Add a captionJohn Rose was a merchant, rancher, and gold miner in Yuba County and surrounding areas in the early days of the Gold Rush. Rose Bar and Rose Hill are named for him. Rose is believed to have been the first person of European descent to build a permanent structure in Nevada County. In 1848, he built a trading post halfway between what is now Lake Wildwood and what is now Bridgeport, for Nisenan people.1 When the Gold Rush began the following year, the trading post also received lots of business from gold miners.
Rose also established a store in Yuba County that same year. The History of Yuba County, California (Chapter XXVII: Rose Bar Township) by Thompson & West, 1879, described Rose's activities at the place that soon became known as Rose Bar:
| In July, 1848, John Rose came to the bar with about a dozen men, from the American river. Accompanying the party was John Ray, with his wife and several children. This was the first family at the bar. |
| That fall John Rose and his partner, William J. Reynolds, started a store at the bar. Rose did the buying at Sacramento, and in that way the locality became known as Rose Bar. |
Rose and Reynolds soon took a younger man named George Kinloch into partnership with them. In 1849, Rose, Reynolds, and Kinloch purchased a large land grant from Michael C. Nye. The History of Yuba County, California (Chapter XXV: Linda Township) by Thompson & West, 1879, described the purchase this way:
| John Rose, William J. Reynolds, and George Kinloch bought the grant land along the south bank of the Yuba river from Michael C. Nye in the spring of 1849. |
| They kept large numbers of cattle which they grazed on the plains and with which they supplied the mines with meat. Rose and Kinloch had charge of the ranch while Reynolds kept the store at Rose Bar. They lived at the old house where the town of Linda was afterwards built. In December, 1849, the Linda Company arrived at the ranch in the steamer "Linda" and disembarked. They were well pleased with the location and beauty of the spot, and thinking as they had succeeded in reaching this point in their vessel, navigation to the mines would be extended as far as this place, and they advised Rose to lay out a town. They promised to take or sell enough lots to repay him for any outlay he might make in that direction. The partnership of Rose, Reynolds and Kinloch, was dissolved in the spring of 1850, Rose keeping the ranch as his portion. In the spring, Rose laid out a town containing about one square mile and named it Linda in honor of the company and the little pioneer steamer. The "Linda" brought up a load of Marysville people, and the new town was inaugurated and christened over many a bottle of wine. Lots were advertised for sale in Sacramento, April 26, 1850, by J. B. Starr & Co., auctioneers. Rose established a ferry across the river, Charles Lupton built a house, a store was opened, and two or three small dwellings were erected. This was the condition of the place for two years, when all expectation of building a town was given up, and the people who had settled there removed to other parts. In 1856, a bridge was built across the river, at this point, and was carried away by the great flood in December, 1861. |
The town of Linda that Rose laid out in 1850 was not located where Linda is now, but rather in the area that is now known as Hammonton. The cattle corral that supplied meat to be sold to gold miners was at Sicard Flat.2
Rose also laid out a 70-acre field near Ousleys Bar, which he sold to a Mr. Chick in 1850. Rose had overstretched his financial resources by this time and was being aggressively pursued in court by his creditors, so he sold as much of his land in 1850 as he could. He sold the northernmost portion of his ranch to John Brophy, who opened a hotel there.3
But Rose's creditors soon caught up with him. The book Woodleaf Legacy: The story of a California Gold Rush Town by Rosemarie Mossinger (Nevada City: Carl Mautz Publishing, 1995) notes:
| In those unstable times, the newspapers were full of stories of properties being sold to satisfy lender—shops, ranches, hotels, toll bridges, homes. Court records tell similar stories, and the justice system did not always operate fairly. In 1850, the vast properties of John Rose, the pioneer for whom Rose Bar is named, were sold to satisfy his creditors. His holdings included toll roads, ferries, toll bridges, ranches, hotels, stores, cattle, and more than 4,500 acres. All was sold for only $410, the highest bid, to satisfy a debt of $4,122.35. |
Footnotes
1. Gold Country History: Nevada City and Grass Valley California
2. History of Yuba County, California (Chapter XXIX: Parks Bar Township) by Thompson & West, 1879
3. History of Yuba County, California (Chapter XXV: Linda Township) by Thompson & West, 1879
