Hi! I’m Maggie Moore, the new member of Explore Historic California. Haven’t done a lot of exploring yet as I am way too young to go out much and haven’t had all of my puppy shots yet.

But that gives me lots of time to read up on who I am named after, and the place she lived in. Papa Jake (who you guys know better as Poor Little Jake) is teaching me how to write like he does, so here’s my first try:

All I ever hear my human Mommy talk about is this place called Cerro Gordo. She says Cerro Gordo means “Fat Hill”, because the mountain was so rich with silver. Some important guys like Mortimer Belshaw and Victor Beaudry owned the big mines up there in the mid to late 1800’s. Another guy named Remi Nadeau owned real big wagons pulled by a whole lot of mules.  These wagons and mules took silver bricks from Cerro Gordo to Los Angeles, then came back to Cerro Gordo with supplies for the town. My family just barely lives in Los Angeles and we’re about 4 hours away from Cerro Gordo driving our comfy 4Runner. But in the 1800’s in Mr. Nadeau’s wagons, it took days!   Longest ride I’ve ever had is 2 hours from my birth home in Apple Valley, to my permanent home here in Tujunga. That trip to Cerro Gordo must have really been something back in the really old days!

 Cerro Gordo was mainly a mining town and most of the people living there were men. There were some families that lived up there, but there was never a real school or a church, or even a newspaper. Other than the buildings that were used for mining stuff, there were mainly bunkhouses, little mining shacks, hotels, saloons, dancehalls, assay offices, general stores for supplies.  The men that lived up there worked hard in the mines all day then spent their money in the saloons and dancehalls afterwards. Since many of them didn’t have any families and were lonely they spent a lot of time in places like The Waterfall owned by the lady that I am named after, Madam Maggie Moore. The Waterfall was at the entrance to town. At the other end of town a lady named Lola Travis ran a place called Lola’s Palace of Pleasure.  These places were really popular with the miners, but I guess decent folks, particularly married women, didn’t like these places so much...

In a really old newspaper  from the big Owens Valley area below the Fat Hill there’s a story about what a rough  place Cerro Gordo was.  The reporter said it was a “man for breakfast” kind of place, where lots of shootings and trouble happened all of the time. A week in February of 1873 was really exciting, apparently.  Four men, Mr. Walker, Mr. Clark, Mr. McCarty, and Mr. Stewart came up to the mountain and got really drunk. They went around bad-mouthing all of the Mexicans, which was not a nice thing to do. At Hughes Saloon, things got so bad that barkeeper, Al Briggs, told everybody to get out and closed the place down.  The four troublemakers didn’t let this stop them from “having fun.”  They took their six-shooters and headed down the hill to Madam Maggie Moore’s Waterfall Dance House.

If you ever get a chance to visit Cerro Gordo, you can still see Lola’s Palace of Pleasure, but Maggie Moore’s Waterfall is long gone.  

 It’s been a few months since I started writing this story and I’m not just a little tiny rottador pup any more!  I’ve been on several trips with Mommy & Daddy, and I’ve even been to Cerro Gordo!  Mom’s friend, Robin went with us and told us that it’s a good possibility that Maggie Moore just called herself that.  Her real name may have been Petra Romero.  One of these days, Robin’s going to have to tell me how she figured that one out!  Meantime, I’m sure glad my Mommy didn’t know about the name Petra when she was looking for a puppy.  She would have had to pick out a little tiny Chihuahua instead of big 6 ½ month old 55 pound me!

Thank you Papa Jake & Mommy for helping me with my first story – I couldn’t have done this good without you!  By the way, Cerro Gordo is just as much fun as everybody said it would be, but it will be more fun when Mommy can trust me off the leash to run around on my own. 

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