Joseph P. Mosconi - University of Nevada, Reno

12 Joseph Mosconi
Right. I knew him.
All right. His uncle lived there. They
made a little cabin for him to stay right there.
He had this kind of a flat ladder, and he’d
climb this ladder, and he had to haul this
big bucket of coals, I think it was. He’d go
up there.. .and I’ll never forget. [laughter]
He’d kneel down there, and he’d always name
himself, bless himself. Sign of the cross. He
said something up there—I don’t know what
it was—then he’d dump this bucket of coals
down in there. And he stayed there and
watched that so it wouldn’t break through.
And if it sometimes broke through, he was
right away there, because all that fire down
in there, that’s how you make coal. It takes
the moisture out of the wood.
Oh, yes. It leaves everything else. How long
would it take?
That I can’t tell you. Then, when it was
done, they’d shovel everything off. Then they’d
get it in great big sacks. They had great big
scoop shovels, I think, or scoop forks, and
they’d fill these sacks, and then they’d make a
big high load on this wagon.
Now, when you were back up there in Euer
Valley that summer, you said there were dairies
in there, and people came up and kept their
cows. Were the people that had their cows up
there Italians, primarily?
Yes. There was Italians. All of Sierra Valley
was mostly Swiss-Italian.
Yes, I’ve heard that.
Lot of Italians and Swiss-Italians. That’s all
they had was dairies. They milked, and that
was their livelihood. They never sold milk;
they separated. They shipped all the cream
to the Crystal Creamery in Sacramento.
So a lot of cream went down of f these
mountains?
Oh, yes. Euer Valley and Carpenter
Valley...all those valleys. Around Lake Tahoe
was the same thing.
All those little valleys up there?
There’re several meadows, like up at..
.what do you call that creek? There was a
sawmill in there afterwards.
Martis, maybe?
Martis Creek, yes. Then there was...Squaw
Creek? No, it’s another. The road that goes
down to the other side of the summit, down
into Hell Hole country. You’ve heard of Hell
Hole?
Yes. You’re not talking about the Yuba [River]?
Well, it’d be on the north fork of the start
of the American River, I think. Yes.
Back up there in all those valleys, what about
sheep? Did there used to be sheep?
Oh, yes. Then there was places where
the sheep never went in the meadows. The
sheepmen and the cattlemen, they didn’t get
along too well. And the sheep very seldom
went into any meadows. Of course, if they
were small meadows that there wasn’t enough
there to keep a string of cows, why, then the
sheepmen.... But the sheep used to travel from
out in the desert here in Nevada, and there
was a lot of sheep that used to come over
through that way and cross right here in Verdi