During my recent exploration of Civil War sites in California, which took us from Los Angeles, to Yosemite, up to Gold Rush Country, to Sacramento and San Francisco, I found a little-visited site that was not even on my itinerary when I left New York. This was the site of a robbery of two civilian stage coaches by Confederate guerrillas operating in the Gold Rush country near Placerville.
To get to the site, we left Placerville and took Highway 50 (The Lincoln Highway) east. The monument is where Bullion Bend Road, Pony Express Trail, and Frontier intersect. You can find it on Google Maps by looking for “Bullion Bend Historic Maker.” The directions from Google Maps had me turn down Sunset Drive, which is a dirt road. A better way is to take Highway 50 east to Sly Park Rd. and exit north to Pony Express Trail and make a right. Just stay on the Trail for a half mile or so and you will come to a large bend and you will see the monument on the left. Here is the street sign at the site.
On June 30, 1864 a band of Confederate guerrillas stopped two stage coaches bringing silver from Virginia City, Nevada. The guerrillas were said to get away with $40,000 from the stage coaches, Nearly a million in today’s dollars that was said to be intended to aid the Confederacy. The robbers said they were Confederate soldiers. They did not harm those on the coaches and after the robbery they were allowed to proceed.
Three deputy sheriffs went after the Confederates, George C. Ranney, John Van Eaton, and Joseph Staples with Ranney in command. The robbers had split into two groups. One group went to Somerset House in the town of Somerset, California about ten miles from Placerville. Deputy Stapes rushed into the house and was killed.
The monument was erected in 1916 where the robbery took place. Here is its description of the events:
Scene of the robbery of two coaches of the Pioneer Stage Line running between Virginia City, Nevada, and Sacramento, California, on the night of June 30, 1864, at about ten o’clock. Perpetrated by a gang of fourteen men, eight sacks of bullion and treasure box were taken. The leader of the gang represented that the money was to be used for the purpose of recruiting for the Confederate Service. In attempting to capture the bandits a battle took place at Somerset in which Deputy Sheriff Joseph Staples was killed and Deputy Sheriff Geo. C. Ranney badly wounded. Thomas Poole, one of the bandits, was captured, and on Sept. 29, 1865 was executed at Placerville. The two coaches were driven by Ned Blair and Charles Watson.
Captain Rufus Henry Ingram, Thomas Poole and Ralph Henry led the robbery. Several of the bandits were found in Santa Clara County. The Confederate guerillas were taken back to Placerville where they were imprisoned. Poole was tried for the murder of Deputy Staples and on September 29, 1865 he was hung.
Interestingly, of the Confederates caught, Poole was the only one hanged. Placerville was originally called Hangtown because, an an original Gold Rush town it had made news for hanging three men for murder soon after the Gold Rush began. Because of its early penchant for executions, it got its name and it was not a good place to be tried for murder.
Tom Poole was born in 1820 to a slaveholding family in Kentucky. He went to California during the Gold Rush and in the 1850s he became a deputy sheriff in Monterey. In 1856 he executed a Native American convicted of murder after he received a stay of execution with the wrong name of the prisoner. Poole executed the man anyway and the governor accused him of murder. He was not renewed as a sheriff.
After the Civil War broke out, Poole joined the Knights of the Golden Circle, a secret paramilitary organizations of Confederate sympathizers. In 1863, he became involved in fitting out and crewing a privateer authorized by the Confederacy. The ship put out in San Francisco Harbor but the following day a Union naval ship captured the privateer and Poole and his shipmates were trundled off to Alcatraz. Later that year, Poole signed an oath of loyalty to the United States and he was amnestied under Lincoln’s new plan of relieving Confederates of their liability by having them take the Loyalty Oath.
Poole went to Santa Cruz, California where a large number of Southerners had settled and various Knights of the Golden Circle groups were operating. Rufus Henry Ingram, a member of Quantrill’s Raiders, joined the Knights saying he was an irregular Confederate captain. The guerrillas were looking at making a raid on San Jose, but it was abandoned. Next they decided to rob gold and silver shipments near Placerville. They chose a site where the road narrowed and twisted through hills, now called Bullion Bend, where the drivers had to slow the horses down to a walk.
When the guerrillas stopped the stage coaches, Captain Ingram told the passengers that they were not interested in robbing the passengers, they they only wanted Wells Fargo silver and gold and that they would use the money to help recruit Confederate soldiers from California. Ingram gave the drivers a receipt saying:
June, 1864.
This is to certify that I have received from Wells Fargo & Co. the sum of $______ cash, for the purpose
of outfitting recruits in California for the Confederate States Army. R. Henry Ingram, Captain,
Commanding Co., C.S.A.
After the war ended, Poole was still awaiting execution and there was an effort to commute his sentence because the conflict was no longer continuing. On September 29, 1865 Poole was executed.
In 1914, several “old pioneers” who took part in the gun fight reunited in Placerville to memorialize the robbery and to journey out to Bullion Bend to see where the robbery took place. News reports said that they held a “sort of a picnic” at the site and shared stories of the events of 1864.
The El Dorado Sheriffs’ Department has anniversary memorializations over the years to mark Deputy Staples death.
The site where Poole was executed was said to be in the vicinity of Confidence Hall, the red building below, in Placerville. Confidence Hall was the firehouse for Placerville built in 1860. Next to it is the Immigrant Jane Stuart Building which was built in 1861.
All color photos taken by Pat Young.
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