History Report for the General Meeting
August 20, 2010 C.Y. 6015
As presented by XNGH Kurt "Kurteous Maximus" Hexburg
"Claude"
In 1811, a boy was born in the wine making region of France near the town of Rouen. This boy was named Claude Chana. As a young man Claude learned the craft of barrel making or cooperage. When Claude was 29 he felt the lure of the new world and made his way to New Orleans, eventually setting up shop in St. Joseph, Missouri, where he ran a prosperous cooperage.
After five years in St. Joseph, Claude heard of how wonderful it was in California and he was off again. On his way to California, Claude and his wagon train met up with a very slow moving Donner party and reached California several weeks ahead of them. When he got to Johnson’s Ranch, which was the first settlement at the end of the immigrant trail, he met up with another Frenchman named Theodore Sicard who employed him until he met up with Johann Sutter and went to work for him one year later. It was there that he met James Marshall. Eventually Claude heard of the discovery of gold at Coloma and he caught gold fever.
On his way to Coloma, he camped in the Auburn Ravine and decided to pan some of the soil at this campsite…and it paid off. Over the next year he managed to make his new profession of gold mining very lucrative. He took the money he made and bought the ranch of his friend Theodore Sicard. On this ranch he planted apples, peaches, almonds, and plums. But most importantly, he planted grapes because with grapes you can make wine. By the mid 1850’s Claude Chana was eventually producing about 12,000 gallons of very marketable wine.
Ironically, the gold mining that founded his fortune nearly destroyed it when hydraulic mining upstream caused the Bear River to jump it’s banks and flood his ranch and vineyards. This flooding forced him to mortgage his land so that he could build levees to protect his ranch against the very river that made it possible. Unfortunately, there were no laws in place at that time to regulate hydraulic mining and year after year the mighty Bear would overwhelm the levees that he had built. Eventually he lost his ranch but continued to make about 3000 gallons of wine annually at a winery he set up on 6th St. in Wheatland.
He died in 1882 and is buried in the Wheatland cemetery under a headstone placed by the Native Daughters of the Golden West. But if you are driving through Auburn on the way up to Foresthill, you can see a giant statue of Claude hard at work panning gold not far from where he made one of the most important gold finds in the history of California.
What say the brethren?
Click here for a printable PDF of this report.
