Merrill's Mill

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Merrill's Mill, Owl Creek, Mariposa County, Sierra Nevada (1935-1947)

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The earliest memories of my life are of living at Merrill's Sawmill.

I remember the mill was over there, and the cabins where we lived were across the road that ran down the hill, across Owl Creek, and out to The Point on Windlass Ridge.

I remember my mother keeping milk or other perishables in a screened in box in the creek.

I remember someone putting a big fish he had caught in a little stream that ran through the site (probably for both preservation and showing off).

I remember, when I was a bit older, the drive to the mill, over a rough mountain road with a steep drop-off on one side. I was afraid I would fall out of the car and roll down  the mountain. Unfortunately, my first tendency was to hang on to the door handle.

Considering that we lived at the mill the summer I turned three (in 1942), it is amazing I remember anything. But I know these are real memories, not things we talked about later, as many childhood "memories" often are.

For 12 years starting in 1935, my father worked at the mill every summer but one, and because I was at a most impressionable age during the latter part of this time, Merrill's Mill looms large in my life history. Throughout this time, and well after the mill was destroyed by fire in 1947, our closest family friends were the Merrill’s: Roy and Ruby, and their sons and their families.

My father, Bob Estel, and his parents, Frank and Mabel, came from Ohio to Pasadena CA in January of 1935, part of a great migration seeking work and warmer weather in the still-Golden State. Their destination was chosen because they had relatives there, the only other Estels I remember knowing, Fred and Harley Estel and their sister Florence (Flossie) Estel Hemphill. The three were cousins of Frank and the children of Augustus Estel, a German immigrant who moved west from Ohio to California about 1910.

In Pasadena dad, grandpa and grandma stayed at Flossie’s home. They played the part of tourists, going to the ocean, seeing the southern California sights, going to the movies, and enjoying warm sunshine at a time of year when they had normally experienced the snow and below freezing weather of northwest Ohio.

The Estels were not the only people with Ohio roots that my father and grandparents knew in California. One of my grandfather’s boyhood friends, Roy Merrill, had been in California since the mid-1920s. In 1928 he and Ruby had moved from San Diego to Mariposa, a tiny town in the Sierra Nevada foothills. On February 1^st Dad and his parents headed for the Merrill ranch, about 300 miles north, where they spent a week, making their first visit to Yosemite. This was their first sight of the place where my parents were to spend the rest of their lives.

During their time in southern California Frank and Bob worked at whatever odd jobs they could find, such things as delivering handbills. Grandma’s diary for March 5 notes that they worked all day and made $3 each.

In April of 1935, Roy visited the Estels in Pasadena, on his way to Long Beach and San Pedro to shop for machinery. He told Frank and Bob that he was thinking about starting a sawmill, and if he did, he’d give them a job. (Dad had  previously worked in a mill in Ohio sawing custom barn timbers.)

On May 28 they left Pasadena early in the morning, arriving at Roy’s place about 6 p.m. At that time the Merrills lived in Bootjack, about five miles east of Mariposa, at what is now the corner of State Highway 49 and Silva Road.

The men, including Roy’s two sons Marion (Molly) and Dean, immediately began work building the mill, a project that took about six weeks. The base of the mill was three huge cedar logs, mortised into posts. During construction they stayed in tents at the mill site. The construction site was along Owl creek, at the 5,000 foot elevation, between Footman and Windlass Ridge, and the mill was often referred to as Owl Creek Mill.

The mill ran on five steam engines, a big one for the saws, with others on the greenchain, carriage, and pump. They were fueled by wood, and had to be fed by hand throughout the day until a way was devised to feed sawdust from the mill directly into the burner.

With the mill in operation, some of the families moved into the little tent city that had sprung up in the forest. Grandma’s diary notes that on Saturday, June 22, 1935, they moved up to Owl Creek.

A breakdown in early August apparently gave Bob and Frank some free time, and on the 2nd they started building the cabin in which they eventually.

Grandma seemingly was the camp cook, at least for the men there without their wives. On August 15 she wrote, "I had two new men to cook for, Mike and Hiram, making ten in all." (This was probably Hiram Branson.)

On August 20 they moved into the cabin. While they certainly did not live a life of opulence in Ohio, it was far more civilized and settled than the wild Sierra of California in the 1930s. Grandma’s feelings were probably best expressed by her entry of September 30: "Hip hurrah! Left Owl Creek at 8:30." Nine days later they arrived at her parent’s home in Ohio.

There had been good times, too. They went to Yosemite on July 14, and grandma wrote on August 28^, "About 20 around the camp fire...lots of music."

The mill was located in the Jerseydale area, at about 5,000 feet, in Mariposa County, CA. The Merrill Ranch was in Bootjack, about ten miles away and 3,000 feet lower in elevation. The lumber drying yard was located at the ranch, and the Estels (senior and junior), eventually both had cabins on the ranch. Later the Merrills moved to property on Triangle Road, closer to the mill, where all three of their families (Roy and sons Molly and Deane) had their homes.

Winter conditions in the Sierra Nevada required a seasonal shutdown, so throughout his career with the mill, dad did something else in the winter. They made several trips back to Ohio, and in 1938 what he did was marry my mother, Hazel Mason. Immediately after their marriage in April 1938, they left for California, which became their permanent home.

The elder Estels ended up in southern California, eventually settling in Ventura, where both Frank and Bob spent some time working in the defense industry at Port Hueneme during World War II. Frank did electrical work for most of the rest of his working life, while Bob returned to the mill, working seasonally for local mines and for the Pacific Gas & Electric Company.

This era came to an end when the mill burned down in 1947. The cause of the fire was never determined, although Roy suspected arson. However, in a site with several wood-burning steam engines, there were plenty of opportunities for fire, and there was no evidence one way or another.

Today the Owl Creek site is silent. There is little evidence of the bustling industry and residential activity that started three generations ago. Wild blackberries have covered the place where the mill stood, but if you can brave the thorns, you will find a small concrete platform where the boiler stood. You’ll also find a substantial sawdust pile, though people have hauled it out in buckets and trucks. The young men who worked there when it began are in their 80's, and the older generation is gone--but none are forgotten.

Ruby died in 1963 and Roy in 1968. Deane was killed in a logging truck accident in the 1970s. Bob Estel died in March 2005. Hazel died in August 2007. Mollie's wife Addie died in November 2006. Deane's wife Edith and Mollie are in their 80s or 90s, and are among perhaps five or six people still living who were there in the beginning days of the Owl Creek Mill.

--Dick Estel, December 2000; updated July 2006, June and August 2007

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