El Dorado Camps Final

CULTURAL RESOURCES RESEARCH DESIGN:

FERC PROJECT 184 HYDROELECTRIC CONSTRUCTION CAMPS
EL DORADO COUNTY, CALIFORNIA

ANTHROPOLOGICAL STUDIES CENTER
Sonoma State University
Rohnert Park, California

June 2007

Cover photo. Camp C in 1922. Courtesy of El Dorado Irrigation District.

CULTURAL RESOURCES RESEARCH DESIGN:
FERC PROJECT 184 HYDROELECTRIC CONSTRUCTION CAMPS
EL DORADO COUNTY, CALIFORNIA

0906-001

Prepared by
Mark Walker, M.Phil
Heidi Koenig, M.A., RPA
and
Elaine Maryse Solari, M.A.
Anthropological Studies Center
Sonoma State University
Rohnert Park, California

phone: (707) 664‐2381 fax: (707) 664‐4155
www.sonoma.edu/projects/asc
e‐mail: asc@sonoma.edu

Prepared for
Trish Fernandez, M.A., RPA
Environmental Review Specialist—Cultural Resources
El Dorado Irrigation District
Placerville, California

June 2007

MANAGEMENT SUMMARY

This research design has been prepared for the El Dorado Irrigation District (EID), El
Dorado County, California, as part of their compliance with Section 106 of the National Historic
Preservation Act (NHPA) for the management and treatment of historic properties. Compliance
is necessary for EID’s license issued by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) for
operating the El Dorado Hydroelectric Project in El Dorado, Amador, and Alpine counties,
California. FERC is the lead federal agency for the project and, in this case, has authorized EID
to carry out its day‐to‐day Section 106 responsibilities.
The research design is for 11 construction camps associated with the 1922–1924
rehabilitation of the El Dorado Canal and construction of the El Dorado Powerhouse to
determine their status as historic properties as defined by NHPA to evaluate their eligibility for
listing in the National Register of Historic Places (NRHP). Field visits to the sites by
archaeologists from the Anthropological Studies Center and EID has determined that two (2) of
the sites (05‐03‐56‐830 and 05‐03‐56‐834) are so disturbed that they no longer possess research
potential and evaluation is thus unnecessary. The nine (9) remaining sites will be evaluated for
NRHP eligibility.
EL DORADO IRRIGATION DISTRICT i SONOMA STATE UNIVERSITY
CONSTRUCTION CAMPS RESEARCH DESIGN ANTHROPOLOGICAL STUDIES CENTER

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Management Summary.............................................................................................................................. i
Introduction ................................................................................................................................................ 1
Project Description..................................................................................................................................... 2
Previous work and Site Summaries .................................................................................................. 2
2007 Field Visit ............................................................................................................................ 16
Archival Research ....................................................................................................................... 16
Historic Context ....................................................................................................................................... 17
Hydroelectric Development in California...................................................................................... 17
History Of Project 184 ....................................................................................................................... 20
The El Dorado Canal .................................................................................................................. 20
The Western States Gas & Electric Company ......................................................................... 21
Construction of the El Dorado Powerhouse System.............................................................. 22
Operation of the El Dorado Hydroelectric System, 1924–Present ....................................... 23
California Work Camps in the 1920s .............................................................................................. 25
Investigations of Rural Labor.................................................................................................... 25
Work Camp Reform.................................................................................................................... 28
The Western States Construction Camps....................................................................................... 30
Research Design ....................................................................................................................................... 43
NRHP Criteria for Evaluation ......................................................................................................... 43
Research Orientation......................................................................................................................... 44
Property Types................................................................................................................................... 45
Intrasite Property Types............................................................................................................. 46
Previous Research.............................................................................................................................. 49
Research Domains ............................................................................................................................. 51
Camp Function and Design....................................................................................................... 52
Data Requirements............................................................................................................... 52
Corporate Policy and Labor ...................................................................................................... 53
Camp Conditions ........................................................................................................................ 54
Labor Stratification ..................................................................................................................... 54
Immigration and Ethnicity ........................................................................................................ 56
Gender and Family ..................................................................................................................... 57
Daily Life ...................................................................................................................................... 59
Labor Organization and Legislation ........................................................................................ 60
EL DORADO IRRIGATION DISTRICT ii SONOMA STATE UNIVERSITY


Implementation.................................................................................................................................. 60
Assessing Integrity...................................................................................................................... 61
Association ............................................................................................................................ 62
Design .................................................................................................................................... 62
Materials ................................................................................................................................ 62
Assessing Archaeological Research Potential ............................................................................... 63
Evaluation Approach ................................................................................................................. 64
Mapping ....................................................................................................................................... 64
Metal Detection ........................................................................................................................... 64
Probing ......................................................................................................................................... 65
Surface Clearing .......................................................................................................................... 65
Excavation Units ......................................................................................................................... 65
In‐field Analyses ......................................................................................................................... 66
Reporting...................................................................................................................................... 66
References Cited....................................................................................................................................... 67
EL DORADO IRRIGATION DISTRICT iii SONOMA STATE UNIVERSITY


TABLES
1. Project 184 Construction Camps .................................................................................................... 16
2. Work Camp Sanitation (after Parker 1915)................................................................................... 28
3. Project 184 Construction Camps: Buildings and Structures from Camp Plans ...................... 41
4. Anticipated Property Types, and Frequency by Camp (from 1922 Plans) .............................. 46

FIGURES
1a. Location Map—Camps A, R, K, and B............................................................................................ 6
1b. Location Map—Camps M and N..................................................................................................... 7
1c. Location Map—Camps P and T ....................................................................................................... 8
1d. Location Map—Camps S and G....................................................................................................... 9
1e. Location Map—Camp C ................................................................................................................. 10
2. 1922 Plan of Construction Camp C................................................................................................ 11
3. 1922 Plan of Construction Camps G and P .................................................................................. 12
4. 1922 Plan of Construction Camps M and S .................................................................................. 13
5. 1922 Plan of Construction Camps A, N, R, and T ....................................................................... 14
6. 1922 Plan of Construction Camps B and K................................................................................... 15
7. Panorama of Camp B....................................................................................................................... 33
8. Camp A showing tent flats ............................................................................................................. 34
9. Camp A showing tents with stovepipes ....................................................................................... 35
10. Tents at Camp T ............................................................................................................................... 36
11. Cookhouse at Camp A .................................................................................................................... 37
12. Kitchen at Camp G........................................................................................................................... 38
13. Interior of Icehouse at Camp G ...................................................................................................... 39
14. Mess hall at Camp G........................................................................................................................ 40

EL DORADO IRRIGATION DISTRICT iv SONOMA STATE UNIVERSITY


INTRODUCTION

The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) has issued a license to the El Dorado
Irrigation District (EID) for operation of the El Dorado Hydroelectric Project (Project 184). As
part of FERC’s compliance with Section 106 of the National Historic Preservation Act (NHPA), a
Programmatic Agreement (PA) and associated draft Historic Properties Management Plan
(HPMP) was prepared. The Project 184 area of potential effects (APE) includes private lands
and lands administered by the Eldorado National Forest in Amador, Alpine, and El Dorado
counties. Project 184 includes:
• storage facilities at Silver Lake, Caples Lake, Echo Lakes, Aloha Lake and Forebay
Reservoir;
• diversion and intake facilities near Kyburz, California;
• a water conveyance system that includes the El Dorado Canal, siphons, tunnels, and
pipelines; and
• the El Dorado Power Plant near Pollock Pines on the South Fork of the American River.
Completion of the draft HPMP was required before historic properties were identified
within the Project 184 APE. Historic properties are defined as cultural resources that have been
determined eligible for inclusion on the National Register of Historic Places (NRHP). Thus, a
plan for the treatment of such properties assumes that they have been formally evaluated and
found eligible under the criteria outlined in 36 CFR 60.4. Cultural resources that are determined
ineligible are released from further consideration under Section 106 of the NHPA.
A complete field survey of the APE was conducted and cultural resources have been
identified, but their status as historic properties has not been determined. The next step in
implementing the HPMP, then, is evaluating cultural resources identified within the APE to
determine if they qualify as historic properties. This research design is intended to provide a
framework for evaluation of 11 construction camps within the Project 184 APE to determine
their eligibility for inclusion in the NRHP, and thus their status as historic properties.
EL DORADO IRRIGATION DISTRICT 1 SONOMA STATE UNIVERSITY


PROJECT DESCRIPTION

The APE includes 11 construction camp sites in El Dorado County, California, along the
South Fork of the American River from Kyburz to the El Dorado Powerhouse near Pollock Pines
(Figures 1a–1e). Elevations of the sites range from 2,000 to 4,200 ft. above mean sea level (amsl).
Vegetation consists primarily of coniferous forest. The camps are associated with the 1922–1924
rehabilitation of the El Dorado Canal system by the Western States Gas & Electric Company
(Western States).

PREVIOUS WORK AND SITE SUMMARIES
The sites were recorded and/or updated in 2002 by archaeologists from Far Western
Anthropological Research Group, Inc., and are discussed in the Project 184 HPMP (Hildebrandt
and Waechter 2003).
They are summarized in the HPMP as follows (Hildebrandt and Waechter 2003:72–79):
FS #05‐03‐56‐833 [Figures 1e and 2]. Also known as Western States Camp C,
this site is located just west of the El Dorado Canal intake on the north bank of
the South Fork of the American River. The 1922 historic plan map, on file at
EID, depicts 28 tent houses (wood floor and frame structures with canvas roof
and sides), as well as wood‐frame kitchen, mess hall, wood shed, bath house,
foreman’s house, and toilet. Remains of Camp C today encompass an area of
about 5,600 m², and are limited to dirt pads where the mess hall and bath
house were located. The pad at the bath house has two large pits full of
modern trash. No historic trash was seen. The site as been subjected to much
past and recent ground disturbance. It lies within the portion of the APE
spanning the north and south banks of the South Fork, in the vicinity of the
diversion dam [2003:72].
FS #05‐03‐56‐832 [Figures 1d and 3]. Also known as Western States Camp G,
this site is located at the base of a slope on the east side of Alder Creek, near
its confluence with the South Fork of the American River. The 1922 historic
plan map depicts 36 tent houses and several wood‐frame buildings. The latter
include the foreman’s house, a bath house with a boiler, a blacksmith shop,
two mess halls and a kitchen, a meat house, a store room, a gas house, and
three toilets. Only a few structure pads remain of Camp G, which
encompasses an area of 9,500 square meters. No other features or historic
artifacts were observed. Modern cabins, a parking lot, and dirt roads,
including a project access road, are on the site [the 2007 field check by ASC
and EID archaeologists indicated that the site has been so disturbed by later
development that evaluation would serve no purpose; 2003:72].
FS #05‐03‐56‐711 [Figures 1d and 4]. Also known as Western States Camp S,
this site is located adjacent to and immediately north of the El Dorado Canal,


in a stretch north of the Mill Creek to Bull Creek tunnel. An access road
bisects the site. The 1922 historic plan map depicts 22 tent houses and several
wood‐frame buildings, the latter including a bath house, mess hall and
kitchen, meat house, an unspecified outbuilding, and two toilets, all covering
an area of about 5,100 m². In 1993, Rood et al. recorded the portion of the site
on US Forest Service property, noting that much of the site extends north on
to private land. Still, Rood et al. reports this incomplete site area as much
more extensive than indicated on the 1922 map, covering 47,600 square
meters. Finds noted on federal property include two tent flats, two building
pads, a warming shed, a trail, a spiked tree, and much historic occupation
refuse. Modern trash and construction debris cover much of the National
Forest portion of the site, but Rood et al. estimate that about 50% of that area
is relatively intact [2003:73].
FS #05‐03‐56‐825 [Figures 1c and 5]. Also known as Western States Camp T,
this site is located along Plum Creek immediately west of U.S. Forest Service
road 10N08YA. The 1922 historic plan map shows five tent houses, a mess
tent, a wood‐frame meat house, and a toilet, all told circumscribing an area
790 m². The 1922 plan map also notes that Camp T was abandoned October
14, 1922. No historic features or artifacts are present, only large amounts of
modern trash. The site is frequently used as an informal campsite [2003:75].
FS #05‐03‐56‐830 [Figures 1c and 3]. Also known as Western States Camp P,
this site is located immediately upslope from the El Dorado Canal 1.5 mi east
of the Esmeralda Tunnel, at the terminus of access road 10N40M. The 1922
historic plan map depicts a dug out structure, 28 tent houses, and a wood‐
frame bath house, store house, and four toilets. A 1925 plan map shows a
storage shed was added after 1922. Today, Camp P comprises 4,010 m²,
including a privy pit, bath house, depressions, a dugout structure, and two
small dumps with historic habitation debris. The site has been disturbed by
recent logging [2003:76].
FS #05‐03‐56‐834 [Figures 1b and 5]. Also known as Western States Camp N,
this site is located on a flat ridgetop 0.1 mile north of the crossing of the El
Dorado Canal by U.S. Forest Service road 10N40.1, and 1.5 miles east of
Pacific House. The 1922 historic plan map delineates 27 tent structures, as well
as a wood‐frame bath house, store house, meat house, mess hall, kitchen,
office, and wood shed, in an area of 4,010 square meters. Dave Buel of EID
states that Camp N was used during two construction phases, during 1910–
1920 when building the canal [N.B. this date is probably not correct and the
statement in fact refers to the 1922‐24 rehabilitation of the canal], and during the
1920s by Swedes excavating the Esmeralda Tunnel. Remains of Camp N are
limited to two pits where the bath house stood, each now filled with historic
refuse. Some of this refuse has been removed by relic hunters. U.S. Forest
Service road 10N40N bisects the site [2003:76–77].


FS #05‐03‐56‐823 [Figures 1b and 4]. Also known as Western States Camp M,
this site is located on a north slope on the downslope side of the El Dorado
Canal, due south of Fresh Pond. The 1923 historic plan map shows 26 tent
houses, including kitchen and mess tents, as well as a wood‐frame wood
shed, store house, and two toilets, all circumscribing an area of 3,210 square
meters. Remains of Camp M observed in the field include a few possible tent
flats, a gallon paint can, and two 2‐x‐12‐in. boards. The site has been heavily
disturbed by recent logging [2003:77].
FS #05‐03‐56‐829 [Figures 1a and 6]. Also known as Western States Camp B,
this site is located on a gentle slope just northeast of Forebay Road’s crossing
of the El Dorado Canal penstock. The 1922 historic plan map shows a
substantial camp with 60 tent houses. Wood‐frame structures depicted on the
map include a large bath house, two smaller wash houses, tool house,
engineers’ office, kitchen/mess hall, wood shed, and five toilets, all told
circumscribing an area of 13,200 square meters. A 1926 plan map, however,
shows only a temporary cottage, store room, garage, and wood shed. Today
the site comprises two structural pads, one at the location of the former
Office/Commissary or temporary cottage, the other an old car platform. An
old road is also present. No historic artifacts are present [the 2007 field check
by ASC archaeologists showed that site had been graded since the last
recording; only the bath house floor remains extant; 2003:78].
FS #05‐03‐56‐811 [Figures 1a and 6]. Also known as Western States Camp K,
this site is located at the north end of Moon Lane, one mile northwest of
Pollock Pines, near the northern edge of a broad ridgetop overlooking the
steep canyon of the South Fork of the American River. An access road bisects
the site and the northern margin of the site lies within the canal portion of the
APE. The 1922 historic plan map shows another large camp, delimiting a site
area of 11,260 square meters. Features depicted on the 1922 map include 56
tent houses, as well as a wood‐frame bath house, office, two mess halls, meat
house, tool house, blacksmith shop, store house, pump house, two tanks, and
three toilets. The site was originally recorded by Rood (2002), who noted
several scatters of historic cans but only one feature (the bath house pit noted
below). Features recorded during the 2007 field check include five piles of
steel shoes used to shim the old wooden penstock, a rectangular structure flat,
two rectangular tent flats, one definite and one possible privy pit, a rock
alignment and structure pad of the Timekeeper’s Office, a pit where the old
bath house stood, and a standing structure used as the toolhouse [2003:78].
FS #05‐03‐56‐828 [Figures 1a and 5]. Also known as Western States Camp A,
this site is located on a flat on a narrow ridge adjacent to the steep, narrow
access road leading to the El Dorado Powerhouse. The 1922 historic plan map
shows a large camp, including 47 tent houses, one of them used as the camp
office. Wood‐frame structures include a blacksmith shop, mess hall and


kitchen, bath house, wash house, store house, and toilet. A small tramway is
also shown on the map. The site area shown on the historic map is 10,950
square meters. Features recorded in the 2007 field check include numerous
tent flats, and a rock foundation for the mess hall and kitchen. No formal
dump was found. The few artifacts seen include a gas lantern, a wheelbarrow
hub, medicine bottles, and a few cans. The site is nearly undisturbed [2003:79].
FS #05‐03‐56‐838 [Figures 1a and 5]. Also known as Western States Camp R,
this site is located just downstream from the El Dorado Powerhouse. The site
is bisected by an access road to the powerhouse. Camp R is shown on the 1922
historic plan on both sides of the South Fork of the American River, though
most of the features were on the south bank. The south bank was the site of
nine frame buildings, including two bunk houses, two offices, a bath house,
store house, mess hall and kitchen, cement shed, and hoist house. North of the
river, seven tent houses were used, as well as wood‐frame buildings used as a
blacksmith shop, toilet, and an unspecified shed. The site area was about 5,660
square meters. Today, Camp R appears to have been almost totally destroyed.
Concrete foundation walls noted at the location cannot be definitively
associated with the camp, and no historic artifacts were noted [the 2007 field
check by ASC and EID archaeologists confirmed that there is nothing
remaining that can be definitively associated with Camp R. An evaluation of
this site would serve no purpose; 2003:79].

TN 0 1/2 mile
0 1/2 1 km
SCALE 1:24000
FS# 05-03-56-838
Camp R
FS# 05-03-56-811
FS# 05-03-56-828 Camp K
Camp A
FS# 05-03-56-829
Camp B
a
Sou th eri c n
Am Riv er
Fork
Figure 1a. Location Map - Camps A, R, K, and B
6
TN 0 1/2 mile
0 1/2 1 km
SCALE 1:24000
FS# 05-03-56-834
Camp N
FS# 05-03-56-823
Camp M
a
Sou th
m eri c n
A Riv er
Fork
Figure 1b. Location Map - Camps M and N
7
TN 0 1/2 mile
0 1/2 1 km
SCALE 1:24000
FS# 05-03-56-830
Camp P
FS# 05-03-56-825
Camp T
a
Sou th
m eri c n
A Riv er
Fork
Figure 1c. Location Map - Camps P and T
8
TN 0 1/2 mile
0 1/2 1 km
SCALE 1:24000
FS# 05-03-56-711
Camp S
FS# 05-03-56-832
Camp G
a
Sou th
m eri c n
A Riv er
Fork
Figure 1d. Location Map - Camps S and G
9
TN 0 1/2 mile
0 1/2 1 km
SCALE 1:24000
FS# 05-03-56-833
Camp C
a
Sou th
m eri c n
A Riv er
Fork
Figure 1e. Location Map - Camp C
10
11
Figure 2. 1922 Map of Construction Camp C (FS# 05-03-56-833)
12
Figure 3. 1922 Map of Construction Camps G (FS# 05-03-56-832) and P (FS# 05-03-56-830)
13
Figure 4. 1922 Map of Construction Camps M (FS# 05-03-56-823) and S (FS# 05-03-56-711)
14
Figure 5. 1922 Map of Construction Camps A (FS# 05-03-56-828), N (FS# 05-03-56-834), R (FS# 05-03-56-838),
and T (FS# 05-03-56-825)
15
Figure 6. 1922 Map of Construction Camps B (FS# 05-03-56-829) and K (FS# 05-03-56-811)

2007 Field Visit

In January 2007, ten of the camps were visited by personnel from the Anthropological
Studies Center (ASC) and EID to assess their current condition in relation to the latest site
record. It was not possible to visit Camp T due to icy conditions. Table 1 lists the camps, their
site records and pertinent observations from the 2007 visit.

Table 1. Project 184 Construction Camps
USFS designation Camp Name Record and Update on file Current condition

05‐03‐56‐711 Construction Camp S Rood 1993 Poor visibility
05‐03‐56‐811 Construction Camp K Darcangelo 2002; Rood 2002; Wee Good

2002; Waechter 2003
05‐03‐56‐823 Construction Camp M Darcangelo 2002 Disturbed
05‐03‐56‐825 Construction Camp T Darcangelo 2002 Unknown
05‐03‐56‐828 Construction Camp A Darcangelo 2002 Good
05‐03‐56‐830 Construction Camp P Darcangelo 2002 Good
05‐03‐56‐832 Construction Camp G Darcangelo 2002 Extensively disturbed
05‐03‐56‐834 Construction Camp N Darcangelo 2002 Disturbed
05‐03‐56‐838 Construction Camp R Darcangelo 2002 No evidence of site
05‐03‐56‐829 Construction Camp B Darcangelo 2002; Waechter 2003 Extensively disturbed
05‐03‐56‐833 Construction Camp C Darcangelo 2002 Good

Due to their extensive disturbance, there is no purpose of evaluating Camps G and R.
Although Camp B is extensively disturbed, it does possess a surviving feature in the form of the
wood and concrete floor for the bath house. As this is the only such feature from any of the
camps, the feature should be evaluated.
Archival Research
Research included a review of documents on file at the PG&E Archives in Brisbane for
information on the construction camps built and used in 1922 during the renovation/rebuilding
of the El Dorado Canal. Although over 100 archive boxes were pulled and inspected, very little
information pertaining specifically to these camps was found. Occasional mentions of particular
camps were encountered in construction ledgers and accounting records, providing a limited
amount of detail on camp construction and removal. The documents contained no information
on the workers who lived in the camps. Appendix A provides specific details on the search
parameters, a brief description of the materials found to be potentially useful, and a list of the
boxes that were searched and determined not to be pertinent.
The research effort also included a review of historical photos on file at EID; in addition,
EID provided historic plans of the construction camps.


HISTORIC CONTEXT

The El Dorado Hydroelectric Project along the South Fork of the American River, now
owned and operated by the El Dorado Irrigation District, was built by Western States Gas &
Electric Company (Western States), a subsidiary of H. M. Byllesby Engineering and
Management Corporation, between 1922 and 1924. This new hydroelectric power system
consisted of several high‐mountain reservoirs, an intake dam on the South Fork of the American
River, and a 22‐mile‐long canal terminating at a forebay reservoir at Pollock Pines; from that
point a wood‐stave pipe conduit and steel penstock led to a powerhouse below Pollock Pines on
the South Fork of the American River. This system was in turn part of an older water system
established in the 1870s during the era of hydraulic mining for the purpose of providing water
to mining and irrigation concerns in the City of Placerville. Thus, the resources related to this
water development cover a vast area from high in the mountains above 8,000 ft. in elevation on
various tributaries to the South Fork and spread across three counties, down to a powerhouse
on the South Fork at an elevation of only 1,889 feet. The El Dorado Hydroelectric Power
Development, brought on line in 1924, is one example of dozens of similar high‐head
hydroelectric plants in the Sierra Nevada that were built during the 1920s, a period of rapid
growth in the electrical industry in California.

HYDROELECTRIC DEVELOPMENT IN CALIFORNIA
adapted from Wee 2003 and Shoup 1990
For much of the 19th century gold mining was the primary impetus behind the
development of methods to tap high‐head waterpower. As early as the 1850s, gold miners
working placer deposits in the Sierra Nevada had devised complex water‐delivery systems of
wooden and iron pipes, ditches, dams, and flumes. Hydraulic mining, which used high
pressure waterpower to sluice gold‐bearing deposits from hillsides, required even more
extensive water delivery and storage systems.
Hydraulic mining as a major corporate enterprise was virtually halted in California
January 1884 with the decision of Judge Sawyer in Woodruff v. North Bloomfield Gravel Mining
Company, et al. Finding that the hydraulic mining industry was causing widespread damage by
depositing its tailings into the rivers of the state, the judge ordered a halt to hydraulic mining
and issued an injunction perpetually enjoining the miners from discharging their waste into the
rivers (Kelley 1959:188–216).
In addition to its devastating environmental impact, hydraulic mining left an important
legacy to the economic development of California in the elaborate systems of dams, reservoirs,
tunnels, and ditches that were subsequently utilized for irrigation, hydroelectric power
generation, and municipal water systems (JRP and Caltrans 2000: 31–53). The combined length
of all ditches that had been constructed in California for mining purposes by the end of the
hydraulic mining era was staggering. One mining expert estimated that by 1882 there were
more than 6,000 miles of main ditches, another 1,000 miles of secondary lines, and an unknown


larger quantity of small distributing ditches in California’s mining region. Probably no more
than 24 of these ditches can be classified as large mining canals, i.e., those carrying at least 50
ft.³/second (2,000 miner’s inches) of water (De Groot 1882:161). The large ditches alone totaled
about 1,750 miles in length and represented an investment of more than $11,500,000. These
principal ditches diverted water from the major streams that drain the west slope of the north
central Sierra Nevada—the Feather, Yuba, Bear, American, Mokelumne, Cosumnes, Stanislaus,
and Tuolumne rivers. Furthermore, the technological developments of hydraulic mining
influenced the hydroelectric industry. For example, the hydraulic monitor was adapted by the
hydroelectric industry as a way of turning tangential waterwheels, and the ability to control the
rate of water flow through a nozzle was later used in hydroelectric plants.
The development of the hydroelectric industry in California was an evolutionary process
that dates as far back as 1879, the year in which the Excelsior Water and Mining Company in
Yuba County became the first mining company to use electricity. The company used a water‐
driven Brush dynamo to supply power to three arc lights, thus doubling its production capacity
because the mine could be worked throughout the night. Another milestone also occurred in
1879, as the San Francisco‐based California Electric Light Company began operation,
distributing generated electricity to local subscribers from a central station. During the 1880s,
the use of electricity in California became widespread, and local electric companies began to
spring up in cities throughout the state. By the 1880s, Sacramento, San Jose, Oakland, San
Francisco, and Los Angeles all used electric motors to power streetcars or lighting for buildings
and streets. Most of these motors were driven by steam converted from water through the
burning of coal or wood, both costly commodities in California at the time (Myers 1983:11).
While energy created from burning fuels was quite costly, hydroelectric energy—
electricity created from the flow of water—was comparatively inexpensive and abundant. The
Sierra Nevada provided an annual snow pack that melted throughout the spring and early
summer, which in turn created numerous creeks, streams, and rivers that dropped rapidly from
the mountains to the lower elevations. In terms of generating hydroelectric power, California
was geographically distinct from the East where plants utilized high volumes of water flow
with low heads and benefited from year‐round flow. California’s plants, in contrast, utilized
high‐head and low volumes of flow usually along a watershed in the Sierra Nevada or
Transverse Range. Large storage reservoirs were also required, not only to store water in the
dry summer and fall seasons, but to provide carry‐over storage to ensure supplies during a
prolonged period of drought (JRP and Caltrans 2000:54–55).
The decades from the 1890s to 1910 were a period of experimentation in hydroelectric
plant design (JRP and Caltrans 2000:54–55). The Pomona Plant of the San Antonio Light &
Power Company, brought online in 1892, was the first hydroelectric facility in California to use
“step‐up” AC transformers, in which the generator potential of 1,000 volts was increased to
10,000 volts for transmission. The voltage was then “stepped down” at the receiving stations.
The concept of boosting voltage for transmission was a major innovation that soon became
standard practice throughout the industry. The hydroelectric system of which the plant was a
part was, however, far more elementary. It utilized water diverted from the San Antonio Creek
through a 2,370‐ft. pipe, emerging from a tunnel 400 ft. above the floor of the canyon. A


penstock delivered the water to a small concrete powerhouse, which generated the energy and
transmitted it to San Bernardino, a distance of 28 miles (Fowler 1923; JRP and Caltrans 2000:56–
57; Myers 1983:24–31; Williams 1997:175–176).
The first high‐head hydroelectric plant in California was developed by the Nevada County
Electric Company between 1892 and 1896. Water was diverted from the South Yuba River
through an 18,400‐ft. wooden flume and then dropped 206 ft. through a pressure pipe to the
powerhouse on the lower river. The same company built a second plant on Rock Creek in 1897
that utilized a head of 785 feet. In 1893, the Redlands Electric Light & Power Company Mill
Creek Plant Number 1 became the first three‐phase alternating current plant in California, a
technology that increased efficiency and reliability of power transmission (Fowler 1923:1–2).
Two years later, the Folsom Powerhouse on the American River was completed; its three‐phase
plant, with four 750‐kilowatt generators and 11,000‐volt transmission system, represented a
significant advance over Mill Creek and was the first hydroelectric powerhouse in northern
California. In the wake of Mill Creek and Folsom, enthusiasm for hydroelectric development
blossomed, prompting the San Francisco Call to report, “The air of the whole Pacific Coast has
all at once become filled with talk about setting up water wheels in lonely mountain places and
making them give light and cheaply turn other wheels in towns miles away” (San Francisco
Call, 1 June 1895 in Williams 1997:177).
The first decades of the twentieth century were a period of rapid growth in the
hydroelectric industry. Between 1900 and 1910 the population of California increased by 60
percent, with a consequent increased demand for electric power (Coleman 1952:257). Dozens of
hydroelectric companies formed throughout California, many building new powerhouses and
long‐distance transmission lines to service new and growing markets. By 1900 there were
already 25 hydroelectric plants in service throughout the state, with many more to follow in the
upcoming decades. The American River Electric Company’s Rock Creek Plant, later to become
part of the Western States Gas & Electric System, was completed in 1903. Also in that year the
Valley Counties Power Company opened its De Sabla plant on the Feather River; this plant had
the highest static head of its time (1,528 ft.) and set several long‐distance transmission records.
Another important plant built during this period was Great Western Power Company’s
(GWPC) Big Bend plant on the Feather River in 1908, with a total generating capacity of 40,000
kilovolt amperes (kva). By 1916, the plant had been expanded to a total capacity of 65,000 kva,
the largest of its time in California (Fowler 1923:275, 364; JRP 1986:96, 102; Myers 1983:44–47;
Williams 1997:178–182).
The extensive build‐up of hydroelectric plants in California that began around the turn of
the last century continued into the early 1920s, with several large developments breaking the
previously held output records. During 1923 and 1924, no fewer than 40 power plants were
built or under construction in the western United States and Canadian British Columbia. Of
these, half were located in California. The generating capacity of these plants ranged from less
than 1,000 kilowatts to upwards of 80,000 kva and had static heads ranging from less than 100
ft. to nearly 2,500 ft. (Journal of Electricity 1924:97–98). In 1928, the two largest developments in
terms of output were the Big Creek No. 3 plant (1923), run by Southern California Edison, with


an 84,000‐kva capacity, and Pit No. 3 (1925), run by PG&E, which had an 81,000‐kva capacity
(Bonner 1928:20, 118).

HISTORY OF PROJECT 184
adapted from Wee 2003 and Shoup 1990
The El Dorado Canal
The El Dorado Canal, built between 1873 and 1876, was constructed during a period when
hydraulic‐mining holdings in the state were being consolidated by large corporations. The
reservoir and ditch system of the Canal was based upon appropriative water filings made by
John Kirk and Francis A. Bishop in the 1850s and their efforts to build a canal to bring water to
the hydraulic mines in Placerville. By 1873 the two men had spent more than $20,000 on the
canal system, which consisted of a diversion dam at Cedar Rock on the South Fork of the
American River, small dams at the outlet of Silver and Echo lakes, and a short segment of the
ditch excavation on the lower end of the canal line.
The El Dorado Water and Deep Gravel Mining Company (the Mining Company) acquired
the water and ditch rights of Kirk and Bishop in 1873. Kirk left the project, but Bishop remained
with the new company, serving on its board of directors and as supervising engineer on the
canal construction project. Financed with $150,000 by a prominent group of San Francisco
capitalists who had experience in California and Nevada mining and strong financial ties to the
Bank of California, the El Dorado Company began by consolidating about 750 acres of mining
ground above Placerville into their ownership, together with some 112 miles of distribution
ditches and small canals to combine with the ditch and water rights of Kirk and Bishop on the
upper South Fork of the American River. The Mining Company expanded its potential storage
rights in the fall of 1873 by making claims on numerous high‐Sierra lakes and streams with
potential reservoir sites. The following year the company began construction work on its major
trunk line canal down the south side of the South Fork of the American River Canyon.
Expectations of delivering water the following season were shattered by the realities of the
difficult environmental barriers facing the project. At the end of the first year, Bishop assessed
the major problem facing the construction crews: hidden boulders. Bare granite domes
characteristic of the region drained by the American, Mokelumne, and Tuolumne rivers are
numerous in the eastern part of the American River basin. Weathered outcrops of massive gray
rock rise above steep and unstable mountain slopes containing an extensive litter of loose rock.
From below Riverton to Pollock Pines, the canyon walls become less precipitous but are still
quite rugged, and decomposed volcanic and sedimentary rock dominate the landscape. These
topographic and geologic conditions brought both engineering problems and opportunities for
Bishop. His practical solutions are what give the El Dorado Canal its extensive and unique dry‐
laid granite engineering features.
During the winter of 1873–1874 Bishop readied himself for the following construction
season by obtaining contract wage labor, skilled masons and blasters, and lumber contractors.
He carefully mapped out a schedule of work and ascended into the Sierra in the winter to


experiment with the use of black powder and nitro‐glycerine compounds to determine how to
best induce lines of rupture that would dislodge rock in blocks suitable for construction
purposes. Because of the high cost of lumber for trestles, the difficult rocky condition of the
ground, and the topography of the canyon along the upper canal, neither ditching nor trestle
building were economical alternatives. Bishop decided to rest flumes on a solid bed of dry‐laid
granite block and rubble bench walls wherever possible. This approach economized the
foundation work, because bracing and timbers for trestle substructures had to be massive
timbers and custom‐cut for each use. With uniform wall foundations in place and at grade, all
of the required flume lumber could be mass‐produced to pre‐set dimensions at a mill located
upstream on the canal and floated down the conduit to awaiting carpenters.
Constructing the canal involved an enormous work force that peaked at more than 1,200
men. Crews were housed at camps along the route of the canal in accommodations that were
primarily tents and at least one boardinghouse. There were 10 to 12 camps including a large
camp of Chinese laborers at Fresh Pond, a camp at the diversion dam, and camps designated as
2, 5, 7, and 10 at various locations along the route. The majority of the laborers were Chinese
immigrants; up to 1,000 by mid‐July 1874 (Shoup 1990:8).
In order to maintain the canal after completion, ditch tenders would walk along the boards
and banks for miles checking the flume and earthen berm ditch for breaks, damage, and other
problems. The ditch tenders were housed at the four numbered camps. Each camp had a frame
dwelling and various outbuildings including sheds and blacksmith shops. The ditch tenders
lived an isolated existence most often only the ditch tender and his family would live at the
camp. They were required to order supplies to last from November through May. Many kept a
small amount of livestock and hunted for the majority of their meat. A telephone system
operated between the camps along the ditch line, although winter storms often brought down
the poles and cut off service. The men worked in extraordinary conditions for extended hours
and reportedly had only four days off a year (Shoup 1990:21).
When the 26‐mile‐long main canal was completed in 1876, the Mining Company had spent
$650,000, or an average of $25,000 per mile. Mile for mile, it was the most expensive canal built
in California during the hydraulic mining era. Although the canal was productive, the owners
had speculatively high expectations and records indicate that the income from this service fell
short of what was needed to reimburse the original investment. Between 1876 and 1916, when it
was acquired by Western States, ownership changed several times. In the later years the canal
did not even produce enough to meet immediate expenses (Shoup 1990:16).
The Western States Gas & Electric Company
At least as early as 1907 there was interest in converting the canal to hydroelectric
generation. These plans reached fruition in 1916 with the incorporation of the canal in to the
Western States system. The canal was reconstructed in 1922, and the El Dorado Powerhouse,
which would generate power from the water of the canal, was built in 1923–1924.
Western States, a subsidiary of the Byllesby Engineering and Management Corporation of
Chicago, was created in 1910 through the consolidation of several existing California power
companies: the Stockton Gas & Electric Company, the American River Electric Corporation, the


Richmond Lighting Corporation, the Humboldt Gas & Electric Company, the Arcata Lighting
Company, the Ferndale Electric Lighting Company, and the Fortuna Lighting Company. From
these holdings, Western States established the Eureka, Richmond, and Stockton districts, each
providing gas or electricity to customers in and around those communities. The Stockton
district consisted of properties formerly held by American River Electric, including the 8,100‐
horsepower Rock Creek hydroelectric plant near Placerville (built in 1903), transmission lines to
Stockton, a steam plant in Stockton, and local distribution systems in Placerville and Stockton.
The purchase also included the El Dorado Canal, together with its three storage facilities at
Echo Lakes, Medley Lakes (Lake Aloha), and Silver Lake (Fowler 1923:390–391; Tenney
1923:49).
It soon became clear to the Western States executives that the Rock Creek and Stockton
plants were not sufficient to satisfy the growing needs of its market in the Central Valley. By
1923, Western States was purchasing $400,000 of energy annually from outside sources, and as
early as 1916, the company had begun plans to expand and add to the American River
hydroelectric system. Early work included an enlarged dam at the Medley Lake and two new
dams at Twin Lakes reservoir (now Caples Lake), as well as repairs to the canal that fed the
Rock Creek Plant. By 1922 these upgrades to the existing system had been completed and
Western States had turned its energies toward the construction of a new powerhouse. In 1921,
the El Dorado Power Company, a subsidiary of Western States, filed an application with the
California Railroad Commission to build the El Dorado Powerhouse and improve the old El
Dorado Canal; the permit was granted in February 1922, and work on the canal began shortly
thereafter. The entire project, including the restoration of the El Dorado Canal, was estimated to
cost $5 million (PAR 1995:5–7; Tenney 1923:49).
Construction of the El Dorado Powerhouse System
Major rehabilitation work on the old canal commenced in 1922. The canal conduit was
widened and re‐lined and the flumes replaced and enlarged along its entire 22‐mile length,
from its Cedar Rock diversion dam on the American River near Kyburz to the new forebay at
Pollock Pines. At the time of its completion in 1923, it was for all intents and purposes a new
canal. Its theoretical capacity was more than doubled from about 70 to more than 150
ft.³/second, and most of the original engineering features were replaced. Two new redwood‐
stave pipe siphons were constructed above ground level across the mouths of Alder Creek and
Plum Creek canyons. Flumes and ditches were enlarged with the canal being lined through
long stretches with steel‐reinforced gunite shells floated into place by boat from temporary
manufacturing plants located along the canal. Dry‐laid and mortared rock lining and wood
panels were also used to enhance the efficiency and durability of canal segments. The old
rectangular box flumes were reconstructed and reconfigured with flared sides to increase their
carrying capacity. Western States also built a new rock‐filled, timber‐crib intake dam in the
summer of 1923. The only original features between the diversion dam and the forebay to
remain intact were the extensive rock bench foundation walls that supported the many flumes
on the ditch system and two tunnels, the latter of which were both eventually enlarged and re‐
lined.


In addition to work on the old canal, upgrades to the water‐storage system in the upper
South Fork watershed were also undertaken. Three of the four reservoirs in the system required
either new construction or expansion. At Twin Lakes (Caples Lake) on a tributary of the Silver
Fork, construction of a new earthen storage dam and an auxiliary spillway was initiated in 1917
and completed in 1923, creating a reservoir with a storage capacity of 21,581 acre‐feet. After
extensive planning, the old rock‐filled and timber‐crib dam built in 1876 at Silver Lake was
enlarged and substantially reconstructed in the late 1920s to increase storage capacity from
about 5,000 acre‐feet to 11,800 acre‐feet. Finally, at the Medley Lakes site, the old reservoir
containing only 350 acre‐feet was enlarged between 1917 and 1923 by construction of a new
main dam and eleven auxiliary dams raising the reservoir, now called Lake Aloha, to a storage
capacity of about 5,350 acre‐feet (Tenney 1923 in State of California DWR 1979:50–51).
New construction was also required at the lower end of the project. The El Dorado Canal
emptied into a forebay that was built to a capacity of 400 acre‐ft. of water. From the forebay
intake and valve house, water was released into a two and one‐half mile‐long pipeline,
consisting of 66‐in. and 84‐in. wood‐stave pipe. At the end of the pipeline the water flows were
controlled at a tall surge chamber and valve house at the head of the penstock. The welded steel
penstock was about 4,000 ft. long with a 52‐in. diameter at the top and a 30‐in. diameter at the
bottom. The penstock split at a Y‐junction near the powerhouse and provided the motive power
to run the generators at the powerhouse (PAR 1995:7).
One problem of construction was supplying materials to parts of the ditch that were not
near any main roadway. This was mainly solved with the use of 6‐1/2‐ft.‐diameter round steel
tubs that were used to float loads of cement, sand, tools, supplies, and other items down the
canal. A hoist and derrick system was used to put in and take out the tubs from the water
(Engineering News‐Record, 23 February 1923 in Shoup 1990:30).
The powerhouse was built at an elevation of 1,889 ft. amsl, and, with the forebay at 3,797
ft. amsl, it had a static head of 1,910 feet. Two General Electric 10,000‐kw generators were
installed, with plans to add up to six more units in the future. Other equipment included two
Allis‐Chalmers single overhung impulse wheels, two General Electric exciters, and two Allis‐
Chalmers governors. These were considered state‐of‐the‐art at the time and found in many
contemporary hydroelectric plants in California (Electrical West, 15 May 1932:370–376 cited in
PAR 1995:7). Early plans of the powerhouse show a “proposed expansion” on the east side that
would approximately double the original floor space and accommodate two new generators. To
accommodate this expansion, the east wall of the powerhouse was built of wood‐frame, as
opposed to the other walls, which were constructed of reinforced concrete. The expansion was,
however, never undertaken.
Operation of the El Dorado Hydroelectric System, 1924–Present
As part of the 1922–1924 construction project, five new permanent ditch camps (Camps 1–
5) were built to house ditch tenders and other personnel who were needed to maintain and
repair the El Dorado Canal to permit year‐round operation of the hydroelectric plant. At the
head of the system were the lake tender’s cabins at Caples Lake and Silver Lake. Ditch Camp 5,
located a short distance above the town of Pollock Pines and on the state highway, became the


headquarters camp for the project. A few storage sheds were also constructed at strategic points
along the canal where maintenance and emergency repair tools were stored. These sheds also
served as refuge shelters where protection could be secured from the elements during severe
weather. Some of these structures built in the 1920s still remain on the canal system today.
Ditch tenders generally lived at the camps with their families. The term camps is a
misnomer since each location included permanent standing structures and infrastructure,
utilities, and even some modest landscaping. Life along the ditch was isolated despite telephone
communication. Ditch tenders walked their “beat” daily checking water flows, clearing debris,
and checking for damage or wear to the canal and flumes. Further information about the lives
of ditch tenders is available in Baxter, Allen, and Fernandez (2006).
Western States continued to own and operate the powerhouse until the company’s merger
with PG&E in 1928. PG&E acquired 95 percent of the Western States stock and assumed
ownership of the latter company’s properties and holdings; the California State Railroad
Commission approved the merger in April of that year. Under PG&E ownership, the El Dorado
Canal has been modified through routine or cyclical maintenance and repair work that
introduced new materials not found on the 1922–1924 hydroelectric system. Major construction
projects have also been undertaken. Among the most notable would be construction of
Esmeralda Tunnel (1930–1931) and Slide Tunnel (1983–1984), replacement of the wood‐stave
Alder Creek and Plum Creek siphons with a steel pipe conduit (1945–1947), and replacement of
the old wood‐stave forebay‐powerhouse conduit with a steel pipe (Shoup 1990:34–40). The two
PG&E tunnel projects, as well as the more recent Mill to Bull Creek tunnel, have resulted in the
abandonment of long sections of the canal and flume.
During the era of PG&E ownership, the El Dorado Powerhouse experienced some
modifications to its original equipment and structure, most often as a result of major flooding
events. The first of these events, a penstock rupture on the hillside above the powerhouse,
occurred in 1943. Water and eroded soil flowed through the windows on the south side of the
plant, depositing approximately six ft. of debris on the floor surrounding the turbines and
generators. PG&E reacted by infilling the south window bays with concrete and constructing a
concrete stream diversion wall on the west (downstream) side of the powerhouse. In 1955 the
South Fork of the American River rose above the level of the floor of the powerhouse, causing
damage to equipment inside. To prevent further high‐water flooding in the future, PG&E built a
second concrete wall, this one on the east (upstream) side of the plant. These preventative
modifications proved effective against major floods in December 1964 and February 1986. The
1964 flood was the highest on record to that date, but the floodwalls held and there was no
reported damage to the powerhouse or its equipment. The flood protection measures
performed well in 1986, again resulting in no damage.
Perhaps the most devastating flooding event occurred in 1993, because it resulted in the
closure of the powerhouse. Mechanical failure was to blame: the Unit 2 Turbine Nozzle Body
failed because of a governor malfunction coupled with an undetected flaw in the original
casting of the nozzle body. The resulting flood deposited four feet of water in the powerhouse
and caused severe damage to electrical and mechanical equipment. EID had purchased the El
Dorado Hydroelectric Project, including the powerhouse, in 1995 and completed repairs to the


nozzle bodies, hydraulic pressure systems, governors, and controls in 1995–1996. EID also
replaced the penstock relief valves with jet deflectors at this time, thus improving control of
penstock pressure rise.
The most recent flooding occurred in 1997. Unusually high amounts of rainfall in late
December 1996 culminated in a 100‐year flood event on the morning of January 2, 1997. The
water level overflowed the flood protection wall on the upstream side and flooded the
powerhouse with nine feet of water and debris. The damage to the plant included the loss of
control equipment and damage to the governors and generators, as well as loss of part of a
window on the east wall and a suspended foot bridge over the river. The generators and control
equipment have since been replaced or repaired and protective measures to modify the concrete
shell of the building to prevent further flooding are under construction.
During the short time that EID has owned the project, damages resulting from fire and
unstable mountain slopes have given rise to concerns about the viability of retaining certain
segments of the canal. EID has placed some canal segments into pipe and the recent Mill to Bull
Creek tunnel bypasses a particularly troublesome section of canal located in an area subject to
massive recurring landslides. EID also built a new intake dam at Cedar Rock near Kyburz in
2001.

CALIFORNIA WORK CAMPS IN THE 1920S
The 1920s were, other than a brief but very sharp recession after WWI, a period of
economic expansion, at least until 1929, and for many workers a time of steady work, rising real
wages, and the beginnings of the modern consumer society. It was also a time of relative
industrial peace compared to the previous decade. The Industrial Workers of the World (IWW)
had been suppressed, by both legal and extralegal means, and was no longer considered a
serious threat and there was a decline in union membership. The Progressive ideal of a
harmony of interests between labor and capital was still an important idea during the 1920s,
although hardly a universal one. California rural industry started drawing once again on a
transnational migrant workforce, recruiting workers from the Philippines and Mexico.
Several trends should be considered for the study of the 1922 construction camps. The
economy was moving into a period of expansion after the post‐WWI slump. The labor market
was relatively tight, in part due to the expanding economy, but also because of the passage of
the restrictive 1917 Immigration Act. A third factor was the impact of earlier Progressive‐era
investigations and reforms, particularly those of the California Commission of Immigration and
Housing (CCIH).
Investigations of Rural Labor
During the previous decade, a nationwide eruption outburst of strikes, the growing
influence of the International Workers of the World (IWW, or ʺWobbliesʺ), and the
indiscriminate use of violence by corporations and government forces resulted in public, state
and scholarly attention to the ʺlabor question.ʺ The end result was a general shift on the part of


many industries from outright confrontation to cooptation, improving work conditions
sufficiently to make independent organization unattractive for their workers.
The violence of the 1910s, in particular the Wheatland Riot of 1913, marked a turning point
in the history of California rural labor. The Wheatland Strike led to an investigation of seasonal
work in California by the Commission on Industrial Relations, and the establishment of the
California Commission of Immigration and Housing (CCIH). The records and
recommendations of these investigators comprise an invaluable resource for understanding
California rural labor in the early 20th century. There exists no comparable record until the
1930s when the internal migration of American tenant farmers from the southwest sparked
another series of investigations.
The presence of the IWW had also been an impetus behind the spate of investigations of
rural working class life at the turn of the century. Rural labor was generally unskilled and
transient, and, as such, of little interest to the craft unions of the American Federation of Labor
(AFL). Thus the IWW was for many years the only union that actively organized rural laborers
(Higbie 2003:8). Their belief in ʺOne Big Union,ʺ a single union for all workers, and their
rhetoric of revolution and sabotage was seen by many Americans, including other unions, as a
significant threat to the social order.
The State‐level CCIH and Federal‐level Commission on Industrial Relations (CIR), as well
as other Progressive‐era reforms, grew out of the public awareness that the struggle between
labor and capital now posed an important social problem. Numerous investigations sought to
define the precise nature of the problem. In the case of transient laborers, the bread and butter
of IWW organizing, the subject was so mysterious to the middle‐class professionals who
comprised the reforming committees that some extraordinary measures were taken, particularly
a series of ʺparticipant observationsʺ in which investigators went undercover as hobo workers
in order to try to get some idea of the realities of this class of workersʹ day‐to‐day life.
This work produced a wealth of detail on work camp life in the early 20th century from a
variety of industries. Before Wheatland the prevailing attitude towards work camp housing
might at best be described as laissez faire, especially among agriculturalists. A leading 1903
textbook, Farm Management, advised that good housing was a waste of capital as harvest
workers were ʺunappreciative of attempts to provide livable surroundingsʺ and were ʺbest
cared for with some cheap shelter where they can flopʺ (quoted in Street 2004:503).
Conditions in other industries were probably marginally better—a workforce cannot just
ʺflopʺ wherever it can when constructing canals in the Sierras. There were some notable early
experiments in paternalism, especially among citrus growers, who required a more skilled
workforce (Mitchell 1996:97–98). Nonetheless housing could be grim. In testimony before the
CIR in 1916, one George Speed described conditions on dam construction camps on the
Sacramento River, ʺWell, I have been in camps where there has been four to 500 men packed
together in a camp in tiers, four tiers high, with only an alleyway of about 2 ft. between them,
and then boards put on the rafters for the men to sleep on thereʺ (Walsh and Manly 1916:4937).
A CCIH investigator, F.C. Mills, worked undercover at a logging camp in 1914 and noted that
the workers lived four to a tent or cabin, and that there were no toilets, ʺthe hill‐sides nearby


being used.ʺ The water was piped from a distance, a method that Mills referred to as unclean
(Woirol 1992:55–56).
Diet was another element of work camp life that received attention. Street (2004) writes
that most hobo farmworkers had a very regimented diet, due to an influential study of the
economics of providing board for farm workers by Richard L. Adams (Street 2004:553). Because
the largest of all expenditures was typically for meat, workers were usually given meat in a
stew rather than whole cuts. This allowed employers to use the bones and other unsavory parts
that could be easily disguised in gravy and sopped up with bread. Workers also ate meat
substitutes like eggs, milk, dried fruit; and packinghouse byproducts like hog jowls, oxtails,
pigsʹ feet, sausages, ʺ the lesser cuts ʺ and lamb tongue (Street 2004:553). At the other extreme
lumber workers appear to have had rather good diets, regardless of how poor camp conditions
were otherwise (Cornford 1987:24; Franzen 1992; Higbie 2003:39). Diet could also vary by
ethnicity and individual arrangements on the part of the workers.
Carleton Parker (1915) summarized the finding of the CCIH investigations on work camps.
The Commission investigated 876 labor camps in California, which contained 60,813 workers,
and included lumber camps, construction camps, hop camps, berry camps and highway
construction camps. Of the 876, 297 (34 percent) were ʺgood;ʺ 316 (36 percent) were ʺfair;ʺ and
263 (30 percent) were ʺbad.ʺ By ʹbadʺ Parker meant there were no toilet or bathing facilities
(with some of the camps having nearly 100 women and children present), the camps ʺviolated
the state law with regard to the sleeping accommodations—the cubic air law that there should
be 500 cubic ft. of air for every sleeper.ʺ The kitchens and dining rooms were unscreened, and in
many, the bunkhouses there had no flooring (Walsh and Manly 1916:4935). ʺFairʺ camps had
some accommodation, but were still below the standards established by the State Board of
Health.
Using the state of the toilets as a measure of sanitation at the camps, Parker listed the
percent of unsanitary by industry (Table 2). Parker noted the relatively good sanitation of the
railway and highway camps as being due to their operation by large corporations (Parker
1915:119) that presumably had the capital to invest in work camps.
The report noted that of the 876 camps as a whole, 13 percent had no toilets, 41 percent
had filthy toilets, 20.4 percent were fairly sanitary, and 23.4 percent were sanitary and fly‐
screened. Forty percent of the camps had no bathing facilities, and 39 percent had tubs or
showers. Twenty‐five percent of the camps had no garbage disposal, with the kitchen refuse
being allowed to accumulate indefinitely. Five hundred twenty seven camps had horses, and of
these, 47 percent allowed manure to accumulate around the kitchen and mess tent (Parker
1915:119–120). Parker also observed that a ʺgood deal of the unrest which has convulsed
Californiaʹs agricultural workers this year was due to the carelessness and indifferent housing
of migratory casual laborersʺ (Walsh and Manly 1916:4935).


Table 2. Work Camp Sanitation (after Parker 1915)
Camp Type ʺFilthyʺ Toilets
Fruit Camps 68%
Grape Camps 69%
Hop Camps 52%
Ranch Camps 61%
Mining Camps 37%
Lumber Camps 42%
Highway Camps 38%
Railway Camps 24%
Oil Camps 27%

An explicit part of the CCIH program was reforming the camps so that they conformed to
an ʺAmerican standard of living.ʺ This was intended to assimilate some nationalities while
driving out others. For example in 1926 the CCIH convinced the Guasti operation to construct a
complete new camp for its Mexican farm worker families. The CCIH investigator noted that:
It is worth the trip to Guasti to see just how all some of the Mexican families
can be elevated ... the kitchens of this new camp are piped for gas. The Guasti
Co. sells gas to the occupants for so much a month same as installment
houses. I assure you that it was a pleasure for me to look into these Mexican
kitchens and see the Mexican women instead of being smoked out with an old
Dutch oven, standing by gas stoves like noble Anglo‐Saxons [Mitchell
1996:105].
The material improvements described here, such as piped gas, went beyond being simple
amenities to make their workersʹ lives easier, but were bound up with racial ideologies and
strategies for assimilating immigrant workers into a middle class idea of the American way of
life.
Work Camp Reform
Early Progressive legislation was on one hand an effort to forestall the looming threat of
class conflict in the early 20th century through the implementation of selected reforms, and was
an acknowledgment that a policy of open repression was not necessarily the best response to
labor agitation (Adams 1966; Gitelman 1988). These reforms were also intended as a form of
social engineering. Donald Mitchell (1996) discussed this aspect of Progressive Era reforms in
reference to California farmworker camps and the California Commission of Immigration and
Housing (CCIH).
As with much social research, the findings of these investigations were framed within the
researchersʹ class backgrounds and expectations, and a mix of prevailing ideological
representations of the working classes. Within social Darwinist models transient workers were


the losers in social competition, compelled to the margins of society by their own inadequacies.
Racial models dwelt on the biological characteristics of the different ethnic groups that
comprised rural laborers. Some progressive researchers saw the attitudes and worldview of
transient workers as rationalizing laziness (Higbie 2003:3). Carleton Parker, the first director of
the CCIH, was strongly influenced by the then‐modern field of psychology, arguing that the
mindsets of migratory workers were psychological abnormalities caused by environmental
conditions, that their ʺstates of conventional willfulness such as a laziness, inefficiency,
destructiveness in strikes, etc., as ordinary mental disease of a functional kind, a sort of
industrial psychosisʺ (Higbie 2003:88). The psychological strains experienced by migrant
workers, their absence from the stabilizing influence of women and family, their rootlessness,
and the degrading conditions in which they lived and worked, combined with their frustration
at being unable to enjoy the ʺhigh‐end social and economic life of the American middle classʺ
(Higbie 2003:87) led to their propensity to engage in irrational behavior such as working slowly
or striking. For Parker, social upheavals such as Wheatland were not reactions to power,
exploitation, and economics, but psychological disturbances brought about by environmental
conditions (Mitchell 1996:52).
Carleton Parker and many of the CCIH reformers interpreted labor violence on the part of
seasonal workers as the result of pathologies brought on by unhealthy environments.
Reforming these brutalizing environments would eliminate the source of the pathologies and
thus eliminate strikes and other forms of labor agitation (Mitchell 1996:51). Historians and
archaeologists have noted in many studies of 19th and 20th century immigration that notions of
ʺAmericanismʺ included strong ideas about standards of living, public display, and had a
definite material component. This could be expressed through architecture, diet, table settings,
furnishings, and childrenʹs toys (Cohen 1986; Jameson 1998; Praetzellis and Praetzellis 2001)
For middle class Americans in the late‐19th and early‐20th centuries, the material world
served an explicit pedagogical purpose, inculcating appropriate forms of behavior and the use
of modern amenities and objects. There was also a more general idea of environmental
determinism, the environment in this case being an artificial one. Unpleasant environments
bred unpleasant people, and vice versa. Many domestic reformers thus saw working class
agitation as the result of pathologies brought about by the domestic environments in which
working class people lived. Class tensions could be resolved by reforming working class home
life, eliminating the source of the pathologies that led to strikes and criminal behavior.
The Progressive Era reforms of the CCIH should be seen in the light of these prevailing
middle class ideologies towards class tensions. The Director of the CCIH, Carleton Parker, was
committed to the idea that violent eruptions such as Wheatland could be avoided by a series of
environmental ʺtweaksʺ that would provide a domestic environment for workers that would
make workers less pathologically inclined to strike, engage in violence, or other socially deviant
behavior.
Based on Parkerʹs analysis the CCIH produced a set of standardized work camp plans
(CCIH:1919), in essence commencing a program of environmental fixes to the places that
produced psychological disturbances. The plans were developed by one J.J. Rosenthal, a
sanitary engineer, with the input of a board of prominent public health authorities. The plans


incorporated innovative approaches to sanitary engineering pioneering, for example, up‐to‐date
sanitary toilets. The work camp program became the most important part of the CCIH activities,
and in 1915 the CCIH recommendations became the Labor Camp Act of 1915. The guidelines
produced by the CCIH, Advisory Pamphlet on Sanitation and Housing, form an important baseline
for the archaeological study of work camps, providing a sense of socially acceptable norms for
work camps, such as the number of people per tent, proper sanitation, construction, and other
facilities. The degree to which employers conformed to or deviated from the guidelines is also
an important topic for research (Maniery 2002).
Although by the 1920s the political power of the CCIH was in decline, it had succeeded in
getting some work camp legislation passed into law (the 1915 Labor Camp Act) and it
maintained inspections and published guidelines for work camp construction. The CCIH work
camp program started declining in importance after ca. 1919, when postwar conditions, a
resurgent nativism, and a lull in labor activism lead to a gradual dismantling and
bureaucratization of CCIHʹs functions (Mitchell 1996:52). Responsibility for the enforcement of
the Labor Camp Act was thereafter transferred to the California Department of Industrial
Relations in 1927.

THE WESTERN STATES CONSTRUCTION CAMPS
To complete this massive construction project, Western States employed some 2,000 men,
the majority of whom were housed in temporary construction camps along the 40 miles from
the powerhouse at the lower end of the system to Caples Lake (formerly Twin Lakes) at the
upper end. Most of the camps were identified by letters. While the Headquarters Camp, located
near 14 Mile House (current Pollock Pines), had wood‐frame office buildings and several
cottages, the typical construction camp consisted of varying numbers of tents put up on wooden
frames with wood floors. Each camp employed a foreman, engineer, timekeeper, and a cook
(Shoup 1990:29). The camps that concern us here are the eleven camps between the powerhouse
and Kyburz; Camps A, B, C, G, K, M, N, P, R, S, and T. The numbers of buildings and structures
for each of these camps, as reconstructed from the 1922 plans, is shown in Table 3.
The numbers in Table 3 give some idea of the different workforces amassed for the
different operations along the canal construction zone. Camps A, B, K, and R cluster down at
western end of the canal, around the forebay reservoir, the pipe conduit, the penstock, and the
powerhouse. These large construction projects are reflected in the size of the camps. Setting
aside Camp R, which was a more permanent arrangement with frame bunkhouses as opposed
to tents, these Camps A, B and K had 43, 62, and 51 tents respectively. Camp B also had a
temporary cottage. The camps along the canal east of the forebay had, with one exception, from
25 to 30 tents. The exception was Camp T, which had only five tents, and may have served a
specialized function.
The camps had a standardized array of support structures—a kitchen, mess hall, bath
house, store house, and meat house. Water was provided from tanks, as was oil and gas. Work‐
related buildings, such as blacksmith shops, tool houses, and offices occurred primarily in the
camps at the western and eastern ends of the canal, with the camps in the central stretch


(Camps M, N, P, and T) having only wood sheds, and a semi‐subterranean structure (the
“dugout” on the plan, Figure 3) at Camp P. Every camp had formal toilet facilities. It should be
noted that a cursory inspection of the camps by archaeologists from the ASC and EID revealed
variation from the plans at least two of the camps. At Camp P the variation was minor
consisting of some additional structures not indicated on the plan. At Camp A, the difference
was significant. The camp was far larger with more substantial structures than the 1922 plan
indicated.
The tents at the camps were typically on raised wooden platforms, regardless of whether
the tents were on sloping ground or not (Figure 7), and had wooden sides. Where the slope was
severe, as at Camp A, flats and terraces were constructed with retaining walls (Figure 8). The
tents in many of the camps do not seem to have been heated, probably because it was summer
when the photographs were taken. An exception was Camp A (Figure 9), where the photo
shows stove pipes protruding from the rear flaps of the tents. Either the photo was taken later
in spring or fall, or Camp A was considerably cooler due to its location in the canyon. Bedding
within the tents appears to have consisted of steel cots (Figure 10).
The cookhouses were relatively substantial frame buildings with well‐equipped kitchens
(Figures 11 and 12). Unsurprisingly the associated refrigerated meat houses also had a
substantial construction, which would be necessary for insulation (Figure 13).
The main information we have on the Western States workforce comes from the
reminiscences of Walter McLean, a field engineer on the project (McLean 1993). He recalls that
the workers were hired like agricultural labor, through hiring halls in Stockton and Sacramento.
His statement is worth quoting at length.
McLean: …Most of these fellows came in through hiring halls. In those days Sacramento
and Stockton had what they call labor hiring halls. If you wanted men for your
construction camp you would call up Marray and Ready in Sacramento and say
“I want three of four carpenters, I want so many laborers, and I want so many
workers,” or something like that. And they would round them up and take them
by bus to the job.
Lage: It’s reminiscent of agricultural day labor now.
McLean: Pretty much the same as agricultural labor. In other words, these people were
actually labor contractors, you might call them. If you wanted laborers or cement
workers or somebody like that, why you’d call Murray and Ready. Tere were
also three or four other agencies. You’d call them up and say, “ Send me up x
number of laborers for tomorrow, “ or the next day or something like that, see?
In those days I think they used to pay a dollar a head. In other words, for every
man they sent up for the job, the contractor would then pay a dollar for that
particular fellow.
Lage: Pay to the labor contractor?
McLean: Yes, to the hiring group—to Murray and Ready. Then they would deduct that
dollar from the worker’s first paycheck [McLean 1993:58].


The early 1920s came after tightened immigration restrictions from Asian countries and
were a period of increasing immigration from southern and eastern Europe. Other
archaeologists have noted that work forces on hydroelectric projects tend to be European and
American (Maniery 2007, pers. comm.), and this may be the case for the Western States
workforce. The site record for Camp N notes that the occupants were Swedish immigrants
(Darcangelo and Collins 2002h). At this time Mexican immigrants were an important part of
mining and road and railroad construction projects. Western States was drawing on this labor
pool is unknown. McLean’s discussion of the hiring process does suggest, however, that
Western States was drawing on the same pool as agricultural labor.
Likewise little is known of labor relations on the project. One Floyd Poole, interviewed in
1987 by Laurence Shoup, relayed one incident that sheds light on labor relations during that
place and time. Western States hired thousands of men in order to meet the established
deadlines. Having little time to screen the men, the company was fearful of unions and strikes.
Many of the working men were undoubtedly favorable to a union. The conservative tenor of the
1920s forced unions to oftentimes exist underground, but in place to emerge if the needs arose.
Western States used spies to respond to this perceived threat. The company would have an
agent dress as a workman and hire on to the project. The agent was really in place to discover
the existence of a union and identify its leaders. Once, when one of these spies arrived at a
construction camp, the workmen asked to see his “red card,” the membership card of the
Industrial Workers of the World or the “Wobblies.” The spy was told that nobody worked at
that camp unless they had a red card. The spy reported this to the company supervisors who
immediately fired about 100 men or the entire camp except one (Shoup 1990:29). On the other
hand McLean (1993:59) recalls that the carpenters and riggers were unionized, while the
laborers and concrete workers were not.



Figure 7. Panorama of Camp B (FS# 05‐03‐56‐829). Photo taken in 1922. Courtesy of El Dorado
Irrigation District.


Figure 8. Camp A (FS# 05‐03‐56‐828), showing tent flats. Photo taken in
1922. Courtesy of El Dorado Irrigation District.


Figure 9. Camp A (FS# 05‐03‐56‐828), showing tents with stovepipes.
Photo taken in 1922. Courtesy of El Dorado Irrigation District.


Figure 10. Tents at Camp T (FS# 05‐03‐56‐825). Photo taken in 1922. Courtesy of El Dorado Irrigation
District.


Figure 11. Cookhouse at Camp A (FS# 05‐03‐56‐828). Photo taken in 1922.
Courtesy of El Dorado Irrigation District.


Figure 12. Kitchen at Camp G (FS# 05‐03‐56‐832). Photo taken in 1922. Courtesy of El Dorado Irrigation
District.


Figure 13. Interior of Icehouse at Camp G (FS# 05‐03‐56‐832). Photo taken in 1922. Courtesy of El
Dorado Irrigation District.


Figure 14. Mess hall at Camp G (FS# 05‐03‐56‐832). Photo taken in 1922. Courtesy of El Dorado
Irrigation District.


Table 3. Project 184 Construction Camps: Buildings and Structures from Camp Plans
05‐03‐56‐ 05‐03‐56‐ 05‐03‐56‐ 05‐03‐56‐ 05‐03‐56‐ 05‐03‐56‐ 05‐03‐56‐ 05‐03‐56‐ 05‐03‐56‐ 05‐03‐56‐ 05‐03‐56‐
828 829 833 832 811 823 834 830 838 711 825
Camp A Camp B Camp C Camp G Camp K Camp M Camp N Camp P Camp R Camp S Camp T
(Figure 5) (Figure 6) (Figure 2) (Figure 3) (Figure 6) (Figure 4) (Figure 5) (Figure 3) (Figure 5) (Figure 5) (Figure 5)
Tent 43 61 23 25 50 23 26 22 4 25 4
Engineerʹs Tent 1 1 1 1 1
Cookʹs Tent 1 1
Timekeeperʹs Tent 1 1 1 1
Foremanʹs Tent 1 1
Sub‐foremanʹs Tent 1
Bunkhouse 2
Temp. Cottage 1
Kitchen 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1
41
Bath House 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1
Mess Hall 1 1 1 2 2 1 1 1 1 1 1
Store House 1 2 2 1 1 1 1 1 1
Meathouse/Refrig. 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1
Wash Stand 2 2 1 1 1 2 1
Wash House 1 2
Office 1 1 1 1 2
Wood Shed 2 1 1 1
Commissary 1
Vegetable House 1
Pantry 1

Table 3. Project 184 Construction Camps: Buildings and Structures from Camp Plans, continued
05‐03‐56‐ 05‐03‐56‐ 05‐03‐56‐ 05‐03‐56‐ 05‐03‐56‐ 05‐03‐56‐ 05‐03‐56‐ 05‐03‐56‐ 05‐03‐56‐ 05‐03‐56‐ 05‐03‐56‐
828 829 833 832 811 823 834 830 838 711 825
Camp A Camp B Camp C Camp G Camp K Camp M Camp N Camp P Camp R Camp S Camp T
(Figure 5) (Figure 6) (Figure 2) (Figure 3) (Figure 6) (Figure 4) (Figure 5) (Figure 3) (Figure 5) (Figure 5) (Figure 5)
Gas and Oil Stand 1 1 1 1 1
Tank 2 2 1 1 1
Water Tank 1
Tool House 1 1 1 1 1
Blacksmith Shop 1 1 1 1
Engineerʹs Office 1 1
Car Platform 1
Garage 1
Dugout 1
Cement Shed 1
42
Warehouse 1
Toilet 1 5 1 2 2 2 2 3 1 2 1
Frame Building 1 1 1 1
Illegible 2

RESEARCH DESIGN

In the context of a Federal undertaking, the legal significance of cultural resources is
critical because it determines whether the properties ʺshould be considered for protection from
destruction or impairmentʺ (36 CFR 60.2). Impacts to historic properties listed or eligible for
listing in the National Register of Historic Places (NRHP) must be considered in accordance
with the regulations of the Advisory Council on Historic Preservation (ACHP) set forth in 36
CFR 800. Cultural remains determined to be not significant usually do not require further
management consideration.
The process by which one determines the NRHP eligibility of a property is set out in
Archaeology and Historic Preservation: Secretary of the Interiorʹs Standards and Guidelines (48
CFR 44716–44742).

NRHP CRITERIA FOR EVALUATION
The significance of a historic resource is measured against the NRHP Criteria for
Evaluation. The quality of significance in American history, architecture, archaeology,
engineering, and culture is present in districts, sites, buildings, structures, and objects that
possess integrity of location, design, setting, materials, workmanship, feeling, and association,
and,
a. That are associated with events that have made a significant contribution to the broad
patterns of our history; or
b. That are associated with the lives of persons significant in our past; or
c. That embody the distinctive characteristics of a type, period, or method of construction,
or that represent the work of a master, or that possess high artistic values, or that
represent a significant and distinguishable entity whose components may lack
individual distinction; or
d. That have yielded, or may be likely to yield, information important in prehistory or
history [36 CFR 60.4].
While examples of all categories of properties—districts, sites, buildings, structures, and
objects—may be judged in relation to any or all of the criteria, the significance of archaeological
properties is usually assessed by applying Criterion D. This criterion stresses the importance of
the information contained in an archaeological site rather than its intrinsic value as a surviving
example of a type or its historical association with an important person or event.
To assess whether a property is likely to contain important information, the researcher
must prepare an archaeological research design. This document identifies the important
questions that could be addressed by the kind of data that the property is likely to contain and
that cannot be addressed using data from other sources alone.



RESEARCH ORIENTATION
At first glance work camps are not the most appealing topics. The camps themselves are
often designed, reflecting only the cost efficiencies and paternalistic concerns of corporate
engineering departments. With little presence in the historical record and a nondescript
material culture, the inhabitants of work camps can appear as an undifferentiated conglomerate
mass, without culture or ethnicity.
We take the perspective that the cultures of classes—working class, capitalist, and middle
class—are, like classes themselves, relational. They exist only in their relations with other
classes or class segments. Working class culture does not exist outside its relations with other
classes. Work camps are likewise the products of the relations between classes, between
workers and their employers, albeit relations that are not on equal terms. A central notion here
is the concept of power, and an awareness of the different kinds of power that exist and the
conflicts between these kinds of power (Giddens 1979; Wolf 1990; Brumfiel 1992), essentially
boiling down in the case of work camps to the dialectic between ʺpower overʺ and ʺpower to;ʺ
the power over othersʹ lives and the power to control oneʹs own life (Miller and Tilley 1984;
Paynter and McGuire 1991). The power of work camp operators is formal, institutional, and
easily documented. The power of the workers in the camp is informal, heterogeneous, and
rarely documented, unless it should erupt into large labor actions. Employersʹ interests are the
most obvious element in work camp design. But even these interests are the outcome of class
relations, as employers designed the camps in response to episodes of labor strife or in response
to legislation, which is also often also the result of labor strife. And their employees react to,
adapt to, and alter those designs.
While work camps can inform on a number of general issues within historical
archaeological research, such as consumerism, commodity flows, or local adaptations, they also
have a specific and unique contribution to make to our understanding of Western history and
archaeology. When considered within the framework of California labor history, work camps
are one of the only material resources associated with California rural labor.
Through their labor on road and railroad construction, irrigation and hydroelectric
projects, and in agriculture, logging, and mining, it was largely immigrant or transient labor
who built the landscape of the modern West. Yet it is a workforce for which it is singularly
difficult to form an accurate historical picture. The jobs they worked, and lived, on were
seasonal and temporary. The workers themselves were of little interest to the broader society
unless they became perceived as a problem, either through strikes, as the object of one of the
periodic eruptions of nativism among white Americans, or when the labor pool that most rural
workers cycled in and out of, the indigent and unemployed, became large enough to be
perceived as a social problem. For example the state and national reaction to 1914 Wheatland
Riot, Kelleyʹs Army, and the expansion of the IWW, and a host of other labor struggles
provided us with an important series of documents and testimonies as investigators sought to
diagnose the reason for these social upheavals. Likewise the massive internal migration of
southwestern tenant farmers, as well as another upsurge of labor struggle during the 1930s also
sparked a series of investigations. But otherwise, as long as they were there when needed, and
gone when not, rural labor was an object of little interest and thus little documented.


This lack of documentation is a particular problem in the 1920s. The 1920s appear as a kind
of lull in the history of American labor, a quiet spot between the industrial violence and
repression of the 1910s and the Great Depression of the 1930s. This period is ensconced in
popular memory as the ʺJazz Ageʺ—evoking images of flappers, Art Deco, and national
prosperity. As it was no longer perceived as an overriding social problem, the life of labor
during this period did not generate the rich documentary investigative record that it did in
earlier and later decades.
The historical difficulty in characterizing rural labor is exacerbated by the nature of rural
labor itself. The sources historians use for demographic information, such as the U.S. census, are
of limited use in reconstructing the make‐up of the rural labor force. Rural workers are often
transient, moving from place to place, job to job, and industry to industry, often within the
space of a few days and often on a national or international scale. There has been little detailed
study of transient workers simply because tracking their lives and their movements is
enormously difficult (Peck 2000:2).
What we are left with in the documentary record is, at best, snapshots of these workers at
specific points and places in their lives, working within specific industries, but with little way of
connecting these points to form coherent narratives of these workersʹ lives or even awareness
that these points might need to be connected. ʺThe conclusions we draw about laborers depend
very much on where we find them in the historical record. But the course of a working life—
even in the course of a few days—a laborer might be a lumberjack, a railroad worker, a farm
laborer, a beggar, or a minerʺ (Higbie 2003:100). This work was seasonal and temporary. Other
than a few privileged ones, most workers moved on when the job was over. They lived in a
ceaseless cycle between mines, logging camps, and fields, or any other number of industries
such as fruit packing, canning, or construction, hoping to accumulate enough to hold them over
during the jobless winter months in cities and towns if they did not leave the state altogether.
This combination of poverty, social marginalization, and mobility, often on a national and
international scale, does not make for easy study or understanding. Both the documentary trail
and the material trail are very scanty.
As the foregoing discussion suggests, it is important to note that work camps represent
only one moment in rural workersʹ lives, but often the only moment where we have material
remains that can be closely associated with those lives. Isolated camps along railroads and
roads become ʺcan scattersʺ or ʺcan dumps.ʺ Winter quarters in cities and towns are, at best, the
archaeological remains of cheap hotels, flophouses and boardinghouses, sites that yield highly
mixed assemblages without definitive associations. Work camps are the most identifiable
material resource we have associated with California rural labor.

PROPERTY TYPES
The National Register of Historic Places defines a property type as ʺa grouping of
properties defined by common physical or associative attributes.ʺ The definition is flexible, and
properly so, since what constitutes a ʺproperty typeʺ will vary by the circumstances of the


project, the research questions, and management considerations. There are at least three scales
of analysis within which property types can be defined—intrasite, site, and intersite.
• The intrasite level of analysis operates at the level of the individual features and
deposits or meaningful groups of features and deposits that comprise the work camp
site. These features may individually have research potential or may only have potential
in relation to other features when considered in the context of the work camp as a whole.
• The site level of analysis considers the work camp site as a single entity. Here the
research potential may derive from the intrasite analysis of the features and deposits,
informing on topics such as spatial organization and activity areas.
• The intersite level of analysis considers groups of work camps. Here the purpose may
be analyzing change through time, considering variation with or across different
industries, or sampling from a set of standardized work camps.
Intrasite Property Types
All three levels of analysis are important for the Project 184 construction camps. But while
the Site and Intersite property types are self evident (ʺthe construction camp siteʺ and ʺmultiple
construction camp sitesʺ), property types at the intrasite level require further definition as they
are the building blocks upon which other levels of analysis will rest.
Review of the historical plans for the construction of the camps, site records, and a field
visit provided us with a list of anticipated relevant property types for the extant Project 184
construction camp sites (Table 4). Certain features such as roads and the El Dorado Canal or the
canalʹs old flume pass through or border some of the work camp sites, but are separate sites.
Table 4. Anticipated Property Types, and Frequency by Camp (from 1922 Plans)
05‐03‐ 05‐03‐ 05‐03‐ 05‐03‐ 05‐03‐ 05‐03‐ 05‐03‐ 05‐03‐ 05‐03‐

56‐828 56‐829 56‐828 56‐833 56‐823 56‐834 56‐830 56‐711 56‐825
Camp A Camp B Camp C Camp K CampM Camp N Camp P Camp S Camp T
Residential
Tent 43 23 50 23 26 22 25 4
Engineerʹs Tent 1 1 1
Cookʹs Tent 1
Timekeeperʹs 1 1 1
Tent
Foremanʹs Tent 1
Support
Mess Hall 1 1 2 1 1 1 1 1
Kitchen 1 1 1 1 1 1 1
Meathouse/Refrig 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1
Pantry 1
Bath House 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1


Table 4. Anticipated Property Types, and Frequency by Camp (continued)
05‐03‐ 05‐03‐ 05‐03‐ 05‐03‐ 05‐03‐ 05‐03‐ 05‐03‐ 05‐03‐ 05‐03‐
56‐828 56‐829 56‐828 56‐833 56‐823 56‐834 56‐830 56‐711 56‐825
Camp A Camp B Camp C Camp K CampM Camp N Camp P Camp S Camp T
Support (cont.)
Wash Stand 2 2 1 1 1 2 1
Wash House 1
Wood Shed 1 1 1
Store House 1 2 1 1 1 1
Office 1 1 1 1
Infrastructure
Gas and Oil Stand 1 1 1 1
Tank 2 1 1
Water Tank 1
Road* 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1
Path 1
Terrace ≥5
Work
Tool House 1 1 1
Blacksmith Shop 1 1
Dugout 1
Small Tramway 1
Canal/Flume* 1 1 1
Refuse Disposal
Toilet 1 1 2 2 2 3 2 1
Dump ≥1 ≥1 ≥1 ≥1 ≥1 ≥1 ≥1
*Separate linear resources that cross or border the construction camp site.

Residential features consist of those buildings in which people slept, and probably spent
much of their non‐work time (Figures 7, 8, and 9). These will comprise the bulk of the properties
at the intrasite level. Depending on the nature of the camp, and the company or agency running
the camp, a work camp residence can range from a blanket on the ground to a large formal
bunkhouse or individual family home. Differences in architecture or size can inform on issues
such as stratification and segregation within the camp, as well as the quality of life. The
presence or absence of architectural amenities such as stoves, flooring, screens, or glass
windows are also important indictors of living conditions. The presence of food preparation
and serving and consumption artifacts such as enamelware, ceramics, cans, cutlery, in the
residential properties might, for example, indicate individualized food preparation and


consumption. Early 20th‐century investigators sometimes observed that foreign‐born workers

preferred to prepare their own meals to eating in the mess hall. Recreation and health‐related
artifacts can provide information on area of sociability and health treatment in the camp.
Support features are those properties within the camp that served to house an
administrative or support function. Key functions here were board for the workers, as
evidenced by a cookhouse or kitchen (Figures 11 and 12), mess hall (Figure 14); and food
storage facilities (Figure 13); and hygiene, as evidenced by a shower or bathhouse. Food, its
storage, preparation, and content, was a central concern of work camp life. For example, diet
was probably one of the few redeeming features of life in logging camps throughout the U.S.,
by most accounts being plentiful and even healthful (Cornford 1987; Brashler 1991; Franzen
1992; Higbie 2003). Other workers, such as many agricultural workers, were not necessarily so
fortunate. In the crowded conditions and often unhygienic conditions of work camps, facilities
for washing and bathing were less a luxury than a necessity. Provisions for bathing, however,
were highly variable. The CCIH recommended heated water, at least one shower per 15 people,
and separate facilities for men and women (CCIH 1919), but in its investigations found facilities
could be little more than a public pump or an irrigation ditch. On the other hand, some camps
for Japanese workers incorporated bathhouses to accommodate Japanese traditions.
Infrastructural features are the systems of features that are largely used for transport and
transmission, be it of people, water, electricity, gas, or sewage. The presence of infrastructure
and its condition yields information on amenities such as electricity or running water, but is
also an important indicator of hygiene. Poor drainage of living areas, unpaved roads and
walkways, and open drains would have been factors in the quality of life in the camp. Water
sources and the filtration of drinking water are conditions that would have affected health.
Refuse disposal features are the features archaeologists like the most. These may take the
form of hollow refuse‐filled features such as trashpits and privies, or may be surface dumps,
such as material broadcast down the nearest slope. These are of course the source of the artifacts
and faunal remains that are the staples of archaeological research. But the features themselves
are important. The placement of these features in relation to the residential properties and water
sources is a significant factor in assessing health and sanitation practices at a camp. In relation
to outhouses, the CCIH recommended one per 15 persons, and that the deposits within be
regularly covered with crude oil, lime, or ashes. The development of cheap portable sanitary
toilets was something of which the CCIH was particularly proud (Mitchell 1996:52).
Unlike more permanent settlements, refuse disposal at work camps was generally
communal. The artifacts usually cannot be associated with individual households, but represent
the refuse of the entire camp. This is counterbalanced by the short time span of most camps and,
relative to most urban settings, a fairly homogeneous composition. The association for a 1922
work camp dump is significantly more focused than the association for a municipal dump. The
refuse can still yield significant meaningful information.
Beyond the refuse itself, the nature of the disposal is important for insights into hygiene
and sanitation practices at the camp. For example, burned refuse in a segregated dumping area


suggests a greater concern with sanitation than would a scatter of faunal material immediately
outside the cookhouse back door.
Work features mark the boundary between the camp and the industry for which the camp
existed. These features include facilities for animals, the maintenance of equipment, and storage
areas for tools and materials. In some cases, such as packing houses, and blacksmith and
machine shops, the feature is the actual place of work itself. These features can convey
information about the nature of the work and specific technological adaptation. They can in
some cases yield information about the control of work and attitudes towards work.

PREVIOUS RESEARCH
Work camps are always part of a larger industrial landscape and thus research tends to fall
within industry‐based categories—logging camps, mining camps, railroad camps, and so forth.
The edited volume Communities Defined by Work: Life in Western Work Camps (Van Bueren 2002a)
considers the phenomenon of work camps as a research topic in itself, establishing
commonalities and distinctions between work camps in different industries and geographic
areas, including oilfield camps, strike camps, , and aqueduct‐ and dam‐construction camps.
Baxter (2002) analyzes how oilfield workers at Squaw Flat in Ventura County created a
separation in work and domestic space that was not designed into the work camp. Van Bueren
(2002b) discusses ethnic and class differences at the Alabama Gates Aqueduct construction
camp, finding that, although there was segregation of housing, there was little in the material
culture to suggest substantial class or ethnic differences. Maniery (2002) looks at health and
sanitation at the 1920s Butt Valley Dam construction camp, particularly in relation to corporate
compliance with the 1915 Labor Camp Act. This article is of particular value as it contains the
key points of the 1920 version of the CCIH guideline as an appendix.
Work camps associated with the construction of dams and hydroelectric facilities are
probably the most extensively studied work camps in the West. An investigation of more than
50 dam‐construction camps in central Arizona is still by far the largest study of its kind (Rogge
et al. 1994, 1995). That research focused on the work camps associated with the construction of
seven dams built between the 1890s and 1940s. Rogge et al. noted after the turn of the century,
most camps shifted away from almost exclusively male societies to communities with more
women and children. With this shift there was an increase in community social institutions.
Although managers sought to control alcohol use there was evidence of alcohol consumption
and home brewing. The arrangement of the camps also became increasingly formal, with more
substantial structures at later camps. The spatial layout of the camps was found to reflect social
hierarchies.
Prior to the 1920s the large unskilled component of the Arizona dam‐construction
workforce was highly transient. Due to the tight labor market, management had a difficult time
maintaining a full crew. The high numbers of Apaches and other ethnic groups in the workforce
may have been due, at least in part, to that labor shortage (Bassett 1994). Rogge et al. (1994:295–
296) suggest that social differentiation within work camps may offer a fruitful avenue for
research.


Several dam‐construction camps have also been investigated in California, including two
located along the upper Santa Ana River in western San Bernardino County (Foster et al. 1988)
and the Relief Dam construction camp in Tuolumne County (Shoup 1989; Van Bueren 1989).
Numerous camps built during the 1920s for hydroelectric development projects, stretching from
the Stanislaus River to the Pit River in northern California (Maniery 1999; Baker 2001, 2002;
Maniery and Compas 2002), have also been studied. The Santa Ana River construction camps
investigated by Foster et al. comprise CA‐SBR‐5500H, occupied around 1905, and the Warm
Springs construction camp (CA‐SBR‐5503H), first occupied in 1903 and later reused in 1926. The
former camp had an unstructured organization and contained industrial features, structure
pads, refuse‐disposal pits, and evidence of corporate food preparation for large numbers of
workers. Foster et al. also surmised that proscriptions against alcohol use may have been
responsible for the low numbers of alcoholic beverage containers at CA‐SBR‐5500H.
Foster et al. (1988) found little evidence of the 1903 Warm Springs Camp and no
investigations were undertaken in the area reoccupied by the highly structured 1926 camp. Both
CA‐SBR‐5500H and ‐5503H, however, were evaluated as eligible for the National Register based
on their potential to address topics concerning technology, spatial patterning, economics,
sociocultural context, chronology, and subsistence practices.
The Relief Dam construction camp in northeastern Tuolumne County was determined
eligible for the National Register without excavation in 1989 (Shoup 1989). The hoistworks,
cableway anchors, steam donkeys, and other equipment used to build this remote dam in the
high Sierra Nevada were abandoned in place. A large flat adjacent to the dam contains
numerous structure pads and an extensive refuse dump dominated by commercial‐size tin
canisters, indicative of corporate food preparation at a mess hall (Van Bueren 1989). Workers
lived in seven bunkhouses, while managers and a doctor lived in separate wood‐framed houses
with their own associated refuse deposits. Status differences are clearly reflected in the remains
found in those different parts of the camp.
Excavation of the Butt Valley Dam Construction Camp 5, a National Register‐eligible site
(CA‐PLU‐1245H) occupied from 1922 to 1924, resulted in an extensive data base capable of
addressing topics similar to those studied by Foster et al. (1988). This was a large camp, with a
machine shop, roundhouse, rows of cabins (each with a wood stove), a cookhouse, and hospital.
A substation provided lighting, and a bathhouse with sump area, and wood‐lined privies large
enough to accommodate four seats were at the fringes of the residential areas. Water lines
transported water from large tanks to camp facilities, and wastewater from the cookhouse was
removed by pipe and discharged into earthen pits with wood lids (Maniery 1999:200–209).
In contrast to findings by Rogge et al. (1994) and Foster et al. (1988), at the earlier dam
construction camps, Maniery (1999) found that conditions at Butt Valley were somewhat
improved. Workers at Butt Valley ate moderate‐ to high‐priced meat cuts, such as roasts, ham,
and leg of lamb, instead of stews. A hospital was on‐site and was identified archaeologically.
There was little in the way of alcohol containers.
Five other 1920s camps at Lake Almanor suggest that hydroelectric camps maintained a
rigid social organization and division between workers and supervisors (Maniery and Compas


2002). At Camp Almanor the foremenʹs housing had running water and a sewer system,
whereas laborers lived in cabins with communal latrines and outside spigots. The layout at
Camp Almanor was terraced, with the administration and foreman housing located at the
highest level of the camp. The terrace below the administration area contained seasonal work
bunkhouses and cabins.
Three camps from the 1908‐to‐1913 construction of the Los Angeles Aqueduct have been
investigated. These are the Narka Camp (CA‐INY‐6359H) (Tordoff and Marvin 2003), the Dove
Springs Camp (Faull and Hangan 2004), and the Alabama Gates Camp (CA‐INY‐3760/H)
(Costello and Marvin 1992; Tordoff 1995a, 1995b). Of these the Alabama Gates Camp site was
determined eligible for the National Register, on the basis of surface evidence alone. was
occupied for less than a year starting in 1912. Remains at that camp consisted in part of well‐
defined rows of tent pad outlines, associated artifact scatters, and equally well‐defined wooden
house locations. Data‐recovery excavations yielded information on several topics, including
camp layout, daily life, camp occupants, labor‐management relations, and the spread of
technological innovations in the early 20th century (Van Bueren et al. 1999).

RESEARCH DOMAINS
This section lays out eight inter‐related general themes, within which there are specific
questions.
The themes are:
• Camp Function and Design
• Corporate Policy and Labor
• Camp Conditions
• Labor Stratification
• Immigration and Ethnicity
• Gender and Family
• Daily Life
• Labor Organization and Legislation
The first three themes are intended to illuminate how and why the work camps were
organized in certain ways and why certain settings were chosen. Proximity to work,
environmental constraints, and comfort were among the factors contributing to choices of
particular locations for camps. Their formal organization reflected management attitudes,
sanitation considerations, laws, social factors, and environmental constraints. To address this
issue, details are needed regarding the design, locations, and functions of all features within the
camp.
The remaining five themes focus on the life of labor in the camps, the relations with the
employers, and the broader issues of labor and social history. Work camps are the result of
what today is a relatively unfamiliar situation for most people—employers constructing and


operating living spaces for their employees, as well as providing food and other services for
them. This enmeshes employees and employers in tensions that stand outside the idealized
contractual relation of waged labor—individuals in the market place, exchanging a set amount
of labor for a set amount of money. The isolation and mobility of rural industry entailed that
employers also provide housing, food, and other services for their employees. Employers had to
invest valuable capital in physical plants for which there was no possibility of financial return,
and employees found themselves still subject to workplace relationships outside the workplace.
The differing ways in which this non‐work relationship was interpreted, struggled over, and
negotiated by workers and employing institutions is a central issue in the study of work camps.

Camp Function and Design
Camp Function and Design elicits basic information about the individual camps under
study; what kinds of camps they were, why the individual camps were laid out, and why they
had or did not have particular features. Some of these questions are resource‐specific and
descriptive and, in of and of themselves, probably trivial, but once answered provide data for
more interpretive questions. Some basic questions that archaeologists ask within this domain
include ones along the lines of: “What property types are present within the site? How was the
camp laid out?” Many of these basic descriptive questions have been answered, to a greater or
lesser extent, through reference to the 1922 camp plans. It should be noted however that plans
are not necessarily reality, and that in at least one case (Camp A) the archaeological site was far
more extensive than the 1922 plans indicated.
• How many residences were there? How many people lived at the camp?
• What support facilities were there at the camp?
• What was the infrastructure of the camp? Was there drainage? Was there supplied water
and gas? Was there electricity and for what purposes?
• What kinds of work areas are present and where are they located in relation to the
residential and other areas of the camp? Were work areas and habitations segregated or
interspersed and how did that impact the livability of the camp?
• Was a blacksmith shop present and, if so, how was it organized and what types of repairs
and fabrication were attempted? What kinds of adaptations and innovations are indicated,
if any?
• What were the environmental and structural constraints and opportunities that affected
the location and design of the camp and its structures?
• What adaptations to specific environmental/work conditions are evident in the layout?
Data Requirements
Documentary: camp plans, construction and maintenance ledgers, building blueprints,
historical photos.


Archaeological: sufficient focus to delimit building locations, functions and, if necessary,
dimensions.

Corporate Policy and Labor
Corporate Policy and Labor addresses how the corporationʹs policies and attitudes towards
their employees influenced the design of the camp and the facilities within it. These policies
might arise from factors as diverse as genuine concern for their employees, prevalent racial or
class ideologies, competition for scarce labor, or simply compliance with current legislation. An
important aspect of this theme is interaction of the often ideal world of corporate planning (as
reflected in blueprints, plans and regulations) and on‐the ground realities and compromises.
A second aspect relates to management ideologies and attitudes towards their employees.
Shoup (1990) relates an anecdote concerning the measures Western States took to prevent union
organization of the construction workers. The El Dorado Canal project commenced in the
immediate aftermath of the ʺRed Scareʺ and the Palmer raids of 1919–1920, a period in which
radical groups, particularly the International Workers of the World (the IWW or ʺWobbliesʺ)
were suppressed. Although the power of the IWW was broken, it still remained a threat, or at
least was perceived to remain a threat, and many corporations carefully monitored their
employees.
Management ideologies during the 1920s were also the product of Progressive‐era ideas
and legislation, as well as a somewhat less violently confrontational approach to labor
problems. There was a general, albeit not universal, acknowledgment that potential labor
problems could be defused and unions co‐opted by reforming workersʹ living and working
conditions. A final factor was the relatively tight labor market of the 1920s. Holding on to a
labor force required an attention to amenities and conditions that was not necessary when
workers had fewer options for employment.
• Do the material remains conform to the 1922 plans, the 1915 Labor Camp Act, and CCIH
guidelines? If there are differences, what are they and why did they occur?
• Does the camp reflect the labor market‐‐is there an effort to attract and hold labor through
improvements, diet, and amenities?
• How does the camp layout and design reflect management approaches to labor? E.g.,
paternalistic, laissez faire, or racial ideologies?
• The construction effort took place during Prohibition. Did the corporation or institution
impose a moral or disciplinary regimen on their workers (e.g., surveillance, Taylorism, or
control of drinking)? Conversely, did the corporation tolerate certain activities that were
illegal, such as drinking, or socially questionable, such as prostitution? If so, how is this
reflected in the material culture?
• Does the camp reflect efforts to control or oversee the workers and their families during
unpaid time?


• Did management approaches vary depending on the workers in question, e.g., benevolent
paternalism towards Euroamerican skilled workers and ʺbenign neglectʺ of unskilled or
migrant workers?
Data Requirements
Documentary: camp plans, Western States regulations for camp layout and employee
conduct, California state regulations and guidelines.
Archaeological: camp layout; refuse deposits; tent pads/tent clusters with associated
refuse deposits; artifacts related to medicine and indulgences; residential, support, and
infrastructure features.

Camp Conditions
Camp Conditions follows on from the corporate policy theme, but focuses on the lived
experience of the camp, incorporating not only corporate design, but also alterations and
adaptations by the inhabitants. These adaptations may consist of improvements, ignoring
corporate policy, or simply ʺvoting with oneʹs feetʺ and quitting.
• Is there evidence that the inhabitants altered or adapted housing to suit their own needs or
desires (e.g, informal features and efforts to personalize residential spaces)?
• Was there a communal dining structure and central food storage and preparation facilities
or did workers prepare their own food, or both?
• What kinds of health and sanitation practices were employed at the camp? What sanitary
facilities were there (e.g., showers, privies, septic tanks, cesspools)? Were sanitation
facilities and housing adequate or overcrowded for the number of workers?
• How was refuse disposed of at the camp? Was refuse burned, buried, or just dumped or
scattered? Was there a central dump?
• What was the spatial relationship of housing and refuse?
• Are there differences in conditions between larger and smaller camps?
Data Requirements
Documentary: camp plans, camp ledgers, blueprints,
Archaeological: residential tent pads; support buildings such as mess halls and kitchens;
refuse disposal features; diet‐related artifacts.

Labor Stratification
Labor stratification addresses the complex questions of multiple divisions among the
workers, divisions that might be racial, ethnic, class or skill‐based or, more rarely in the case of
work camps, gender‐based.
A key point to be aware of in looking at the people who lived in work camps is they do not
comprise a monolithic group. Labor is stratified. Particularly in the 19th century, most


industrial work consists of a large proportion of low‐paid unskilled laborers. Above this is the
higher paid and more privileged group of skilled workers. A third group consists of managers,
supervisors, administrative personnel, and skilled professionals, such as engineers and
surveyors. Even within a single industry the workforce is often divided into multiple technical
specializations. Some of these jobs are skilled, requiring workers with experience and training,
while others are regarded as unskilled, simply requiring ʺa strong back.ʺ Other jobs such as
engineers and surveyors are professional, requiring formal education.
The divisions between skilled and unskilled workers in the 19th and 20th centuries are
well documented in labor history. Skilled workers were able to gain a certain amount of control
over the labor process and their wages through their monopoly of skill, often organizing into
exclusive and powerful craft‐based unions. In the 19th and early 20th centuries the American
Federation of Labor (AFL) was an association intended to defend the interests of craft unions,
and had little interest in organizing workers it saw as unskilled. The reluctance of the
mainstream labor movement to organize rural labor is a recurrent theme in labor history.
On the other side of the equation, the bulk of the rural work force were classed as
unskilled—ʺlaborer,ʺ ʺcasual worker,ʺ or some similar term in the census and other official
documentation (Parker 1915). They performed physical labor that required little formal training,
although performing it efficiently or even surviving the work, as in the case of blasting railroad
grade, could in fact take considerable skill. The reluctance of the AFL to organize unskilled
workers meant that more radical organizations, such as the International Workers of the World
(IWW) and the communist Cannery and Agricultural Workers Industrial Union (CAWIU),
played important roles in the history of rural labor in California.
A second and inter‐related form of labor stratification was rooted in social attitudes
towards biology and culture: race and ethnicity. Stratification by skill and stratification by race
and ethnicity cannot easily be separated. Workers from certain nationalities found themselves
channeled into specific industries, specific jobs, and often very different living conditions. In
part this was due to the organization of labor, the labor market itself, but it was also due to
racial assumptions about the capabilities and the desirability of different ethnic groups. Even
when Europeans or Americans of European descent predominated in the unskilled rural labor
force, their presence in this workforce was cast in quasi‐racial and biological terms (Stein 1973;
Higbie 2003; Street 2004), particularly when social Darwinist theories of social stratification
were dominant.
In testimony before the CIR an investigator of camps in Montana noted the distinction
between those living on a ʺWhite manʹs basisʺ wherein the workers received board from a
commissary company, and the way in which foreign workers lived. At one railroad camp in
Montana the 25 U.S. citizen workers purchased their board from the commissary company,
while the 46 foreign workers (43 Bulgarians and three Russians) shared the cost of staples such
as potatoes, bread, and coffee, and bought more expensive items like eggs and meat
individually. At another camp in South Dakota, the inhabitants (seven Greeks and seven
Romanians) all lived in six old boxcars and bought all their food communally, each chipping in
30 cents per day and buying their food in town. Another investigator, summarizing in 1915 the
findings of his investigation for the CIR, noted that ʺThe term white man (also white hobo) ...


applies to Native or old‐time immigrant laborers, who are boarded by the employers in the
camps, or who individually prepare their own meals.ʺ In contrast, ʺʹForeignersʹ or members of a
ʹForeign gangʹ means chiefly newly arrived immigrants organized into their own boarding gang
on a cooperative basis, having their own cook who prepares the meals according to their
national customs and tastesʺ (Higbie 2003:106).
• Is stratification by skill, class, or ethnicity reflected in housing and camp layout? Does the
layout reflect stratification through spatial segregation? Do the camps’ conditions reflect
this and, if so, how? Are different groups of workers housed and fed differently?
• Were there distinctions in living conditions for workers with different positions? Were
some jobs, such as cook, afforded a higher status within the camp that is reflected in the
material record?
• Were there transient or seasonal workers? Were the workers skilled, unskilled, or
professionals? What were their class backgrounds? Were they segregated or were
conditions stratified by skill? Does the material culture of the camps reflect different
expectations? If so, how?
Data Requirements
Documentary: plans showing residences of certain occupations (cook, engineer, foreman,
etc.), corporate or other records indicating ethnicity or nationality, corporate records indicating
jobs and pay scales.
Archaeological: camp layout, residential features and deposits, support and infrastructure
features, refuse disposal features and deposits.

Immigration and Ethnicity
Immigration and Ethnicity highlights the important role of work camps in understanding
immigrant labor in California. This theme concentrates on immigrants as part of rural labor, but
each immigrant group also has a range of research issues specific to its historical experience that
may be relevant to the study of work camps. The early 1920s were a time of rising immigration
from Southern and Eastern Europe, a trend that was pinched off by the 1924 Immigration Act.
Mexican workers were by this time firmly established as a significant part of rural labor.
Although declining, Japanese immigrants were also an important labor force.
Most probably, identification of different ethnic groups in the Project 184 construction
camps will be dependent on the documentary record. Without this information there will be
little opportunity to address this research domain.
Work camps are one of the most important archaeological resources we have relating to
the immigrant history of California. In contrast to the industrial centers of the northeast, where
immigrants funneled into steel working, the needle trades, and other urban trades, the driving
economic engine behind immigration in California was unskilled manual labor in rural
industries. The demographic make up of California is a result of the need for large temporary


labor forces in isolated settings. The most significant industries in drawing immigrant labor
were agriculture and railroad construction.
Obviously not all rural labor was migrant labor and not all immigrants were alike.
Scandinavian loggers and Chinese railroad workers followed different patterns of migration
and migrated for different reasons. Some sought to make enough in the U.S. to return home and
buy their own land, and others followed what we tend to see as the more ʺclassicʺ pattern of
seeking a new home in the U.S.; yet others came simply because the U.S. was where work was
available.
• What were the ethnic, racial, or cultural backgrounds of the workers? Were any of them
migrants and, if so, from where? If there were migrants, what was the type of migration
(chain, circular, etc.), is this reflected in the material culture, and does that reflection
coincide with assumption about migratory workers (e.g., single men traveling light,
families with household possessions)?
• Is there evidence of ethnic stratification in jobs and living conditions? Were particular
racial or nativist ideologies dominant in this period reflected in the camp conditions?
Data Requirements
Documentary: corporate or other records indicating ethnicity or nationality, pay scale, and
occupation, newspaper articles.
Archaeological: residences and deposits that can be associated with ethnically or
nationally distinct groups.

Gender and Family
Gender and Family addresses the presence of families in the camps, domestic labor,
domesticity, and the construction of gender (male as well as female). There is little in the
historical photos or the camp plans to suggest that families or women were present full‐time in
the Project 184 work camps, but possibility of female employees or family members should not
be ruled out. The only definite mention of women in the camps we have found is a mention of
regular visits by prostitutes to at least one the camps (Camp B) on pay days (McLean 1993:57).
Gendered labor in work camps was not necessarily waged labor. More often, if women
and families were present in the camp, female gender was represented by unwaged labor. In
family situations the domestic economy was generally in the hands of wives. Archaeological
remains of food, drink, and other amenities are often the reflection of careful, and sometime
desperate, decisions balancing household budgets and necessities.
Ideas of gender and domesticity also played into work camp design and construction. For
example the Americanization programs of the CCIH centered on certain notions of domesticity.
As exemplified by the CCIH observer at the Guasti agricultural camp (i.e., the Mexican women
standing by their gas stoves “like noble Anglo‐Saxons”) considerations of gender are often
intertwined with notions of ethnicity and acculturation.


Gender is an important consideration in another way. Gender is not only the construction
of femaleness, but also maleness. The fact that work camps consisted of large numbers of single
men was a source of anxiety to the CCIH and most probably to most managers, particularly
given prevalent notions of working class masculinity. Constructions of masculinity were, and
are, an important factor in working menʹs identity. Even today, lumberjacks are popular
paragons of exaggerated masculinity. What constituted appropriate manly behavior was also
subject to conflicting interpretations and change through time. In the later‐19th and into the
20th century, middle class and Victorian notions of masculinity were bound up in ideas of
individuality, nativist ideas of Anglo‐Saxon virility, and the virtues of physical labor. Working
class men, particularly white working class men, were often seen as typifying these virtues
(Dabakis 1999). Many of the descriptions of certain kinds of camp by reformers reflect these
attitudes. There is little doubt that the management tolerance of prostitution was also based on
specific ideas of masculine behaviors and needs.
Working‐class notions of gender and masculinity varied by ethnicity, subculture, and
other divisions within the working class. Skilled and unionized workers often drew on middle‐
class ideas of gender in making their claims to social respectability and wages (Jameson 1998).
The Victorian ideal of the family being supported by a single male head‐of‐household was a
crucial element in working menʹs arguments for a ʺfamily wageʺ, a wage with which they could
support their families in a respectable American manner. White working‐class men also
incorporated ideologies of Anglo‐Saxon virility and working‐class respectability in nativist
campaigns against immigrant labor.
Ideals of masculinity also played a role in recreation and sociability in work camps, and
conflicts over these activities. The role of alcohol in the social life of working‐class men is well
documented as source of concern for middle‐class reformers, particularly during the
Prohibition. The conflict and negotiation between working‐class drinking and middle‐class
notions of respectability has been documented by archaeologists in a number of settings
(Beaudry 1989; Beaudry, et al. 1991; Praetzellis and Praetzellis 1993; Shackel 1996; Reckner and
Brighton 1999).
• Were families present in the camp? Were children present? Were they part of the waged
work force?
• Were there women workers in the camp? Was labor in the camp gendered? What jobs did
men and women perform (e.g. women in the packing sheds)? Were there efforts to
separate facilities by sex?
• Does the presence of families correspond to other variables such as job or class? Was
having a family in camp a prerequisite of a certain class position (manager, professional,
etc.)?
• How did the material world of the camp participate in the creation and maintenance of
gender roles (e.g., notions of working class sociability and masculinity)? Were dominant
notions of appropriate gender behavior reflected in camp layout and architecture? Were
they ignored and, if so, why?


Data Requirements
Documentary: documents indicating the presence or absence of women and families in the
camps; guidelines and regulations pertaining to camp discipline and moral regimen.
Archaeological: camp layout; residential features; support features, refuse deposits
containing domestic artifacts.

Daily Life
Daily Life focuses on questions of household life, particularly diet and health, as these were
central to work camp conditions. More generalized historical archaeology research topics, such
as those relating to consumerism and commodity flows, can also be addressed under this
theme.
• What types of food were eaten by camp residents and what does that reveal about the
balance struck between quality, volume, and cost? How was food obtained and supplied
by the institution?
• How and where was food prepared?
• Was meat butchered at the camp and, if so, what can be inferred about dietary uses of
animals within the camp?
• Did workers supplement their diet with purchases and/or local procurement (i.e., hunting,
fishing, and gathering)? What is the context of this augmentation (e.g., berries are available
nearby and they are collected and preserved; or the camp operator is not providing
adequate food and workers go to greater efforts to augment their supply)?
• What was the relationship between the camp and local markets? What about more distant
markets, and ultimately, what was the “reach” of the work camp and distant markets? Is
there archaeological evidence of interaction with local Native American communities?
• Is there evidence of a non‐regulated economy within the camps or between the camps and
nearby communities? This would include local merchandise, as well as unsanctioned or
illegal recreational activities including drug use, alcohol production and consumption, and
prostitution. An oral history taken from a field engineer on the El Dorado rehabilitation
notes, for example, visits by cars of prostitutes to the forebay camp (Camp B) on paydays
(McLean 1993:57).
• What kinds of health problems are indicated at the camp? To what extent did the residents
of the camp treat their own medical needs?
Data Requirements
Documentary: company records on camp supply and medical treatment, newspaper
records, reminiscences of camp life.
Archaeological: mess hall features, kitchen features, refuse deposits, diet‐related artifacts,
medical artifacts, artifacts with makerʹs marks.



Labor Organization and Legislation

Labor history as an academic field was initially the study of the history of unions. In the
last decades of the 20th century with the growth of social history, labor history branched out
beyond its initial institutional focus to encompass unorganized workers, women, issues of
gender and family, working class culture, and immigration history.
One of the major areas of historical interest to which archaeology can make a significant
contribution is understanding the impact of labor organization and legislation on lived
conditions, as well as understanding how lived conditions contributed to labor organization
and militancy, or the lack thereof.
This theme places work camps in the broader framework of California rural labor history.
Shoup (1990) indicates that Western States took definite precautions to forestall organization of
the work camps by the IWW. While the specific case he came across was the use of company
spies, there may have been other precautions, including the design of the camps for ease of
surveillance or improving camp conditions to make unionization unattractive.
• What was the impact of legislation and state involvement on camp conditions?
• Is there evidence that workers resisted efforts to regiment their time or private life by, for
example, concealing sociability or gatherings? Is there evidence of sabotage in work places,
for example, broken tools and equipment?
• How did labor and management respond to labor disputes and did this influence work
camps?
Data Requirements
Documentary: CCIH work camp guidelines; guidelines and regulations pertaining to
camp discipline;
Archaeological: camp layout, work features, refuse deposits with indulgences or tools,
concealed features or deposits, informal alterations to residences.

IMPLEMENTATION
Integrity is an essential prerequisite for NRHP‐eligibility. For most archaeological
properties, integrity is a matter of the property’s research potential. This dictum, however, begs
the question of the property’s physical condition. Most of the research questions in the project
research design require, in addition to portable artifacts, an adequate archaeological context in
the form of archaeological strata, interfaces, and features. To possess research potential,
archaeological phenomena must have adequate physical integrity in the form of what James
Deetz (1977) has called archaeological “focus.” By focus, Deetz refers to the level of clarity with
which the archaeological remains can be seen to represent a particular phenomenon. Remains
that represent a number of activities or other characteristics that cannot be separated out from
one another are said to lack focus. Where focus is lacking as the result of disturbance, a property
also lacks integrity. The following criteria will be used to assess integrity:


• Does the property have focus? That is, is it possible to interpret the behaviors that are
represented by it?
• Does the property have integrity of location and setting with respect to the arrangement of
remains? That is, does the property retain a significant portion of its original contents and
condition, and is it in its original location?
Properties that retain integrity will be evaluated in relation to the NRHP criteria for eligibility.
For historic‐period archaeological sites, this involves assessing the property’s historical
associations and information potential under Criterion D.
Assessing Integrity
NR Bulletin 15 defines integrity as the “ability of a property to convey its significance.” A
site must have integrity to be eligible for listing on the NRHP. Although many archaeologists
take the concept on its face value to mean a site’s physical condition, this is only part of the
story. For a site that is being evaluated under Criterion D integrity is actually a measure of the
property’s ability to yield important information—that is, whether the site has the necessary
qualities to meet the data requirements of a particular research question. Even a disturbed site
will meet this test if intact stratigraphy is not necessary to meet data requirements such as the
presence of certain diagnostic artifacts.
The NRHP Criteria for Evaluation recognizes seven aspects of integrity: location, design,
setting, materials, workmanship, feeling, and association.

Location The place where the property was constructed.
Design The combination of elements that create the form, place, space, structure, and style of a
property.
Setting The physical environment of a property.
Materials The physical elements that were combined or deposited during a particular period of
time and in a particular pattern or configuration to form a historic property.
Workmanship The physical evidence of the crafts of a particular culture or people during any given
time period in history.
Feeling A property’s expression of the aesthetic or historic sense of a particular period of time.
Association The direct link between an important historic event or person and a property.

NR Bulletins 15 and 36 as well as the book by Hardesty and Little (2000) provide detailed,
practical guidance on how each of these aspects of integrity should be applied. In general,
archaeological properties should retain integrity of location, design, materials, and association
to be important under Criterion D. There is usually no need to address setting and feeling as
these characteristics rarely affect a site’s information value. Every evaluation of NRHP
eligibility must discuss the aspects of integrity that are relevant to the important qualities of the
site being assessed.


Association
Often many work camp features and artifact deposits cannot be associated with particular
individuals or households. For example, centralized dumping locations mean that refuse
deposits have a community‐wide association and cannot be associated with individual
households within the community, although there certainly may be light artifact scatters that
can. This is counterbalanced by the fact that work camps have a tight chronology and can be
associated with particular historical events and groups of people, if not specific individuals. A
community‐wide association for a work camp dump is far tighter than for a municipal one.
Often, identifying a historical association for the work camp as a whole is not a problem.
They can be recorded in corporate archives, or the proximity of a camp site with an extractive or
construction enterprise may also provide the association. However the integrity of association
can be affected by subsequent occupations. The rarity of deep hollow features with discrete and
sealed artifact deposits means that work camp artifact deposits are easily contaminated by later
occupations. Integrity of association entails that the work camp be relatively ʺpristine,ʺ without
much in the way of later occupation, or, if there is such occupation, that the deposits have
enough spatial separation to be distinguishable.
Design
Since work camp integrity tends to be horizontal and spatial rather than vertical and
stratigraphic, integrity of design is an important part of determining the integrity of a work
camp site. The shallowness of work camp features and deposits means that they are fragile and
often easily destroyed or displaced through factors such as off‐road vehicular traffic or erosion,
with flats disappearing and formerly discrete artifact deposits being merged into a large and
indistinct smear. Integrity of design entails that the camp retain significant portions of its layout
and internal structure.
Materials
As with integrity of design, the shallow nature of work camp deposits is an important
factor in the integrity of materials. Surface or shallow refuse deposits are visible and very
attractive to looters. With work camp refuse deposits, stratigraphic integrity is often not a
primary concern as the deposits were usually created rapidly and had little stratigraphy to
begin with. Looting will usually mean that certain classes of artifacts, such as whole bottles, will
be under‐represented. Faunal remains will probably also be under‐represented due to the
activity of wildlife.
Lack of integrity of materials may also result from clean up and demolition after the camp
had served its purpose, especially if heavy equipment was involved. The work camp may also
lack integrity of materials right from the beginning, either due to energetic refuse disposal
efforts in which garbage was removed a sufficient distance from the camp that association is
uncertain, or due to the occupants never depositing enough for the material to have research
potential.



ASSESSING ARCHAEOLOGICAL RESEARCH POTENTIAL

It is seldom necessary, or appropriate, to collect and record all possible data. Investigation
strategies should consider the following factors: 1) specific data needs; 2) time and funds
available to secure the data; and 3) relative cost efficiency of various strategies. The approach
suggested here involves employing a set of general principles that would aid in determining
which archaeological remains will be excavated and analyzed and which will not. The
principles are not criteria, in that they should not be applied directly as a “test.” Rather, they are
intended to guide the thoughtful consideration of a difficult issue. They will not substitute for
the best judgment of a team of experienced professionals, but they may help to direct it. In this
scheme, archaeological research potential is defined as the ability of a deposit to contribute to
the questions identified in the research design. The principles are as follows:
1. Association. All else being equal, the research potential of an archaeological deposit that
has reliable cultural, historical, or chronological associations will be higher than one
whose associations are less certain.
2. Integrity. All else being equal, an archaeological phenomenon that retains good
integrity will have more research potential than one whose integrity has been
compromised.
3. Materials. All else being equal, the research potential of a cache of archaeological
materials from a domestic context will increase with the number of items and the
variety of types present.
4. Stratigraphy. All else being equal, remains from a feature or site with vertically or
horizontally discrete stratification meeting the criteria herein retain importance.
However, remains from an archaeological feature with a complex stratigraphic
sequence representative of different events over time can have the added advantage of
providing an independent chronological check on artifact diagnosis, and the
interpretation of the sequence of environmental or sociocultural events. Stratigraphic
integrity may not be as important in the case of redeposited prehistoric material.
5. Relative Rarity. All else being equal, remains from a group that is poorly represented in
the sample universe will be more important, because of their rarity, than remains that
relate to a well‐represented entity.
The initial letters from the above principles of Association, Integrity, Materials,
Stratigraphy and Rarity provide a simple mnemonic for use in the field and laboratory: “AIMS‐
R.” That is, archaeologists in the field can make an initial assessment of the property type
encountered on the basis of what the assessment “aims are,” as represented in the mnemonic.
Of course, all remains that will be encountered in the course of project activities will have the
characteristics of some degree of relative association, integrity, materials, and rarity, and all will
be found in some form of archaeological context. Should it become necessary, the process of
evaluation would consist of comparing individual properties on the basis of these
characteristics. But this evaluation cannot be done in a mechanistic fashion. A feature or site
with poor physical integrity might still have research potential if its relative rarity is high.


Evaluation Approach
The evaluation of the eight camps that may possess sufficient integrity to have research
potential will have two phases: archival research and fieldwork. The archival research will focus
on: (a) site association, refining our knowledge of the workers in the camps; and (b) corporate
policy, identifying the decisions that went into overall camp design, employee regulations, and
how the camps were supplied and maintained. This should include further work in the PG&E
archives, the archives of local newspapers, contacts with local historians, and, if feasible, oral
history interviews.
The field approach should emphasize mapping, identifying and delineating features and
deposits, and sampling artifact deposits sufficiently to assess their integrity and information
potential. Although they could be quite dense settlements, work camps present a distinct set of
problems from town sites, and can require distinct approaches. In contrast to most urban sites,
work camp sites tend to be either on the surface or very shallow and, on cursory inspection,
indistinct, without the defined property boundaries, substantial architectural features, and deep
stratified hollow features, like privies and wells, that town sites are likely to contain. While the
nature of work camps means that the sites tend to consist mainly of surface or very shallow
deposits, there are hollow features, such as sumps, that served as repositories for camp refuse,
that will require deeper excavation. Most features, however, can probably be assessed through
surface recording and sampling, or shallow excavation.
The HPMP recommends a program of mapping, metal detection, probing, surface clearing,
and excavation units. The following discussion is adapted from the HPMP (Hildebrandt and
Waechter 2003:109–11).
These methods are subject to change, depending on actual site/ground conditions; work
will be conducted at the discretion of the Field Director. In general, evaluation work at historic
archaeological sites will include a combination of detailed mapping and feature drawing,
surface clearing, feature‐oriented excavation, and controlled scanning with a metal detector and
fiberglass probe to determine the presence, condition, and composition of subsurface deposits.
Excavations will be by stratigraphic levels and broad surface clearing of features; data will be
documented using US standard nomenclature.
Mapping
Excavation units, newly identified features, surface‐clearing areas, and metal‐detection
areas will be added to existing base maps generated during the inventory phase. To ensure
rapid mapping and ready integration with GIS, mapping ideally should be accomplished with a
combination of a total station and a survey‐grade GPS unit, along with compasses and tapes.
Metal Detection
Metal detection is useful for a variety of reasons: (1) to confirm the location of site
boundaries; (2) to determine the extent of features or artifact concentrations; and (3) to detect
concentrations of nails or other metal between features or across the site that could indicate the
remains of structures. At the discretion of the field director or principal investigator, detection
should be conducted by an experienced staff person using a top‐of‐the‐line metal detector.


Probing
Numerous depressions have been recorded at many of the sites. In some cases, these
depressions correspond to privy locations plotted on historic maps of the camps and the bath
house sumps. A probe should be used to ascertain if these depressions are hollow fill features,
and to determine their approximate depths. The probe will also be used to estimate depth of
some refuse deposits. Probing will be done in conjunction with metal detection. Once hollow
features are identified through probing, excavation units (see below) will be used to quarter or
cross‐section the features to identify their composition and structure.
Surface Clearing
Surface clearing will include systematic clearing of duff within designated units to expose
all rock, artifacts, and features. Clearing will be completed primarily using rakes, due to the
nature of the duff. Other hand tools, such as trowels, hoes, shovels, and hedge clippers may be
used. Generally, clearing will consist of pulling duff away from a feature, leaving any artifacts
in place. At sites with foundation remains, however, a grid may be laid out surrounding the
structural features.
Surface clearing may occur around a selected number of features representing a variety of
types and locations. Stone alignments or foundations will be cleared to document size,
structure, composition, and associated features or artifact areas. Surface clearing may also apply
to artifact concentration areas identified on the original site record or by metal detecting.
Feature clearing will be used to accurately determine the size, structure, and composition of the
features and to reveal any ash deposits, surface depressions, or other anomalies.
Once a feature area is cleared, a scaled drawing will be made and photographs taken to
document the exposed extent of the feature and associated material. Concentrations of artifacts
will be noted and should be sampled. Feature‐associated artifacts exposed during the clearing
activities will be catalogued in the field by material, type, and function, and left in place.
Excavation Units
Two types of excavation units may be used during the field evaluation phase. Surface
Transect Units (STUs) consist of small units excavated to varying depths. The STUs will be dug
to test surface concentrations of artifacts, metal‐detector “hot spots,” feature‐associated
deposits, and site boundaries. Generally STUs are planned to determine presence or absence of
artifactual materials and depth of deposit. Artifacts from STUs will be catalogued by strata,
material, type, and function, and left in place.
Excavation units may range from 3 to 5 ft.² and will be used to expose and define
concentrations of artifacts, depressions, or other features. In dense concentrations of refuse, one
unit will be placed in the center of the concentration, and artifacts within that unit will be
excavated and recorded, providing a representative sample of material contained in that
deposit. Unit size will be determined by the size of the deposit. Excavation units may also be
used to expose and better define structural foundations or features, or areas containing high
numbers of metal‐detector readings but with little surface evidence of artifacts.


All units will be dug using picks, shovels, and trowels. Material from the units will be
passed through 1/4‐in.‐mesh screen. Level records will be completed for all units, recording
cultural and non‐cultural materials, methods, and observations regarding soil texture and depth
of cultural deposits. Munsell color charts will be used to standardize soil information gathered
in the field. Digital or black‐and‐white photographs will be taken to document the excavation
process.
In-field Analyses
Artifacts will be catalogued in the field to avoid collection of repetitive or fragmentary
artifacts and non‐museum‐quality specimens (cans, glass and ceramic fragments, nails), to
avoid curation expenses. No collection of any excavated historic‐eras artifacts is anticipated. All
work will be designed to conduct the minimum amount of work necessary to determine the
structure and stratigraphic integrity of a feature, artifact deposit, or site, the approximate date of
deposition, functional representation, quantity of artifacts, and contextual association.
Artifacts will be separated by material for cataloguing and analysis. The laboratory
procedures should be designed to address relevant research questions. Generally, analytical
procedures will consist of sorting, cataloguing, identifying, and interpreting the artifacts
recovered during excavations, as well as processing and synthesizing the historical data
collected from the archival research phase.
Historical artifacts will be sorted by material type, artifact class, and provenience.
Materials of limited interpretive value (e.g., small glass shards, tin can fragments) will be
counted and catalogued by lot. Diagnostic specimens will be measured, described, individually
catalogued and photographed (if necessary) to facilitate further analysis. Like‐items, such as tin
cans of the same diameter and size, will be grouped and catalogued as one lot.
The artifacts, stratigraphic data, and other information on horizontal and vertical site
structure obtained during the archaeological investigations will be collectively analyzed. The
goals of this analysis are to address issues such as chronology, site structure, and applicability
to the stated research domains and goals.
Reporting
The technical report documenting archival research, fieldwork, and analyses of historic‐era
remains will include the following: a historical context of the project area; a research design;
methods and results, including site histories and descriptions by contextual theme; a summary
of the analyses; and a National Register evaluation of each site in accordance with 36 CFR 800.4.
Appendices will include pertinent feature drawings, plans or profiles, and catalogue sheets.


REFERENCES CITED

Adams, G.
1966 The Age of Industrial Violence, 1910–1915: The Activities and Findings of the U.S. Commission on
Industrial Relations. Columbia University Press, New York.

Baker, C., with contributions by M.L. Maniery
2001 National Register of Historic Places Evaluation, Pit River 3, 4, and 5 Hydroelectric System, Shasta
County, California. PAR Environmental Services, Sacramento. Prepared for Pacific Gas and
Electric Company, San Francisco.

2002 National Register of Historic Places Evaluation, Spring Gap‐Stanislaus Hydroelectric System, FERC
No. 2130, Tuolumne County, California. PAR Environmental Services, Sacramento. Prepared for
Pacific Gas and Electric Company, San Francisco.

Baker, C., and T. Bakic
2001 National Register of Historic Places Evaluation, Upper North Fork Feather River Hydroelectric System,
Plumas County, California. On file, Pacific Gas and Electric Company, Chico and San Francisco,
California.

Bassett, E.
1994 ‘We Took Care of Each Other Like Families Were Meant To’: Gender, Social Organization, and
Wage Labor Among the Apache at Roosevelt. In Those of Little Note : Gender, Race, and Class in
Historical Archaeology, pp. 55–79, edited by Elizabeth Scott. University of Arizona Press, Tucson.

Baxter, R.S.
2002 Industrial and Domestic Landscapes of a California Oil Field. In Communities Defined by Work:
Life in Western Work Camps, pp. 18–27, edited by Thad M. Van Bueren. Society for Historical
Archaeology, California, Pennsylvania.

Baxter, R.S., Rebecca A., and T. Fernandez
2006 Research Design for Hydroelectric Maintenance and Operations Residences in FERC Project 184 APE.
Past Forward, Garden Valley, California. Prepared for El Dorado Irrigation District, Placerville,
California.

Beaudry, M.C.
1989 The Lowell Boott Mills Complex and its Housing: Material Expressions of Corporate Ideology.
Historical Archaeology 23(1):19–32.

Beaudry, M.C., L.J. Cook, and S.A. Mrozowski
1991 Artifacts and Active Voices: Material Culture as Social Discourse. In The Archaeology of
Inequality, pp. 150–181, edited by Randall H. McGuire and Robert Paynter. Basil Blackwell,
London.

Bonner, F.E.
1928 Report to the Federal Power Commission on the Water Powers of California. Federal Power
Commission, Washington, DC. No. 20 and 118.



Brashler, J.
1991 ‘When Daddy was a Shanty Boy’: The Role of Gender in the Organization of the Logging
Industry in Highland West Virginia. In Gender in Historical Archaeology, pp. 54–68, edited by
Donna J. Seifert. Society for Historical Archaeology, California, Pennsylvania.

Brumfiel, E.
1992 Distinguished Lecture in Archaeology: Breaking and Entering the Ecosystem—Gender, Class,
and Faction Steal the Show. American Anthropologist 94:551–587.
Clement, D.
1995 Historic Architectural Survey Report and Historic Resource Evaluation Report for State Route 88
Rehabilitation and Improvement Project at Silver Lake, Amador County. Prepared for California
Department of Transportation, District 10, Stockton, California.

Cohen, L.A.
1986 Embellishing a Life of Labor: An Interpretation of the Material Culture of American Working‐
class Homes, 1885–1915. In Common Places: Readings in American Vernacular Architecture, pp. 261–
278, edited by Dell Upton and John Michael Vlach. University of Georgia Press, Athens.

Coleman, C.M.
1952 PG&E of California: The Centennial Story of Pacific Gas and Electric Company. McGraw‐Hill Book
Company, New York.

Commission of Immigration and Housing of California (CCIH)
1919 Advisory Pamphlet on Sanitation and Housing (Revised 1919). Commission of Immigration and
Housing of California, San Francisco.

Cornford, D.A.
1987 Workers and Dissent in the Redwood Empire. Temple University Press, Philadelphia.

Costello, J., and J. Marvin
1998 Bread Fresh from the Oven: Memories of Italian Breadmaking in the California Mother Lode.
Historical Archaeology 31(1):66–73.

Dabakis, M.
1999 Visualizing Labor in American Sculpture: Monuments, Manliness, and the Work Ethic, 1880–1935.
Cambridge University Press, New York.

Darcangelo, M. and J. Collins
2002a Primary record for CA‐ELD‐6. On file, El Dorado Irrigation District, Placerville, California.

2002b Primary record for FS 05‐03‐56‐811/812. On file, El Dorado Irrigation District, Placerville,
California.

2002c Primary record for FS 05‐03‐56‐823. On file, El Dorado Irrigation District, Placerville, California.

2002d Primary record for FS 05‐03‐56‐825. On file, El Dorado Irrigation District, Placerville, California.

2002e Primary record for FS 05‐03‐56‐828. On file, El Dorado Irrigation District, Placerville, California.



Darcangelo, M. and J. Collins (continued)
2002f Primary record for FS 05‐03‐56‐830. On file, El Dorado Irrigation District, Placerville, C
California.

2002g Primary record for FS 05‐03‐56‐832. On file, El Dorado Irrigation District, Placerville, California.

2002h Primary record for FS 05‐03‐56‐834. On file, El Dorado Irrigation District, Placerville, California.

2002i Primary record for FS 05‐03‐56‐838. On file, El Dorado Irrigation District, Placerville, California.

Darcangelo, M., and N. Pagaling
2002 Primary record for CA‐ELD‐7. On file, El Dorado Irrigation District, Placerville, California.

Deetz, J.
1977 In Small Things Forgotten: The Archaeology of Early American Life. Doubleday, New York.
De Groot, H.
1882 Hydraulic and Drift Mining. In Second Report of the State Mineralogist of California, 1880–1882. State
Printing Office, Sacramento, California.

Faull, M. and M. Hangan
2004 Snapshot in Time: Life at the Dove Springs Aqueduct Construction Camp. Paper presented at
the 38th Annual Meeting of the Society for Californai Archaeology, Riverside, California.

Foster, J.M., R.S. Greenwood, and A. Duffield
1988 Work Camps in the Upper Santa Ana River Canyon. Greenwood and Associates. Contract Number
DACW09‐86‐D‐0034. Prepared for the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, Los Angeles District,
California.

Fowler, F.H.
1923 Hydroelectric Power Systems of California and Their Extensions into Oregon and Nevada. U.S. Forest
Service, Washington D.C.

Franzen, J.G.
1992 Northern Michigan Logging Camps: Material Culture and Worker Adaptation on the Industrial
Frontier. Historical Archaeology 26(2):74–98.

Giddens, A.
1979 Central Problems in Social Theory: Action, Structure and Contradiction in Social Analysis. University
of California Press, Berkeley.

Gitelman, H.M.
1988 Legacy of the Ludlow Massacre: A Chapter in American Industrial Relations. University of
Pennsylvania Press, Philadelphia.

Hardesty, D., and B. Little
2000 Assessing Site Significance: A Guide for Archaeologists and Historians. AltaMira Press, Walnut
Creek, California.



Higbie, F.T.
2003 Indispensable Outcasts: Hobo Workers and Community in the American Midwest, 1880–1930.
University of Illinois Press, Urbana.

Hildebrandt, W.R. and S.A. Waechter
2003 Proposed Hydroelectric Relicensing of the El Dorado Hydroelectric Project (FERC Project 184): Historic
Properties Management Plan. Far Western Anthropological Research Group, Davis, California.
Prepared for El Dorado Irrigation District, Placerville, California.

Jackson Research Projects
1986 Great Western Power Company: Hydroelectric Power Development on the North Fork of the Feather
River, 1902–1930. Prepared for Pacific Gas and Electric Company, Hydroelectric Division
Library, San Francisco.

Jameson, E.
1998 All That Glitters: Class, Conflict, and Community in Cripple Creek. University of Illinois Press,
Urbana.

Journal of Electricity
1924 Journal of Electricity. 1 February 1924:97–98.

JRP Historical Consulting Services and California Department of Transportation
2000 Water Conveyance Systems in California: Historic Context Development and Evaluation Procedures.
Environmental Program/Cultural Studies Office. Prepared for California Department of
Transportation Headquarters, Sacramento.

Kelley, R.
1959 Gold vs. Grain: The Hydraulic Mining Controversy in California’s Sacramento Valley. Arthur H.
Clarke Co., Glendale, California.

1989 Battling the Inland Sea: American Political Culture, Public Policy, and the Sacramento Valley, 1850–
1986. University of California Press, Berkeley.

Maniery, M.L.
1999 Historical Archaeology at the Butt Valley Dam Site (CA-PLU-1245/H), Plumas County, California,
Volume 1: Historical Archaeology. PAR Environmental Services, Inc., Sacramento, California.
Submitted to Pacific Gas and Electric Company, San Francisco, California.

2002 Health, Sanitation, and Diet in a Twentieth‐Century Dam Construction Camp: A View from
Butt Valley, California. In Communities Defined by Work: Life in Western Work Camps, pp. 69–84,
edited by Thad M. Van Bueren. Society for Historical Archaeology, California, Pennsylvania.

Maniery, M.L., and C. Baker
1997 National Register Evaluation of the Red River, Fruit Growers, and Lassen Lumber and Box Railroad
Logging Systems, Lassen National Forest, California. PAR Environmental Services, Inc.,
Sacramento, California. Submitted to Lassen National Forest, USDA Forest Service, Susanville,
California.



Maniery, M.L., and L. Compas
2002 National Register of Historic Places Evaluation of 37 Historical Archaeological Sites and PSEA Camp
Almanor for the Pacific Gas and Electric Company Upper North Fork Feather River FERC Relicensing
Project, Plumas County, California. On file, Pacific Gas and Electric Company, Chico and San
Francisco, California.

McLean, W. R.
1993 From Pardee to Buckhorn: Water Resources Engineering and Water Policy in the East Bay Municipal
Utility District, 1927‐1991, with an Introduction by Jay Zeno. Interviews conducted by Ann Lage in
1991. East Bay Municipal Utility District Oral History Series. Regional Oral History Office, The
Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley.

Miller, D., and C. Tilley (editors)
1984 Ideology, Power, and Prehistory. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge.

Mitchell, D.
1996 The Lie of the Land: Migrant Workers and the California Landscape. University of Minnesota Press,
Minneapolis.

Myers, W.A.
1983 Iron Men and Copper Wires: A Centennial History of the Southern California Edison Company. Trans‐
Anglo Books, Glendale, California.

Myrtle, F.S.
1923 Six Monthsʹ Progress in Construction of Pit Three Development. Pacific Service Magazine,
December:196–205.

Owens, K.N.
1989 Archaeological and Historical Investigation of the Mormon‐Carson Immigrant Trail: El Dorado and
Toiyabe National Forests, Vol II: History. Prepared for the El Dorado National Forest, USDA Forest
Service.

PAR Environmental Services
1995 National Register of Historic Places Evaluation of Equipment and Pipeline Segment, El Dorado
Hydroelectric System, El Dorado County, California. September 13.

Parker, C.H.
1915 The California Casual and His Revolt. The Quarterly Journal of Economics 30(1):110–126.
Paynter, R., and R.H. McGuire
1991 The Archaeology of Inequality: Material Culture, Domination, and Resistance. In The
Archaeology of Inequality, pp. 1–27, edited by Randall McGuire and Robert Paynter. Basil
Blackwell, Oxford.
Peck, G.
2000 Reinventing Free Labor: Padrones and Immigrant Workers in the North American West, 1880–1930.
University of Cambridge Press, Cambridge.



Praetzellis, A., and M. Praetzellis
1993 Life and Work at the Cole and Nelson Sawmill, Sierra County, California: Archaeological Data Recovery
for the Granite Chief Land Exchange. Anthropological Studies Center, Sonoma State University,
Rohnert Park, California. Prepared for Tahoe National Forest, Nevada City, California.

2001 Mangling Symbols of Gentility in the Wild West: Case Studies in Interpretive Archaeology.
American Anthropologist 103(3):645–654.

Reckner, P.E., and S.A. Brighton
1999 ‘Free From All Vicious Habits’: Archaeological Perspectives on Class Conflict and the Rhetoric
of Temperance. In Confronting Class, pp. 63–86, edited by LouAnn Wurst and Robert K. Fitts.
Society for Historical Archaeology Special Publication Series.

Rogge, A.E., M. Keane, and D.L. McWaters
1994 The Historical Archaeology of Dam Construction Camps in Central Arizona, Volume 1: Synthesis.
Prepared for the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation, Phoenix, Arizona.

Rogge, A.E., D.L. McWatters, M. Keane, and R.P. Emanuel
1995 Raising Arizona’s Dams: Daily Life, Danger, and Discrimination in the Dam Construction Camps of
Central Arizona, 1890s‐1940s. University of Arizona Press, Tucson.

Rood, J.
2002 Primary record for FS 05‐03‐56‐811. On file, El Dorado Irrigation District, Placerville, California.

Rood, J., W. Bloomer, J. Northrup, and R. Palmer
1993 Archaeological Site Record for FS 05‐03‐56‐711. On file, On file, El Dorado Irrigation District,
Placerville, California.

Shoup, L.
1982 Theoretical Models for Project Area History. In Final Report of the New Melones Archeological
Project, California. Volume VII: Review and Synthesis of Research at Historical Sites, pp. 7–12, edited
by Roberta S. Greenwood and Laurence H. Shoup. Infotec Research Incorporated. Coyote Press,
Salinas, California.

1989 Cultural Resources Overview and National Register of Historic Places Significance Evaluation of Relief
Dam and Vicinity, Stanislaus National Forest, Volume 1. Prepared for Pacific Gas and Electric
Company, San Francisco.

1990 Historical Overview and Significance Evaluation of the El Dorado Canal, El Dorado County, California,
Volume 1. Prepared for Pacific Gas & Electric Company, San Francisco.

Stein, W.
1973 California and the Dust Bowl Migration. Greenwood Publishing Group, Westport, Connecticut.

Street, R.S.
2004 Beasts of the Field: A Narrative History of California Farmworkers, 1769–1913. Stanford University
Press, Stanford, California.



Tenney, G.C.
1923 ‘Changing Miner’s Inches to Kilowatt Hours,’ State of California Department of Water
Resources. In Dams Within Jurisdiction of the State of California, Bulletin 17‐79 (December
1979):50–51.

Tordoff, J.D.
1995a Memorandum to Hans Kreutzberg, California Office of Historic Preservation concerning the
Alabama Gates Aqueduct Construction Camp, dated 24 August 1995.

1995b Supplemental Historical Study Report, CA‐INY‐3760/H, the Alabama Gates Aqueduct Construction
Camp. Submitted to California Department of Transportation, District 9, Bishop.

Tordoff, J. D., and J. Marvin
2003 Historic Resource Evaluation Report Little Lake Rehabilitation Project. Report prepared for the
California Department of Transportation, District 6, Fresno.

Van Bueren, T.M. (editor)
2002a Communities Defined by Work: Life in Western Work Camps. Society for Historical Archaeology,
California, Pennsylvania.

Van Bueren, T.M.
1989 Cultural Resources Overview and National Register of Historic Places Significance Evaluation of Relief
Dam and Vicinity, Stanislaus National Forest, Volume 2: Confidential Site Records and Maps.
Prepared for Pacific Gas and Electric Company, San Francisco.

2002b Struggling with Class Relations at a Los Angeles Aqueduct Construction Camp. In Communities
Defined by Work: Life in Western Work Camps, pp. 28–43, edited by Thad M. Van Bueren. Society
for Historical Archaeology, California, Pennsylvania.

Van Bueren, T.M., J. Marvin, S. Psota, and M. Stoyka
1998 Building the Los Angeles Aqueduct: Archaeological Data Recovery at the Alabama Gates Construction
Camp. Environmental Analysis Branch, Headquarters, California Department of Transportation,
Sacramento. Prepared for California Department of Transportation, District 06, Environmental
Analysis Branch Chief, Fresno.

Walsh, F.P., and B.M. Manly
1916 Industrial Relations: Final Report and Testimony: Submitted to Congress by the Commission on
Industrial Relations. Vol. V. U.S. Commission on Industrial Relations, Washington, D.C.

Wee, S.
2003 Historic Context. In Proposed Relicensing of the El Dorado Hydroelectric Project (FERC Project 184).
Historic Properties Management Plan, by William R. Hildebrandt and Sharon A. Waechter. Far
Western Anthropological Research Group, Inc., Davis, California. Prepared for El Dorado
Irrigation District, Placerville, California.

Wee, S., and A. Walters
2002 Primary record for FS 05‐03‐56‐811/812. On file, El Dorado Irrigation District, Placerville,
California.



Williams, J.C
1997 Energy and the Making of Modern California. University of Akron Press, Akron, Ohio.

Woirol, G.R.
1992 In the Floating Army: F.C. Mills on Itinerant Life in California, 1914. University of Illinois Press,
Urbana, Illinois.

Wolf, E.
1990 Distinguished Lecture: Facing Power—Old Insights, New Questions. American Anthropologist
92:586–595.


APPENDIX A
The PG&E Archives

RESEARCH METHODS AND RESULTS

In 1966 PG&E established its Records Center to centrally store the company’s records.
Until then, records were stored where they were generated. When the call went out to the
outlying areas to obtain the old records, employees boxed the records and sent them to central
storage. These early records are stored in the manner that they were originally sent in; thus,
similar records were not organized and archived together. Nor was an index as to what the
records contained typically provided. Circa 1971 a standard practice for record transmittal was
established; however, the manner in which the records were described varied widely. Some
descriptions were vague and generic; other descriptions were more detailed and useful. There
are approximately 160,000 boxes in PG&Eʹs four archive facilities. Research was done in the
Record Center in Brisbane, California. Records stored in the other facilities were ordered and
delivered to the Brisbane facilities.
The computer database for these records is only as good as the information that was
provided and entered into it, often by temporary help. According to William Baxter Supervisor
of Records at the Records Center, it can be hit or miss whether you find useful information at
the archives. Some people have come in and been delighted with all the materials they have
found. On the other hand, once a group of ten people came in and searched for days and they
found little that they needed (William Baxter, personal communication 5 March 2007, 23 March
2007).
The Archives database was searched as follows:
Camp Names: Camp A, Camp B, Camp C, Camp G, Camp K, Camp M, Camp N, Camp P,
Camp R, Camp S, and Camp T.
Place Names (closest area to individual camps): Alder Creek, El Dorado Canal, El Dorado
Ditch, El Dorado Power House, El Dorado Power Plant, Fresh Pond, Kyburz, Ogilby Canyon,
Pollock Pines, Riverton, Silver Fork, South Fork American River AND El Dorado, and White
Hall.
Word Searches:
1922 Installation
Blueprints
Boarding House
Construction Camp
Ditch Camp
El Dorado (this broad search produce 777 pages of results; because of time and efficiency
constraints did not read word for word, but did a variety of searches within it and did a scan
through it)
El Dorado Development
FERC 184
A‐1

Word Searches (continued):
Project 184
Western States Gas and Electric
Work Camp
Combined Searches:
Camp w/25 words of: regulations; rules; guidelines; policy; employees; El Dorado; 1922;
temporary; construction; ditch; canal; Western States
1920 w/25 words of: workers; employees, laborers
The descriptions of the records for these searches were then evaluated for potential
usefulness. It was frequently difficult to determine how useful they would be without looking
manually through the archive box. As a result over 100 boxes were inspected. Nothing relevant
was found in the files pulled for the various camps. It was discovered that more than one camp
would have the same letter name. Also an abbreviation after the word Camp provided false
leads. Searching by location name was also not useful. This search would produce a box of
hundreds of General Maintenance files from various years for the entire area. It was quickly
realized that looking through these records was not an efficient use of time and hence not
continued. Generally the most useful records were the construction and accounting records of
the Western States Gas and Electric Company and the FERC 184 files. The potentially useful
records are briefly described below. The archive boxes that were inspected but found not to be
relevant are also listed so that they will not need to be rechecked in the future.

POTENTIALLY USEFUL RESOURCES
Box W00486
Includes Western States Gas and Electric Co. Construction Accounts – El Dorado Project,
April 1922‐February 1925. Broken down into six accounts: 2‐G Grounds and Improvements; 3‐G
Generating Station; 4‐G Hydraulic Equipment; 5‐G Electrical Equipment; 6‐G Auxiliary
Equipment; 30‐G‐1 Expense Not Covered by Estimate; 38‐G General Transportation; 39‐G
Insurance; 40‐G Local Engineering and Superintendence; 41‐G Watchmen, Waterboys, Nippers;
42‐G Field Office; 43‐G Traveling Expenses. Information on the construction camps is buried in
the records; for example in 2‐G‐1 Power Plants and Improvements‐Power House Road, May
1922, “Hauling by Placerville Transfer, $17.50, Groceries to C “then from C” to A‐ 7 hrs;
“Hauling‐3 spans at Camp B, 14 da. @ 3.00 per span‐by G.L. Blakely”. Records contain details of
various supplies and costs, which were presumably for the construction camps but were not
necessarily broken down by individual camp. Under Misc. Accounts various employees and
amount paid at El Dorado Hydroelectric Plant are listed. Note that for many listings; e.g., pipe
line clearing labor is listed without individual name or location. This ledger also has pages on
operators’ cottages in 1923. This ledger would definitely be worth looking at in greater detail.
A‐2

Box 096153
Historical Cost Report Electric Utility. Western States Gas and Electric Company (Stockton
Division) December 31, 1921. Byllesby Engineering and Management Corp.
Information on El Dorado Project, pages 290‐297 “Construction in Progress to June 30,
1922.” Gives estimates for construction camps, for their salvage, for moving them, etc.

Box 087112
Contains Minutes of PG&E Employees Welfare Committee, 1920–1929. Great detailed
information down to individual level of whose who filed complaints, request for pension;
request for religious services at Pit Camp; workers’ rights; applications for loans; pension
system, etc. For example, abstract of pension application for Frank L. Harris, lake tender,
operating department San Joaquin Division gives brief details of his employment for the past 23
years up through 1929. Mentions some of the camps (none of the construction camps specified)
where he worked. Potential exists that other employees mentioned in these records would list
whether they worked at a specific construction camp.

Box 004132
Contains “Index to Mist Cost Reports, Work Orders, Construction Contracts, Constr.
Authorized, Monthly Progress Reports, Improvements Req., etc. Western States G & E; Coast
Valley G & E. Refers to July 8, 1922 for El Dorado Hydro Development on American river (3)
Cont. No. 654. Box did not contain Cont [Contract?, Container?] No. 654. If these records could
be located in the archives, they could potentially contain very useful information.

Box 008877
Includes FERC Project No. 184 Unit Cost Report For Revised Statement of Actual
Legitimate Original Cost Of Project as of 2/1/24 and Historical Valuation Computation of
Depreciation Annuity FPC 12/31/24 To 12/31/27. Contains detailed information on Ditch Camps
1–5 that were used by ditch tenders and maintenance workers for the new El Dorado Canal.
Lists the buildings and their dimensions. Also lists equipment that was housed in some of the
buildings in the mid 1920s as well as storage sheds scattered along the ditch. A typescript by
W.B. Rittenhouse provides details and history on the El Dorado Project. These records would
definitely be worth looking at in greater detail. Even if nothing specific to the construction
camps is found, they provide great information for other camps in the area within a several year
period.

Box 008876
Includes El Dorado Power Co Cost 12/31/24 Summary Valuation Survey of El Dorado
Canal for Western States, dated December 1920 by Jerome Barieau; Unit Cost Report of Revised
Statement of Actual Legitimate Original Cost of Project #184 as of 2/1/24 to 12/31/27; Work
papers For Unit Cost Report For Revised Statement of Actual Legitimate Cost of Projects as of
A‐3

2/1/24; Fixed Capital Accounts; and other accounting records. At first glance, information is
relevant to the canal itself rather than details on work camps.

Box 005197
Includes the Annual Reports of the Western States Gas and Electric Company of [various
divisions including Stockton] to the Railroad Commission of California for the years 1920–1926.
Lists number of employees for El Dorado Development, but does not break down to Camp
level. Provides overall all wages per year for the project, but not down to individual level. Note
that in the Stockton Report it states: “All statistical data available on covering this ‘water
system’ has been submitted to the commission in the case of El Dorado Water Users Association
versus Western States Gas and Electric Company.ʺ

Box 028019
Western States Gas and Electric Co. Minutes of the Board of Directors, Volume 5, 1922–
1925. Includes expenditures for March 1, 1922 through November 30, 1923 and broad categories.
Does not break down into local level. Might find some detail on El Dorado project but doubtful
down to work camp level. Includes by laws, dividends, stockholders, articles of incorporation;
does not appear to contain policy or regulations as for work camps or employees etc.

Box W00827
Includes Western States Gas and Electric Co. Fixed Capital 1923 Accounts. Contains
construction ledger for El Dorado Division, April 1922‐January 1926. Under commissary
supplies has end of month date, e.g. April 30, 1922. Lists vouchers with costs but generally
leaves the description category blank, except occasionally “stores.” Similarly, freight &
transportation or supplies usually description [location] left blank except when for Twin Lakes.
Work broken down by type “stripping”, “cleaning”, ‘excavation”, etc. Puts labor cost total by
month; not broken down more than that for each category. Some expense broken out in field
offices; e.g., E. Bennett, rental of horses. .

Box 015278
Appraisal of Western States Gas & Electric for 1931, adjusted to 1927/28. Does not provide
information on 1922 construction work camps but provides detailed descriptions of buildings
for other projects such as the operator’s residence No. 2398 at Finnon Reservoir (American River
Project) and value of buildings at Twin Lake and Silver Lake.

Box W02025
Contains basically a library of articles new and old on PG&E and its activities. Includes
PG&E Place Names, compiled by Virginia Borland in 1957; various histories of PG&E and its
corporate predecessors; a PG&E organization history; a typescript “Hydro‐Electric
A‐4

Development, 1895–1925, Pacific Gas and Electric Company and Subsidiaries; and photocopies
of numerous magazine and other articles beginning in 1915. At first glance, nothing on
construction camps but potentially useful for historic context.

Box 069727
Western States Gas & Electric Records, 1916–1932. Files for 1921–1922 have nothing on
construction camps. Box contains a variety of copies of the publication “PG&E Progress”
including some in the mid 1920s. One contained a section called “On the Job with the ‘Old
Timers.’” If interviews or information on “Old Timers” was a regular feature, it could be a
potentially useful source to browse.

Box W01859
Contains a wide collection of early manuals and catalogs. Not relevant for construction
camps per se, put useful for identification of artifacts found in the field, particularly those
pertaining to early electrical supplies such as porcelain insulators. Also contains a small
pamphlet “Rules and Regulations for employee, PG&E, 1912 [some general rules, but mainly
operations instructions] and a Manual of Working Conditions for Employees on Daily and
Weekly Rates, effective October 1, 1937.

Photographs
Didn’t look at photographs because previously had been done. During computer searches
found numerous references to photographs of the El Dorado Project in the early 1920s including
Boxes W00226; W00742; W00743 W00744; W00745; and W02176.

A‐5

BOXES CHECKED THAT DID NOT CONTAIN USEFUL INFORMATION

Archive Boxes that were searched for information on the 1922 Construction Camps in El
Dorado that did not contain useful information are set forth below. Some of the boxes contained
unorganized materials or hundreds of files with no index indicating which file the information
would be. In those instances it was determined that it would be like looking for a needle in a
haystack and thus it would not be productive to search those files. The abbreviation GM stands
for “General Maintenance File.”

BOX BOX BOX
W00468 015351 085974, GM 176642
W00468 015352 085983, GM 176755
W00469 022132 086035, GM 176979
W00474 023348 086201, GM 178425
W00826 026010 086206, GM 178523
W00833 026010 086208, GM 178556
W01064 028020 086347, GM 179389
W01093 029225 0266894
W01191 034039 0269165, GM 59406
W01204 034328 086203, GM 178469; 178471
W02017 035061 051747, GM 456528
W04142 035470 051810, GM 457734
W04683 032721, GM 11554 051968, GM 460091
002153 048361 052040, GM 461549
003598 032835, GM 15553 052103, GM 462716
004130 050263 052146, GM 463240
004131 032963, GM 19849 052149, GM 463318
004133 051729, GM 45 5990 052322, GM 465748
004436 063332 052404, GM 467133
004683 067486 052411, GM 467287
004684 067487 052462, GM 467966
004684 069683 052525, GM 468939
005197 069726 052681, GM 470990
005711 034276, GM 57332 052710, GM 471706
009890 034342, GM 59406 052818, GM 473108
011625 053075, GM 174526 052835, GM 473513
012544 058474, GM 180443 052233, GM 464769; 464773
014159 058476, GM 180475 052875, GM 473949; 473950
015340 058749, GM 181506 052945, GM 475149; 475384; 475393
015350 085897, GM 176075

A‐6

El Dorado Camps Final

Uploaded by

Document Information

Copyright

Available Formats

Share this document

Share or Embed Document

Sharing Options

Did you find this document useful?

Is this content inappropriate?

Copyright:

Available Formats

El Dorado Camps Final

Uploaded by

Copyright:

Available Formats

CULTURAL RESOURCES RESEARCH DESIGN:

EL DORADO IRRIGATION DISTRICT ii SONOMA STATE UNIVERSITY

EL DORADO IRRIGATION DISTRICT iii SONOMA STATE UNIVERSITY

EL DORADO IRRIGATION DISTRICT iv SONOMA STATE UNIVERSITY

EL DORADO IRRIGATION DISTRICT 1 SONOMA STATE UNIVERSITY

EL DORADO IRRIGATION DISTRICT 2 SONOMA STATE UNIVERSITY

EL DORADO IRRIGATION DISTRICT 3 SONOMA STATE UNIVERSITY

EL DORADO IRRIGATION DISTRICT 4 SONOMA STATE UNIVERSITY

EL DORADO IRRIGATION DISTRICT 5 SONOMA STATE UNIVERSITY

Figure 1a. Location Map - Camps A, R, K, and B

Figure 1b. Location Map - Camps M and N

Figure 1c. Location Map - Camps P and T

Figure 1d. Location Map - Camps S and G

Figure 1e. Location Map - Camp C

2007 Field Visit

USFS designation Camp Name Record and Update on file Current condition

05‐03‐56‐811 Construction Camp K Darcangelo 2002; Rood 2002; Wee Good

05‐03‐56‐823 Construction Camp M Darcangelo 2002 Disturbed

05‐03‐56‐825 Construction Camp T Darcangelo 2002 Unknown

05‐03‐56‐828 Construction Camp A Darcangelo 2002 Good

05‐03‐56‐830 Construction Camp P Darcangelo 2002 Good

05‐03‐56‐832 Construction Camp G Darcangelo 2002 Extensively disturbed

05‐03‐56‐834 Construction Camp N Darcangelo 2002 Disturbed

05‐03‐56‐838 Construction Camp R Darcangelo 2002 No evidence of site

05‐03‐56‐829 Construction Camp B Darcangelo 2002; Waechter 2003 Extensively disturbed

05‐03‐56‐833 Construction Camp C Darcangelo 2002 Good

EL DORADO IRRIGATION DISTRICT 16 SONOMA STATE UNIVERSITY

EL DORADO IRRIGATION DISTRICT 17 SONOMA STATE UNIVERSITY

EL DORADO IRRIGATION DISTRICT 18 SONOMA STATE UNIVERSITY

EL DORADO IRRIGATION DISTRICT 19 SONOMA STATE UNIVERSITY

EL DORADO IRRIGATION DISTRICT 20 SONOMA STATE UNIVERSITY

EL DORADO IRRIGATION DISTRICT 21 SONOMA STATE UNIVERSITY

EL DORADO IRRIGATION DISTRICT 22 SONOMA STATE UNIVERSITY

EL DORADO IRRIGATION DISTRICT 23 SONOMA STATE UNIVERSITY

EL DORADO IRRIGATION DISTRICT 24 SONOMA STATE UNIVERSITY

EL DORADO IRRIGATION DISTRICT 25 SONOMA STATE UNIVERSITY

EL DORADO IRRIGATION DISTRICT 26 SONOMA STATE UNIVERSITY

EL DORADO IRRIGATION DISTRICT 27 SONOMA STATE UNIVERSITY

EL DORADO IRRIGATION DISTRICT 28 SONOMA STATE UNIVERSITY

EL DORADO IRRIGATION DISTRICT 29 SONOMA STATE UNIVERSITY

EL DORADO IRRIGATION DISTRICT 30 SONOMA STATE UNIVERSITY

EL DORADO IRRIGATION DISTRICT 31 SONOMA STATE UNIVERSITY

EL DORADO IRRIGATION DISTRICT 32 SONOMA STATE UNIVERSITY

EL DORADO IRRIGATION DISTRICT 33 SONOMA STATE UNIVERSITY

EL DORADO IRRIGATION DISTRICT 34 SONOMA STATE UNIVERSITY

EL DORADO IRRIGATION DISTRICT 35 SONOMA STATE UNIVERSITY

EL DORADO IRRIGATION DISTRICT 36 SONOMA STATE UNIVERSITY

EL DORADO IRRIGATION DISTRICT 37 SONOMA STATE UNIVERSITY

EL DORADO IRRIGATION DISTRICT 38 SONOMA STATE UNIVERSITY

EL DORADO IRRIGATION DISTRICT 39 SONOMA STATE UNIVERSITY

EL DORADO IRRIGATION DISTRICT 40 SONOMA STATE UNIVERSITY

EL DORADO IRRIGATION DISTRICT 43 SONOMA STATE UNIVERSITY

EL DORADO IRRIGATION DISTRICT 44 SONOMA STATE UNIVERSITY

EL DORADO IRRIGATION DISTRICT 45 SONOMA STATE UNIVERSITY

05‐03‐ 05‐03‐ 05‐03‐ 05‐03‐ 05‐03‐ 05‐03‐ 05‐03‐ 05‐03‐ 05‐03‐

EL DORADO IRRIGATION DISTRICT 46 SONOMA STATE UNIVERSITY

EL DORADO IRRIGATION DISTRICT 47 SONOMA STATE UNIVERSITY

consumption. Early 20th‐century investigators sometimes observed that foreign‐born workers

EL DORADO IRRIGATION DISTRICT 48 SONOMA STATE UNIVERSITY

EL DORADO IRRIGATION DISTRICT 49 SONOMA STATE UNIVERSITY

EL DORADO IRRIGATION DISTRICT 50 SONOMA STATE UNIVERSITY

EL DORADO IRRIGATION DISTRICT 51 SONOMA STATE UNIVERSITY

EL DORADO IRRIGATION DISTRICT 52 SONOMA STATE UNIVERSITY

EL DORADO IRRIGATION DISTRICT 53 SONOMA STATE UNIVERSITY