Crystalized – Hard Labor and Poetry

Written by Laile Di Silvestro, Historical Archaeologist, MA


During National Poetry Month, it is only fitting that we honor one of the poets inspired by Mineral King. William Oliver Everson (1912-1994) was a highly acclaimed poet who received numerous honors and awards, including a 1949 Guggenheim Fellowship. He published thirty-five volumes of poetry, and had the distinction of being shaped by Mineral King while also materially shaping Mineral King. This is his story.

William Everson, Guggenheim Fellowship image, date and photographer unknown. (www.gf.org).

It was a gloomy afternoon in Fresno, and the twenty-one year old William Oliver Everson was not alone in being unhappy. On that first day of November in 1933, a Wednesday, the weather forecasters were promising more days of rain, frost, and fog.[1] The Great Depression had a firm grip on society, and another hungry Thanksgiving loomed for the unemployed. The cannery where Everson had worked during high school had closed, and he had been unemployed for about two years. At home, tensions between him and his father had become unbearable.[2] 

If he read the Fresno Bee that day, Everson would have seen an article describing an abundant Thanksgiving menu for Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) enrollees in Yosemite National Park. The meal was to include turkey with two kinds of dressing, ham, clam chowder, and both mince and pumpkin pie, as well as delicacies such as stuffed olives, mixed pickles, and bananas. Dinner was to conclude with coffee and cigars.[3] Perhaps Everson had that article in mind when he noticed an advertisement for the CCC. The ad offered a six month contract with a monthly salary of $30 plus lodging, clothing, and, of course, food. Impulsively, he went immediately to the CCC enrollment office downtown to apply.[4] 

The Fresno Bee, November 1, 1933, p. 7.

To Everson’s surprise, the CCC bypassed the normal application process and enrolled him—effective immediately. Everson, in his street clothes with no belongings, found himself boarding an army truck. It happened so rapidly, he didn’t have an opportunity to tell anyone what he was doing.[5]

Everson lived with his parents, older sister, and younger brother in Selma, California. His mother kept house and his father, a self-educated Norwegian immigrant, ran a commercial printing business and served as justice of the peace. Everson was born September 10, 1912, the year the Titanic sank, and World War I was the dominating topic of his early years. He started writing poetry while a junior in high school, and was prolific, especially after 1930 when he met Edwa Poulson for whom he wrote daily love poems. They planned to get married.[6]

When Everson disappeared on that November day, Edwa spent a week wondering what happened to him.

The army truck carried Everson and other enrollees south to Visalia and then east to Three Rivers. Then they began to climb the rough and dusty Mineral King Road. By evening, Everson crossed the Oak Grove Bridge six miles up the road, and entered the Cain’s Flat camp.[7]

Cain’s Flat was one of about 101 camps in California established by President Franklin D. Roosevelt to reduce the unemployment of the Great Depression of 1929 to 1939. As many as ten thousand CCC men per month were responsible for building and repairing roads and trails; creating public structures, picnic areas, and campgrounds; and conducting fire suppression activities.[8] 

The Cain’s Flat CCC camp was relatively typical. Camps normally housed 110 enrollees, a company commander, an army assistant, an educational advisor, a forest project superintendent, and five project foremen.[9] Captain Rees Skinner commanded the CCC camp the first winter. It was a challenge at first. Not only were the buildings incomplete when Everson arrived, but there was no equipment or supplies for the men.[10]

Cain’s Flat shortly after construction was complete. Photo courtesy of Sequoia and King Canyon National Parks

Everson had been told there would be a uniform waiting for him at camp. There wasn’t. He was given one phone call upon arrival. He chose to call his mother and ask her to send his work clothes.[11]

An excerpt from a poem Everson purportedly wrote after his arrival conveys a sense of what he might have felt those first stormy nights in camp:

In the night the wind came up and drove the rain,
Pounded at the walls with doubled fists,
And hollered in the chimney
Till I felt the fear run down my back
And grip me as I lay. [12]

It didn’t take long for Skinner to get Everson and the other men settled, however. By February they had a baseball team and were publishing a newspaper. They were improving the Mineral King Road and building a road to a fire lookout. They were attending classes, watching movies, and eating enough food for the average man to gain twelve to thirty pounds in six months.[13]

Cain’s Flat occupants with Captain Rees Skinner (center front), after all the enrollees had received their uniforms. The grass suggests the photograph was taken spring 1934. William Everson is assumed to be one of the young men. Photo courtesy of Mainerd Sorensen, grandchild of Rees Skinner.

Everson’s crew was responsible for multiple projects. Upon his arrival, his crew was tasked with building the road to the fire lookout on top of Milk Ranch Peak. According to his memoirs, the crew “had no bulldozers or jackhammers—just shovels and blasting powder.”[14] The crew then went to Hockett Meadow to address a pine beetle infestation.[15] 

CCC crew working on the Milk Ranch Road. Photo courtesy of Sequoia and Kings Canyon National Parks

In an effort to control the spread of bark beetles, enrollees first cut down pines infested by bark beetles and then stripped them before burning the trees. Photo courtesy of Sequoia and Kings Canyon National Parks

Everson completed his six-month commitment, and then reenlisted for another, in part because Edwa had started dating another man. He was promoted to crew leader with a $6 per month wage increase. His crew, now under his supervision, went to a new stub camp at Atwell Mill, where they built the ranger station, fenced pasture for pack animals, and built the campground fireplaces.[16]

Photo of the Atwell Mill stub camp taken by Stanley Leland Ingersol in 1934. Image courtesy of Joe Steed.

Jim Barton of Three Rivers was a boy when his father Robert was foreman at the Atwell Mill stub camp. Jim spent the summers of 1933 and 1934 there, and would have encountered Everson. Everson didn’t make a lasting impression; however, the tent platforms the “boys” lived in, the mess hall, the morning mess call, and the movies shown at camp on some evenings remained firmly in Jim’s memories even at the age of 91. Indeed, Jim watched his first movie at the camp. When the “boys” first arrived “they were scared to death of that road,” he recalled. “They didn’t know if they were ever going to be able to get back home.” [17]

Photo of a mess call at the Atwell Mill stub camp taken by Stanley Leland Ingersol in 1934. Image courtesy of Joe Steed.

Life wasn’t all work, education, and play. There was camaraderie, but close quarters also exacerbated tensions. One young man, for example, stabbed another who wasn’t sharing his newspaper.[18] And there were accidents. In March of 1934, for example, the enrollees set a fire to clear some brush. Such activities were intended to create firebreaks to mitigate the threat of future fires; however, in this case it had the opposite effect. The fire broke away from the men and burned sixty acres of brush, oak, and yellow pine above Traugers’ Ranch on the Mineral King Road. Everson and his colleagues halted the fire about five miles below the Atwell sequoia grove.[19]

Image of fire on the Mineral King road in the vicinity of Slapjack Creek. Photo courtesy of Sequoia and Kings Canyon National Parks.

By August 1934, Edwa was no longer dating another man, and Everson applied for early leave so that he could attend Fresno State College with her.[20] The CCC enrollees at Oak Grove and Atwell Mill continued their work without him until the camp was disbanded in 1937. 

Everson, his crew, and his colleagues left an indelible legacy that is recognized as the Mineral King Road Cultural Landscape District on the National Register of Historic Places. During the three and a half years that Oak Grove hosted the CCC camp, the men created the built environment that is familiar to us today. They constructed ranger stations, hiking trails, campgrounds, hundreds of fireplaces, and overnight shelters. They erected telephone lines. They improved springs, reservoirs, and water troughs. They built fire trails and conducted prescribed burns. And they made the Mineral King Road what it is today… a cultural resource deemed worthy of protection.[21]

CCC crew improving the Mineral King Road. Photo courtesy of Sequoia and Kings Canyon National Parks

The CCC camp left another legacy, as well, embodied in the works of one of the region’s most renowned poets. Everson later described how this period influenced him:
“That time was very important to me, away from home and women, among my peers. It was an important crystallizing experience, especially to be thrown out into the expanse of nature like that.” [22]

Upon his return to Fresno, Everson wrote what he considered his first true poem, “October Tragedy,” excerpted here:

Bitter is the wind,
And a mad dog howls among the withered elderberry on the ridge.
Bitter is the quiet singing of the cricket,
And the silent pools lie black beneath still reeds.[23]

It reads both as a requiem for a time already passed and a prophecy of poetic power to come.

Everson started writing his first book of poetry, These are the Ravens, in 1934 and published it in 1935. It earned him acclaim and recognition as a nature poet. He married Edwa in 1938.  



The author gratefully acknowledges Louise Jackson, who has researched and published articles about the Cain’s Flat camp and helped give this article life; Jim Barton, who spent over an hour sharing an abundance of entertaining and informative first hand anecdotes to which this short article couldn’t properly do justice; Ward Eldridge, Sequoia and Kings Canyon National Parks Curator, who provided access to the government photos; Joe Steed who provided access to the photos of his father Stanley Leland Ingersol, who worked at the camp with Everson; Mainerd Sorensen, who shared the photo of his Grandfather Rees Skinner and the Cain’s Flat company; and Lisa Monteiro, who loves Mineral King, poetry, and history and believed the three should be combined at least this once.


[1] “Warriors will Play Roosevelt Friday Night.” 1931. The Fresno Bee, 1 November 1933:23.
[2] Bartlett, L. 1988. William Everson: The Life of Brother Antonius. New York: New Directions. P. 14.
[3] “Enrollees Don’t Want To Miss This Holiday Dinner.” 1931. The Fresno Bee, 1 November 1933:7.
[4] Bartlett, L. 1988. P. 13.
[5] Bartlett, L. 1988. P. 13-14.
[6] Bartlett, L. 1988. P. 5-12.
[7] Bartlett, L. 1988. P. 13.
[8] Smith, M. 2011. “The C.C.C. by State: California.” Civilian Conservation Corps Resource Page. http://cccresources.blogspot.com/2011/01/california-state-number-five-in-our.html.
[9] “Army in Charge of Enrollies in Corps Companies.” 1936. The Fresno Bee, 10 May 1936:40.
[10] “Sierra Enrollies to be Moved to Monterey Camps.” 1933. The Fresno Bee, 18 October 1933: 27.
[11] Bartlett, L. 1988. P. 13.
[12] Everson, W. 1997. “First Winter Storm” in The Residual Years: Poems 1034-1948. Santa Rosa: Black Sparrow Press. P. 5.
[13] Jackson, L. 2013. “Mineral King Road Corridor.” Mineral King Preservation Society. Accessed on March 28, 2017. http://www.mineralking.org/Mineral_King_Road_Cooridor/. Part 11.
[14] Bartlett, L. 1988. P. 14. and Fowler, H. 1934. Report to the Chief Architect through the Superintendent of Sequoia National Park: E.C.W. and C. W.A. Projects for the Winter Period (November ’33-April ’34): 39.
[15] Bartlett, L. 1988. P. 14.
[16] Bartlett, L. 1988. P. 14.
[17] Barton, J. in oral interview on November 6, 2015
[18] The Fresno Bee, 29 April 1934: 7
[19] “Timber Burns in Year’s First Fire in Sequoia Park.” 1934. The Fresno Bee, 14 March 1934:9.
[20] Bartlett, L. 1988. P. 14.
[21] “Camping Facilities are Developed by Enrollies.” 1936. The Fresno Bee, 10 May 1936:40 and Jackson, L. 2013. Part 11.
[22] Bartlett, L. 1988. P. 14.[23] Everson, W. 1997. “October Tragedy” in The Residual Years: Poems 1034-1948. Santa Rosa: Black Sparrow Press. P. 5.


Not so far from where you are right now, the East Fork of the Kaweah River descends from the granite scarps of Sequoia National Park to meet the Main Fork in the small town of Three Rivers. Laile Di Silvestro resides there, where unusual characters, deeply-forged friendships, relics of her ancestors, her mother, and dust collectively comprise her muse. On her favorite mornings, she eases up a not-so treacherous road to the areas of stark, soul-shaping exquisiteness where she records the remnants of past lives.

Laile is an archaeologist, public speaker, and writer who has spent much of her life kneading words and sharing the voices of the past, especially those that have been squelched or misheard. She is honored and delighted to support an organization dedicated to preserving and sharing the natural and cultural resources of the Mineral King area, thereby nurturing our collective roots. Organizations like the Mineral King Preservation Society allow lost voices to speak again, to become a part of our shared narrative. And that’s important. The stories we tell about ourselves—the stories that define us as individuals—are in turn defined and framed by our cultural narratives. Our shared myth, if you will. Our personal stories develop within the context of the stories of our time, and the stories of our past on which they are based. Together, our personal and cultural narratives give us a sense of self identity, a sense of place, and a sense of time. When our cultural narratives unravel, so do our sense of self and our sense of belonging. When our personal stories exist outside a meaningful shared context, we become alienated and rootless. And that can have an impact both on our society and on our landscapes. 

She is grateful to all of you in the Mineral King community, and encourages you to explore, listen, share, and nurture your own stories. For they, too, shall be heard.

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