LAKE COUNTY, Calif. – St. Helena Toll Road and Bull Trail is California State Historic Landmark No. 467.
It is located at the northwest corner of State Highway 29 and Hill Avenue, Middletown.
The marker states, “ The old Bull Trail Road ran from Napa Valley to Middletown. It was built by volunteers in the 1850s. A number of the grades were 35 percent. It was an official road in 1861 and abandoned in 1868. St. Helena Toll Road also ran from same points, was completed in 1868. The grades ran to 12 percent. State of California purchased from John Lawley heirs in 1925.”
Henry Mauldin, the late County historian, emphasized in his notes that, although the St. Helena Toll Road and Bull Trails are historic, the first trails over Mount St. Helena were made by American Indians long ago.
In fact, Mount St. Helena’s summit was considered a sacred spot to the Wappo Indians. Their trails crossed two main connections – one connecting Knight’s Valley in present-day Sonoma County, and Jericho Canyon, in present-day Napa County.
The other trail used by the Wappo was a steep route through Jericho Canyon into the Callayomi Valley, where present-day south Middletown is.
The Wappo Indians, like all California Indian tribes, had a complex culture and knew their surroundings intimately. Their trails of times past carried them on important business; the Wappo had precious volcanic obsidian to trade for fish and shells from the coast.
Much later, a trail was made from Middletown to the Mountain Mill House, south of the buildings. These trails detoured around, and came back into the location of the main highway of today. The roads were used to drive cattle to market.
Lawley, for whom the toll road is named, moved from Alabama to California in 1852.
He worked at many occupations, eventually leasing the Kellogg Ranch near the Bale Grist Mill, and becoming a trustee in Napa’s first bank.
He came across an opportunity too good to pass up when the Berryessa brothers could no longer hold onto their Mexican land grant. Then, he bought 26,000 acres of Berryessa’s grant for around $4 per acre.
Lawley continued his pattern of changing occupations as opportunity arose, becoming owner of the Phoenix quicksilver mine near Oat Hill, and later, uniting with Sam Brannan in the newly formed Napa Valley Railroad Co.
The plan was to run tracks from the Napa Valley into Lake County. However, this attempt failed – as did many other attempts to secure a railroad through Lake County.
This is when Lawley decided to build a toll road from Calistoga to Middletown with his partners, Henry Boggs and William Patterson, in 1866.
The toll rates for the roads were determined by the Board of Supervisors. Some of the charges follow, below. After public outcry in 1873, the high tolls were reduced.
– Four horse team: $1.50.
– Eight horse team: $2.50.
– One horse buggy: $0.75.
– Man and horse: $0.25.
During the era of the toll roads, stage coach robberies were common.
According to Anne Roller Issler’s book “Stevenson at Silverado: The Life and Writing of Robert Louis Stevenson in California’s Napa Valley 1880,” the valleys and canyons offered ideal hideouts for bandits and, “Many of these were of course genuine desperadoes; but some were, or had been, quite respectable citizens – prospectors, merchants, anything – who succumbed to the lure of the express box with its rich spoils, and who probably enjoyed the 'faint warfaring aroma' of the chase.”
She further explained that the gentleman highwayman Black Bart was purported to have had a favorite hideout “behind a huge fir on a rugged hillside, where the Lawley Toll Road overhung “a narrow and deep canyon filled with trees.”
Driving a stage over the mountain was quite an art form in the 19th century. Some stage drivers became famous for the dangerous and scenic drives on which they took their fares.
When Robert Louis Stevenson lived on Mount St. Helena in 1880 he noted that the local papers reported on the most popular vacation spots in the region. The spas of Lake County were among those mentioned.
Two of the most popular stage drivers of the era, according to Stevenson, were Clark Foss and Bill Spiers, who made frequent forays into Lake County.
Driver Foss is described by Menefee’s Sketchbook as “ second to none in the handling of horse, whip, and lines.”
Foss is further described by his rival, Bill Spiers in his recollections: “Colonel Foss weighed two hundred and sixty-five pounds, and could handle six horses like you’d handle that many cats. He would lift them right up off their feet and swing them around the corners so fast you couldn’t see the leading team. He drove his stage to the Big Geysers for years, and he’d run down the last hill with a yell to wake the dead.”
Kathleen Scavone, M.A., is an educator, potter, writer and author of “Anderson Marsh State Historic Park: A Walking History, Prehistory, Flora, and Fauna Tour of a California State Park” and “Native Americans of Lake County.” She also writes for NASA and JPL as one of their “Solar System Ambassadors.” She was selected “Lake County Teacher of the Year, 1998-99” by the Lake County Office of Education, and chosen as one of 10 state finalists the same year by the California Department of Education.
Lake County Time Capsule: St. Helena Toll Road and Bull Trail
- Kathleen Scavone
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