ROCK, ROCKS, NOTHING BUT ROCKS

This is how the guide book described this land.
"The Roaring Fork community was settled about 170 years ago by people in search of new ground to farm, and the turn of the century found the mature little hamlet stabilized at about two dozen families.
This was enough to support a few small tub mills, a store, a church and a school.
The stream is a crooked crease in the lumpy skirts of Mt. LeCont and settlers followed it because it ran through the most nearly level land, in a place where there is no level land.
The road (that we were on) followed the stream, and was built with local labor...hard labor.
Picks and shovels were used to level high spots, fill ruts and move rocks.
Large boulders were blasted apart with powder or dynamite. Lacking that, they were heated with fire and cracked off with cold water.
This was done year after year, but somehow the rocks never got fewer."
"Eph" and "Nervie" Bales owned 70 acres of these rocks and managed to cultivate 30 of them.
"Hardscrabble" is one name for a place like this. The Bales and their nine children lived crammed into this dog-trot cabin, and life for them was as sparse and hard as the ground around them."
http://www.californios.us/family/dog-trot.htm
"In many of these buildings we see how they managed to cope with the world around them on its terms--not theirs."




The cabin at Jim Bales place.



"Building required trees and hard work, so no one built anything larger than necessary"




"These buildings allow us to see how they sheltered family and livestock, stored food, protected tools and equipment, and earned a living."



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