By Lisa Robinson

In 1869, Bret Hart wrote a poem “Her Letter.” It was published in the Overland Monthly. In the poem, Lily wrote longingly to her sweetheart Joe. Lily’s father had become rich in the mining town of Poverty Flat. He whisked her off to Paris, France for her higher education and perhaps a titled suitor. The poem had a sequel, “His Answer to Her Letter,” which was penned for Joe by his friend Truthful James. James told Lily that Joe was on his sickbed, delirious but constantly saying her name. It was followed by a third poem “Her Last Letter.” No spoiler here—but you can read it on Google Books!

In 1915, writer Charles Kenyon took these three poems and created a script for a silent movie “The Lily of Poverty Flat.” The movie was produced by the California Motion Picture Corporation and was directed by George Emile Middleton, brother of Boulder Creek lumber baron Henry Lewis Middleton.

The California Motion Picture Corporation spared no expense in the making of this “photo-play.” They created a miniature of the mining town of Poverty Flat, two miles out of Boulder Creek on the road to Big Basin. It was a log-built village with over two dozen structures including three saloons—”The Bear Trap,” “The Jumping Frog,” and “Last Chance Saloon”—a big coach barn, post office, express office, boarding house, store, law office, blacksmith shop, and homes. At the mining camp, Boulder Creek had been dammed; there were ditches, flumes, and sluices; all in operation as if it were 1850.

Santa Cruz Sentinel columnist Josephine Clifford McCrakin was extremely skeptical. She had worked as an editor and writer with Bret Harte in the early days of Overland Monthly. She traveled up to Boulder Creek “half in protest, half from curiosity, and quite ready to sneer at any attempt to put Bret Hart on the screen.” However, she quickly became a “convert.” The very talented Beatriz Michelena, wife of George Middleton, was cast as Lily. Josephine found her “graceful and girlish.” She felt she was by “birth, temperament, and experience remarkably qualified to play the California mountain girls” that featured in Bret Harte’s writings. She was also well pleased with the other members of the cast, and the costuming, and was “immensely impressed with the replica of ‘Poverty Flat.’”

A high platform was erected at the extreme end of the Poverty Flat on which two cinematographers recorded the acting. Camerman Lou Hutt was in charge. A few weeks earlier, he had a serious accident when he fell above Deer Creek while filming a mining scene. George Middleton saw him fall, crashing though the brush to the rocks below. He was able to clamber down the steep side and carry him out. The cameras used were top of the line Belle & Howell $1250 cameras carrying two reels so that two negatives of the same scene are produced at the same time. A large, modern laboratory was reported to be being installed in Boulder Creek for developing the negatives. So that “no time would be lost between the taking and releasing of the picture.” However, the writer of a 1934 Riptide and Undertow article who covered the filming for the Santa Cruz Evening News, suggests that the film was not a financial success due to poor photography caused by faulty cameras, which was not discovered until after the cast had disbanded.

There are no known copies of the movie but the Poverty Flat set was used in several others such as Soul of the Beast (1922), Broken Chains (1922), and Salomy Jane (1923)..