Historical marker for overlooked Graham Hotel

It had been a bustling way station during the Gold Rush.

The Graham Hotel, which stood between what is now Beale Air Force Base and Wheatland, offered lodging, a general store, saloon and stables for all those traveling by stage coach between Sacramento and Nevada City, or by wagon train from the Emigrant Trail.

Soon the site — three-tenths of a mile inside the north entrance to Camp Far West Lake — will bear a historical marker and a time capsule to let later historians know what the current batch of area residents has been up to.

"This was really a hub of activity," says Jane Paskowitz, a descendant of pioneer settlers in the area. And it was not only a rest stop and place to change horses.

"It was a voting place, a courthouse, and a place where people could get their mail," Paskowitz says.

The effort to erect a monument here — amid prairie grass hills near a man-made lake — came about through unlikely partners: The Wheatland Historical Society and E Clampus Vitus — better known as the Clampers.

"There was a saloon here. That's all that's important to us," says Kurt Hexberg, unofficial historian for Chapter 3, representing Placer County.

"We try to find parts of history that are overlooked by the state of California and the history books," he says. "They ignore outlaws and saloons and brothels and breweries and things like that, and those are the things we tend to embrace."

Hexberg's group and E Clampus Vitus Chapter10, which includes Yuba, Sutter, Nevada and parts of Butte County, will be represented at a dedication ceremony on Sept. 17.

The marker will stand just 12 feet from a monument marking the Emigrant Trail, Paskowitz says.

Williamson Graham, one of Wheatland's original settlers, built his hotel on the Bear River in 1853.

Paskowitz says the hotel was named on maps from 1861 and from 1870.

But the railroad came through, and business died out. Graham's enterprise was abandoned in 1879.

The Wheatland Historical Society initially hoped to take on the monument project, but the $4,000 price tag was way out of its league.

That's when the Clampers stepped in.

"We said, 'Hey, we'll do it for nothin' and even cast the plaque for you,'" says Hexberg.

In-kind donations have made it all come together, he says.

Hexberg hauled a boulder, selected by the historical society, to the spot, and will apply concrete and affix the plaque — made by a Clamper-owned company in the Bay Area.

The time capsule — which will contain news articles, books about the area, a California quarter and a mobile phone, among other things — will be contained under a level of concrete. Clampers, according to Hexberg, are a natural fit for this type of effort. He explains by way of a Gold Rush history lesson.

"All these opportunists coming in were always getting into trouble," he says. "They didn't know anything about how to survive here, and constantly had to be rescued. They were kind of a nuisance."

Masons and the Oddfellows shunned these carpetbaggers, who, in turn, "started their own organizations to make fun of those that take themselves way too seriously."

The Clampers were born.

Eventually, the group took on more serious missions, focused mostly on helping miner's widows and orphans, as well as other victims of the all-mighty Mother Lode.

A fondness of gold miner history — and of re-enacting the miners' hard-partying habits — are the glues that currently bind the E Clampus Vitus.

Wheatland's historical crossroads, Hexberg says, fit in just right.

"It was a major focal point of the Gold Rush," he says, "until the railroad killed it."

CONTACT Nancy Pasternack at 749-4712 or at npasternack@appealdemocrat.com .