Pioneer stories from Inyo County: John H. Lubken as told to John H. Wintersteen I was born in Lone Pine and have been here all of my 90 years, except for five months when I went to Heald’s Business College in San Francisco. Arthur Shepherd went to college with me at the same time. Nettie Roeper Fausel of Independence was my cousin. Her father was my mother’s brother. There were lots of ranches here then. They raised all their food and had everything they needed winter and summer…… ……The first time I milked a cow I was 9 years old I was 9 years old and then I started milking cows. I never tasted ice cream until I was about 16 years old. I had one dish at levi’s in Independence and I didn’t have any more until I was grown. I was set to work and that is all I did was work. I could lift a sack of potatoes that would weigh 150 pounds when I was 15 years old, and put in on the wagon. My father would go along with four or five kegs of beer and take it up to Cerro Gordo. He made beer and every two days he would take 240 gallons and send it all to the miners. He made lots of money. ………………………………................................ …….They raised a lot of draft horses here (Lone Pine). They were heavy horses that could pull, weighing sixteen to eighteen hundred pounds. They hitched 18 to 20 of them to the big heavy stake bed wagons and hauled groceries from Mojave. It took from 8 to10 days to make the trip. The people decided to run a boat across Owens Lake to help get the lumber from the mill, high up in Cottonwood Canyon. They cut lumber there and sent it down in a flume. Sometimes it would get stuck in the flume and stack the lumber high up in the air and they would have to telephone to the mill lto shut off the water so they could fix it up again. Down at Owens Lake, where the creek comes in, there was a dock running out in the lake to deep water. They would transfer the lumber to the boat and take it to Swansea running far out into the lake. Swansea then was a thriving town something like Lone Pine. There were people scattered all along there. There was a pier from Swansea running far out into the lake. Frothere, the lumber was taken to Cerro Gordo. Cerro Gordo means fat mountain.There was a big mine there and a lot of men, mostly Cornishmen. There were some Mexicans and a Mexican had found it. It was rich in silver and lead. Then there was Beveridge, a big mining cmap. It was all god there. I have seen gold stacked high on the tables, where they were gambling. They would play until one of the men won all the stack, or until dark, and sometimes all night. ………………………………............ …… Lone Pine Brewery was built before the earthquake of 1872, because people told about the gable end of the brewery going out, during the earthquake. My father came to the valley in 1862 and homesteaded on George’s Creek. Later he traded the homestead for a share of the brewery and was a partner in it. Louis Munsinger Built it. John Myers, known as Hans Myers, bought Louis out and my father traded his ranch to Myers for is interest in the brewery and got the whole thing. It was called Lone Pine Beer. It tasted a lot like Miller’s High Life. It was the same kind of beer. It was sold in Darwin,cerro gordo, keeler, idnependence and Swansea. It got so he couldn’t make a profit and they stopped brewing beer in 1894. After my father died, my mother sold the brewery. The malt mill in back of the brewery was a horse drawn mill. The horse would keep going as long as the barley hopper was full. When the barley wasgone, she would stop and as soon as they filled the hopper again, she would go again. She kept going until she died at the age of 32. The brewery building was torndown by Skinner (note: assuming this was Max Skinner). He bought this from my mother. John H. Lubken - Inyo County Supervisor and rancher. Born May 5, 1876. Son of John Fredrick and Augusta Marie Roeper Lubken.
Posted on: Fri, 12 Jul 2013 16:56:52 +0000
Trending Topics
Recently Viewed Topics
© 2015