Fremont's Fort: The Explorer Who Staked a Claim in Mariposa
Near Mariposa, California
John C. Fremont is one of the most complicated figures of the American West. Explorer, topographer, United States Senator from California, the Republican Party's first presidential candidate in eighteen fifty-six, and a Union general in the Civil War, he was also, for a time, a miner and landowner in Mariposa County, living just outside Bear Valley.
Fremont operated mines such as the Josephine and the Pine Tree in the hills here. He had purchased a large Mexican land grant called Las Mariposas, and when gold was discovered on it after the Mexican-American War, the grant became enormously valuable and bitterly contested. Fremont eventually sold the property in eighteen sixty-three. His fort near Bear Valley served as his operational base during those years. Despite his fame, Fremont died in New York in eighteen ninety practically bankrupt, a reminder that even the most celebrated careers in the West could end in financial ruin.
