what I was getting into. My tires were melting on the road. It was horrible.”
Gov. Gavin Newsom, who spent much of his childhood in the sparsely populated mining community of Dutch Flat in Placer County, lamented the loss of another Gold Rush community Tuesday. Wearing aviator sunglasses and a baseball cap, he toured the rubble in Havilah, approaching the remains of the town museum and pulling a novelty Uncle Sam piggy bank out of the blackened rubble.
California Governor Gavin Newsom visited Havilah after the fire and found an artifact in the wreckage of the courthouse museum.
“Cities have been wiped off the map — places, ways of life, traditions,” Newsom said at a news conference. “That’s what this is really about. At the end of the day, it’s about people, it’s about history, it’s about memories.”
In recent years, devastating fires have destroyed some of California’s gold rush towns, erasing the history of one of the most significant periods in 19th-century America. Havilah joins towns like Paradise and Greenville, small communities that experienced an influx of prospectors, followed by an exodus of people and, more recently, devastation.
Havilah traces its origins to Asbury Harpending, a Kentuckian who plotted to seize California and its gold to support the Confederacy during the Civil War. In 1864, Harpending, outraged after his conviction for high treason, ventured into the Clear Creek area of present-day Kern County. He discovered gold deposits and named the area Havilah, after a land rich in gold in the book of Genesis.
Although Harpending had no claim to the land, he established a large mining camp and sold plots to new miners, in what many believe may have been a second gold rush. In 1866, Havilah became the county seat of the new Kern County, a title he held for eight years, until Bakersfield became the principal city. He stayed only two years, but made a fortune: $800,000.
“I have literally been raised from absolute poverty to become the owner of nearly a million dollars,” Harpending wrote in his autobiography. “I have discovered a large mining district and founded a thriving town. And if the question of paternity is ever raised in court, it will probably be proved to the satisfaction of a jury that I am the father of Kern County.”
A 1905 article in the Los Angeles Times describes a shootout reminiscent of a Wild West movie.
(Los Angeles Times Archives / newspapers.com)
As gold became harder to find, Havilah’s residents left and its buildings fell into disrepair. Those who remained tried to commemorate the community’s mining and pioneer heritage. In 1966, for the centennial of Havilah’s founding, residents completed construction of the replica courthouse. They later built a replica of the town’s school, which also served as a community center.
Historical markers along the Caliente-Bodfish Road indicate buildings that once stood: a barbershop, a blacksmith, the Grand Inn and a livery stable. Some large plaques also honor historical events such as the last stagecoach robbery in Kern County in 1869, in which a gunman made off with $1,700 in coins and gold bullion.
Wesley Kutzner, a member of the historical society and Fluhart’s uncle, helped build the replica courthouse alongside his parents and other residents. Although the historical society couldn’t afford fire insurance, Kutzner said he decided to clean up the property and rebuild it, as the community did nearly 60 years ago.
“The plan is to rebuild,” Kutzner said. “It’s going to be a community effort. Coming home will be tough, but we’ll get through it.”
Sean Rains, a resident who plans to rebuild, moved to Havilah two years ago from Bakersfield with his girlfriend and their pit bull, seeking the tranquility of the mountains. Rains, a miner and countertop maker, was also one of the few people hoping to find buried treasure in Havilah.
In his front yard, Rains kept a vibrating table and other equipment to sift the soil for gold flakes.
“It wasn’t something that made us rich,” he said, but he found it.
“They say it’s everywhere,” Rains said. “It’s just a question of whether it’s enough to make it worthwhile.”
1
2
3
1. Sean Rains moved to Havilah two years ago and began panning for gold with a shaking table in his backyard. 2. A roadside scene in Havilah. 3. Melted film canisters litter the floor of the Havilah Museum, some of the items lost in the Borel fire.
Rains was also recruited by the historical society. He read old letters in which one sheriff had remarked that the only pastimes in town were stagecoach robberies and horse racing. Another recalled how pioneers pulled their carriages over the mountainous terrain with a rope.
The historical society had recently installed a hose in the replica schoolhouse. Since Rains lived nearby, he was asked to help defend the schoolhouse in case of a fire.
“I gave them my word,” he said.
So when Rains saw the fire rising over the mountaintop behind his house and moving rapidly down the valley, he rushed home to start the school’s water pump. He doused the building and doused the embers on the porch.
He eventually turned his attention to his own bungalow, hosing it down until the trees in his yard caught fire. He, his girlfriend and their dog fled in his pickup truck.
“It was licking our heels as it came out of here,” Rains recalled. “It was right on top of us. The winds were so high in that thing, blowing in every direction. It was sucking the branches out of the trees. The whole mountain was engulfed.”
Rains returned to town the next morning, walking along Caliente-Bodfish Road to see what remained of Havilah.
The valley’s pines and oaks were charred, and much of the landscape was covered in white ash. Rains’ two-bedroom house had burned to its cobblestone foundation. Two cars he had restored were charred hulks. His two mountain bikes were reduced to skeletons.
The school survived.
Havilah School — after the fire.
