By Lisa Robinson
Much has been written about Isaac Graham and Rancho Zayante, but exactly where was his first sawmill? In 2019, Dave Freeman, an amateur archeologist, John Brewer a former surveyor, and Ken Johnston, a former ranger and author of Legendary Truths, Peter Lassen and his Gold Rush Trail in Fact and Fable, arrived in Santa Cruz County with a goal of locating Isaac Graham’s first sawmill. Built by Peter Lassen of Lassen County fame, the group was on a mission to locate all six of Peter Lassen’s mills in California; the one in Santa Cruz County being his first, built around 1841.
While it was known that the mill was on Zayante Creek, its exact location was unclear. The mill had been washed away and moved – several times. The group was able to survey the area at Mount Herman where the mill was supposedly located. They found a section of the creek that was deeply cut with a natural rock feature that could be used as the foundation for the mill dam. It was about 250 feet upstream of where Bean Creek enters the Zayante. It was reputedly on the gravel bar at this location that one of Isaac Graham’s grist stones was found. This grist stone is in the collection of the Mount Hermon Historical Center.
On closer inspection of the rock feature, the group identified four complete and one incomplete 5/8” diameter bore holes which were similar to bore holes they had found at other Lassen’s mill sites. The bore holes would have been used to fasten A-frame timbers to the bedrock. On the downstream side timbers would have been fastened to create a dam. The structure would then have been backfilled with rock and in time, on the upstream side, gravel would have silted up to fill to the top of the structure.
They found that the only area that could have been used for the sawmill site, was what is now the site of the swimming pool. They concluded that the site was likely both the site of the sawmill, a grist mill and it was likely that there would have been several other buildings supporting the industries, such as a blacksmith shop.
Graham’s operations on the Zayante constituted a small village. It seems that for a short while Peter Lassen operated the water powered supposedly Muley or Sash Mill, which is a mill with an up-and-down saw blade. After which Graham took ownership for which he paid Lassen 100 mules.
