How Lone Tree Got Its Name
As Beale families see their younger school children off to Lone Tree School, parents and children alike may be wondering why the school is named Lone Tree and where Lone Tree is.
The new PAVE PAWS site is located on the southwestern slope of Lone Tree Hill. The famous tree which gave the hill its name no longer stands, and the best way to describe it now is to say That first hill to the east of the cantonment area.
Drawing by Candy Stewart from an old photo of Lone Tree School
The Lone Tree School District was established in 1868 with a small school on the Smartsville side of Spenceville. It only lasted a year or two, and the next Lone Tree School was built at the base of Lone Tree Hill on the east side. There was a stopping-place, owned by W.B. Vinyard, with a big barn where wagon hauling supplies to the mines from Marysville rested their teams. It was called Oak Grove. That school was moved about a half a mile east to the Smartsville Road (now the Grass Valley Highway) in 1902.
This third location is identified today by a long curved pipe which looks like an archway. Actually, it is the pipe which carried water to the school from a spring across the road. The water flowed continuously through the pipe, under the road, to a small wash house. The children took drinks from the pipe by holding a cup under the running water.
The teacher at Lone Tree School boarded with different families in the early years, and when it was Johnny Walsh's turn to have the teacher, she had to walk a mile and a half over the hill named for Billy Walsh, Johnny's brother. Billy Walsh Hill is on the east side of the highway, rising above the spring and the schoolhouse. Later, a small cabin was built for the teacher behind the school, and she got all her water from the pipe running from the spring into the schoolyard. Now the spring is dry, and, people being people, the pipe will probably be gone in a few years, and there will be nothing to mark the place where many of Beale's early families began their formal education.
In 1879, Lone Tree School District had sixty-two children between the ages of five and seventeen years. Forty-six of these children were enrolled in public school; ten attended private schools. Of the forty-six enrolled, the average daily attendance was twenty. The average monthly wage to male teachers was $92.50, to female teachers, $62.12.
Students rode their horses to school, where they were either tied in the shed, or in case a child was late, the cinch was loosened and the horse was left to his own devices in the fenced schoolyard.
When the population of the district grew older, there was no need for a school in this district, and the school-house was given to a family named Adkins whose house had burned. According to Grace Vineyard Nightingale, that disrupted all those poor old woodpeckers. They had the corners of that building filled with acorns.
This old school, as well as the present-day fifty-room school for 970 students on Camp Beale Highway, got its name from Lone Tree Hill, a landmark since pioneer days. It served as a beacon for travelers looking for Spenceville Road. Its golden glow against the dark tree-studded hills could be seen for a distance of twenty miles.
During mining days, any place where quartz was found was suspect of great gold deposits. The quartz outcroppings on the top of Lone Tree Hill were noticed with growing excitement back in the 1870's. At least three mines were started on the hill, two by shafts from the top and one by tunnel into the side. Little pushcarts carried out the ore from the tunnel, which is still there facing the base. There is a shaft running down to the tunnel from the top of the hill.
The Wheatland Free Press of March 13, 1875, announced the opening of the Munroe mine at the Lone Tree, and in October of 1876, reported that the shaft on the Munroe ledge is 100 feet deep, rock is getting better all the time, and there will be a very rich paying mine soon. Work on the shaft at the Lone Tree Mine [a second mine] is also progressing. A mill will soon be erected near the Munroe mine and hoisting works put up on the Lone Tree. The owners of the Oro Grande mine [also on Lone Tree Hill] have workmen engaged in running a tunnel. Such were the hopes of the times.
The Lone Tree Mine is mentioned in Thompson and West, History of Yuba County, published in 1879: A small two-stamp mill is being worked at the Lone Tree Mine, on Lone Tree Hill, in Rose Bar Township, that pays in a small way. The number of stamps (used to crush the ore) indicated the size of the mill, the more prosperous ones using fifty or sixty stamps.
Even though mining on a grand scale was never realized at Lone Tree, whenever it rained, small amounts of gold were found in the many gullies on the sides of the hill. Stories are told of couples on this hill who picked up enough gold in this way to make a meager living.
Grace Vinyard Nightingale is the granddaughter of W.B. Vinyard and attended Lone Tree School in the early part of this century. She says, There were really two trees on the Lone Tree Hill. The original Lone Tree burned off the 4th of July in 1908. I remember we went to the circus, and when we were coming home it rained. My folks had a surrey, and we had to put the curtains up so we wouldn't get wet. When we got back, Lone Tree Hill had all burned off, and it had killed the big old tree. Lightning must have started the fire, and the rain put it out. That left the younger tree. It grew until it took the place of the old one, and the hill was still called Lone Tree Hill.
Later, when the 13th Armored Division used the 86,000 acres of Camp Beale as its training ground, Lone Tree Hill again became a landmark. Mr. J.B. Teel of St. Louis was stationed here during World War II as a tank driver and mechanic. He writes, The Camp should enshrine that tree, because that hill is where we would always wind up our field problems and get our usual 'chewing out' for what we did or didn't do. There was a saying that if anyone cut the tree down on Lone Tree Hill, he would be shot!
Apparently, no one did, because it was still visible when the new Lone Tree School was dedicated in 1960. Mrs. Chester Creps, in her dedication speech, said that the old school had been just below the still standing single oak tree which we can see from here.
Sometime after 1960 the tree fell. It is up there yet, gray and weathered, lying on its side stretched across the quartz boulders. Coiled in the sunshine at the tree's base, a rattlesnake now claims the Lone Tree's place as King of the Mountain.
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This is an excerpt from the book Pebbles in the Stream, A History of Beale AFB and Neighboring Areas, written by Peggy Bal, published by Nevada County Historical Society.
1993 (118 pages-softbound)
ISBN: 0-915641-05-4)