Jesse James
Larry Cressey

            In 1971, on my first trip down the South Fork I met Jesse James.  My friend, Kelly, and I were fresh out of high school in San Francisco, taken into the woods of the West by the mountain wanderlust that affected many at the time.  We were hoping to find adventure and to find ourselves.  We had spent our first night out of the city at a campsite near Shasta Lake, hurriedly pitching our new tent as a thunderstorm struck.  In the Bay Area we were used to rain, but not storms like that one. It boomed and blew, blasting rain against our small shelter with intensity we had never before seen.  Our tent held well and we were glad we had taken the time to set up the fly. 

            The early May morning woke bright and warm and we were on no schedule, so we lolled around the lake awhile.  Kelly tried a little fishing but was frustrated by loosing lures to snags.  By noon we were bored and ready to move on toward our goal of the Marble Mountains.  A longtime friend, whose family owned a sporting goods store in the City had described the Marbles as an untrammeled wilderness, not having the popularity of the Sierras that were being overrun by backpackers.  We enjoyed the drive over Gazelle Mountain and stopped in at Farrington’s in Callahan for refreshments and directions.  Steve Farrington was tending store that day, and helped us in his friendly manner, telling us the road over the South Fork would be more direct than going up to Etna and over the North Fork as we had planned.  That turned out to be a true fork in the road of my life; presenting life altering changes of which I had no clue on that spring day.

            As we drove the old VW Bug over Carter Meadows Divide we were struck by the beauty and knew we had come the right way.  As we passed Sam George’s place, I saw that life was different here from what I had expected.  Sam had an active placer operation going, and I was surprised that such a thing was possible within the boundaries of the National Forest.  I was pleased to find out people could make a living from the land still, in ways I had not before realized. 

            When we saw the sign for East Fork Campground, it looked like a good place to stop.  It was a comfortable campground, and we had the place to ourselves.  It was so comfortable we spent several days there enjoying the beauty of the river and allowing ourselves to adjust to the natural rhythms, unwinding from the city pace we had lived in for our first eighteen years.  Other campers came in one evening and we took it as a sign we should move on, so the next morning we headed down the South Fork to discover Cecilville. 

I found the name Bennett’s Resort somewhat humorous, as it was not like any resort I had heard of, with its low-slung bar and store, small trailer court, a couple of cabins, and proprietors named Nels and Edlo.  Nels greeted us on the porch and pumped our gas for us without saying much.  When we went in to pay, Edlo, who stood behind the counter looking something like the cafeteria cook in the Archie comics, sharply asked “Whaddya want?”  Not quite knowing what to make of her, we just paid and left.

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