Promoting Offbeat History Between the Drinks

Among the sites given plaques by California members of E Clampus Vitus are the grave of the unknown prospector on a lonely stretch of Route 395 near Mono Lake. Jim Wilson/The New York Times

By JESSE McKINLEY
New York Times

TWAIN HARTE, Calif. — Strange where a road trip can begin: a dorm room, a bar stool or Page 283 of the W.P.A. Guide to California.

It is on Page 283 that a reader can find the barest mention of The Order of E Clampus Vitus, one of the oldest and oddest entities in a state known for having a few, a Gold Rush-era organization whose goofball sensibilities are offset by a single, serious pursuit: a tendency to plaque all things historical, an obsession that continues to this day.

With little more than mortar and their ever-present red shirts, the Clampers, as the organization’s members are known, have placed more than 1,000 bronze, wood and granite plaques throughout California, from the remote stretches of coast to mining towns like this one, in the foothills of the Sierra Nevada.

The group’s handiwork appears on roadsides, lakesides and at the sites of former brothels, breweries and ballrooms. Jails and forts have been plaqued, and so have whaling stations. Historical drinks have been commemorated — and, no doubt, imbibed — along with ghost stories, stories of heroism and plenty of tall tales in between.

“It’s a common saying that no one has been able to tell if they are historians that like to drink or drinkers who like history,” said Dr. Robert J. Chandler, a senior historian at Wells Fargo Bank and a proud member of the group’s San Francisco chapter. “And no one knows because no one has been in any condition to record the minutes.”

Whether a historical drinking society or a drinking historical society, the Clampers claim tens of thousands of members in 40 chapters across seven Western states, though nowhere are the group’s strange ways more alive than in California, where members are said to have included Ronald Reagan; John Huston, the film director; and Herb Caen, the famous San Franciscan master of the three-dot journal. Some Clamper membership claims, of course, can be suspect. It is true, however, that many noted historians have been members, as is the current director of the State Office of Historic Preservation.

The group’s specialty is the lesser-known nuggets of history.

“I think these guys felt there were a lot of things that weren’t being covered,” said Michael Wurtz, an archivist at University of the Pacific, whose Clampers archives include photographs, letters and travelogues of trips by past members. “And it’s a whole other type of history. There’s a public element. Rather than the ivy-covered walls, this is the stuff we can go out and touch.”

Take the tiny mountain hamlet of Volcano, Calif. (pop. 101), the site of three plaques, including one devoted to the potent Gold Rush drink known as moose milk. (Mix bourbon, rum and heavy cream. Drink. Do not repeat.)

Or Murphys, a town with wooden sidewalks where the Clampers have erected the Wall of Comparative Ovations, devoted to Californians like John Thompson, a pioneer known as Snowshoe who carried mail over mountain passes, and the saber-toothed tiger that prowled the same territory eons before and was “a formidable adversary.”

Then, there is the pure oddity, like an upside-down house in the eastern town of Lee Vining, built by a long-forgotten silent-film actress named Nellie Bly O’Bryan, who found inspiration for the house in bedtime stories. (The plaque, appropriately enough, is also upside down.)

That the writers of the Works Progress Administration, also charged with chronicling the state’s history, would cross paths with E Clampus Vitus is not surprising. Founded in the 1840s, the Clampers fizzled as the Gold Rush did, but were re-established in San Francisco in the early 1930s, just before the W.P.A. project began.

A few years later, the W.P.A.’s guide to California described the “revived” group as a “gold miners’ burlesque fraternity,” citing its plaque at a tavern in San Francisco favored by Joshua A. Norton — the famed British lunatic who once declared himself the emperor of California. That plaque is now gone, as is the building that housed the saloon, but the local chapter, Yerba Buena, survives.

Even today, the points of interest in the W.P.A. guide to California, published in 1939, shadow those pinpointed by Clampers over the years, like the elegant eastern Sierra fishing hole called Convict Lake (“a pellucid sheet of blue,” according to W.P.A.) and Bodie, a high-desert ghost town that was barely functioning when the W.P.A. guide was published and that the Clampers helped preserve as a state park years later.

For members, the Clampers’ ties to those long-bygone eras — and them that survived ’em — seem to make for potent male bonding in the present day.

“It’s a brotherhood, where men can be men,” said Sid Blumner, a retired economics professor and Clamper since 1969, who has compiled a master list of the group’s plaques.

And sometimes the men act like boys. Established as a parody of more serious minded fraternal groups like the Freemasons and the Odd Fellows, the Clampers spoof ceremonial titles. Their chief executive is Sublime Noble Grand Humbug.

The group’s motto is “Credo Quia Absurdum,” or roughly “believe because it is absurd.” (E Clampus Vitus, after all, is meaningless in Latin.) Members raise the money for the plaques and install them in cooperation with localities. “We don’t get paid for this,” said Ron Wells, 43, a carpenter and a Clamper “plaquero,” the man with the mortar. “It’s just something you do in your heart.”

The Clampers thrived in the overnight towns that sprang up after the discovery of gold in the Sierra Nevada foothills in 1848 — the red shirts they wear now are meant to symbolize the red long johns worn by many prospectors. The early members were often the ones with the pans.

“The Clampers were the ones out in the streams freezing their butts off,” said Skip Skyrud, a Clamper historian. “The businessmen in the towns, making the money, they were Masons.”

About 50 modern Clampers met recently on a chilly Saturday morning in Twain Harte, a foothill town of about 2,500, to unveil a plaque recalling its rich history, and have some “doin’s,” as their gatherings are called.

The town, about 150 miles east of San Francisco, was once a crossroads named Bald Rock Ranch, between western mining settlements and those over the Sierra Nevada to the east. It was the birthplace of William Fuller, a Miwuk Indian chief who held powwows there. Several of his descendants still live nearby and were in attendance.

Paying attention to things other than “rich old man’s history” has been a big part of the Clampers’ value, said Milford Wayne Donaldson, the state’s historic preservation officer and a member of the San Diego chapter.

“The kings and queens are recognized, but the king- and queen-makers are not,” Mr. Donaldson said. “And ethnic groups were the backbone of a lot this stuff.”

Wearing a top hat and holding a staff made of manzanita, the chapter’s current noble grand humbug, Scott Nielsen, intoned a lengthy description of the plaque’s significance. Another Clamper, Mike Carbonaro, took up the issue of the town’s odd naming.

To wit: Twain Harte was never home to the Mother Lode authors Mark Twain or Bret Harte. The town’s name was picked by a local woman for her favorite authors and originally had a hyphen. Where it went no one knows, and the Clampers still want to find out.

“Let’s see if we can go find that hyphen,” Mr. Carbonaro shouted to the crowd, each in red and wearing vests adorned with pins, flags and ribbons. “What say the brethren?”

The Clampers roared their traditional word of approval — “Satisfactory!” — and then retired, as is also tradition, to a local bar to plan their next lark.