Escapees September-October 2024

region to search for gold. They built lean to’s and tents in a little town they named “Emily City.” Eventually, the Coleman Mining District was formed, with A. E. Coleman at the head as the recorder for the district. Washington’s Birthday, February 22, 1870, is regarded as the date when even more gold was discovered in ledges on the hills and mountains of the region. Brothers Drury, James and Frank Bailey, and their cousins Mike and Webb Julian, had arrived in 1869 and found gold. The Julian Mining District was established, with Mike Julian serving as the recorder for the district. And thus was born “Julian City.” Drury Bailey established a 160-acre homestead on July 30, 1874. His land contained the portion designated as “Julian City” and is, still today, the central portion of the town of Julian. He donated a portion of his land to serve as sites for an elementary school, high school, city hall, a jail and any churches to be developed by various denom inations. He continued mining and also built a stamp mill for processing ore. He invited other miners to use the stamp mill he had “In very little time, apples built up Julian’s economy and actually became more of a mainstay than the gold mining business.” constructed and collected only a milling fee from them. That honesty was warmly received by the miners, some of whom had been victimized by unscrupulous owners of other stamp mills who would say they “lost” some of the ore the miners brought, only to pocket the “lost” ore for themselves. Drury Bailey married Annie Laurie Redman, the daughter of one of Drury’s mining associates. They had 12 children, nine of which survived infancy. Drury died in 1921 and Annie Laurie in 1927. Mike Julian, the recorder for the Julian Mining District,

Gold fever o ffi cially started in 1849 in California, if not before. Most of the attention was for the deposits of gold in the Sierra Mountains, but Southern California had a big share of attention, with the town of Julian, located about 50 miles northeast of San Diego, in the Cuyamaca Mountains, along High ways 78 and 79. J ulian and its environs boast a mild climate, ample water and tillable land. Even back in the times of the indigenous people, it offered good hunting, plentiful land for farming and an area well-suited for their camps and villages. Anthropologists have found evidence of more than 15 ancient villages and camps in the region, dating back 7,000 years, along withmany fl at rocks in the region that have bedrock mortar holes in which acorns and seeds were ground for food by the ancients. The creeks and hills harbored gold, too, but that was not of much interest to the native people. When the Spanish and Mexican explorers and missionaries arrived in the region in the 1600s and 1700s, some gold mining occurred, not on a grand scale, but almost incidentally to the area. This is because the native people had little interest in working with the newcomers in gold mining when hunting, gathering and farming were enough to match their needs. And second, the Spanish and Mexican settlers mined for gold, but they, too, recognized the better value of the land for farming, ranching, orchards, vineyards and trading agricultural goods with other areas. Glints of Gold Still, the occasional fi nding of gold was also a part of the terrain, and it was A. E. Coleman who was credited with starting the true gold rush to Julian. He had noticed glints of gold while watering his horse at one of the area’s many creeks. He panned some samples from the creek bed and con fi rmed that it was, indeed, gold that he had found. As it does in such circumstances, word spread quickly and, soon, about 75 miners were in the

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September/October 2024 ESCAPEES Magazine