MILO BIRD: has been bantered back and forth for many years. But the story I got from some of the old timers was that shortly after the discovery of gold at Coroma, a group of Spanish-speaking people were moving up the Spanish trail. That Spanish trail is what highway 49 is now. They followed that. So when they reached the Stanislaus river late one night, they decided to camp there instead of trying to ford the river at night. One of the members needed the privacy of a bush. And while they had discovered a flake of gold, about the size and shape of a watermelon seed. This woman picked up this seed and ran to the others with it in her fingers, yelling “Melones! Melones!”. And that became the name, momentarily, of the town. As soon as people around here discovered, or learned, that gold had been discovered at Melones, they called in Spanish Diggings, and they poured in there by the thousands. But it didn’t retain the name of Spanish Diggings very long, because the type of food they dished out in the restaurants wasn’t of the highest quality. So they called it Slumgullet. And the town was called Slumgullet. And about that time then, a man named Robinson decided that he would make a lot of money by putting a ferry across the river at that point. Which he did. And about that time, the Parrott family, by putting a ferry across, down at ??? ???, was Parrott’s Ferry. So the town at Melones down there, or Slumgullet, was then known as Robinson’s Ferry. People were ??? ??? ??? ???

2:10

Tape becomes indistinct and difficult to understand

General Information:

Interviewer:  ???

Interviewee: Bird, Milo

Name of Tape: Milo Bird Reminiscences (bird_m_0)

When: 1979

Transcriber: Alden (2/27/08)