This story has it all. Fame, power, scandal, a big mistake, some shady business dealings and a fortune in gold. Combine it all and you have the birth of one of Central California’s most historic towns. Today on KVPR’s Central Valley Roots, John C. Fremont and the founding of Mariposa.
Fremont was kind of a big deal back in the 1840s. He was a major general in the Army, and was married to the daughter of U.S. Senator Thomas Hart Benton, the architect of the idea of “manifest destiny.” Fremont led several expeditions to Alta California before the Mexican American War, played a major part in leading U.S. forces in California during the conflict. He also supervised the massacre of Native Americans in California during this period. In 1847, Fremont got into business. He paid an agent in Monterey to buy a Mexican land grant, sight unseen, thinking the land was near San Francisco Bay. He was later shocked to learn that the Las Mariposas ranch was actually in the foothills of today’s Mariposa County.
But he had bigger problems. Fremont was ordered to travel to Washington to face a court-martial trial for insubordination. President Polk overturned the decision, but Fremont resigned and went back to California run his new ranch. However, the mistaken location of the property turned out to be a blessing, when gold was discovered on Agua Fria Creek. And since the boundaries of the grant were loosely defined, and Fremont maneuvered land surveys to get the best gold bearing territory under his control.
It was a questionable move, and wound up before the Supreme Court, which eventually ruled in Fremont’s favor. He would go to become a U.S. Senator from California and the first Republican nominee for President, running on an anti-slavery platform. And his operation gave us the town and county of Mariposa we know today.
