Will the Real Castle Rock Please Stand Up? by Zina Abbott

 

 

There tends to be place names or other identifier names that are used over and over. Some places in the United States and Canada are named to remind immigrants of the town or locality from which they came. Others receive their name because they remind people of something. This second instance must be behind there being so many rock outcroppings known as Castle Rock.

I thought I wrote a blog post about a Castle Rock several years ago. It turns out the rock formation is known as Castle Dome (close, not a rock) in the Arizona desert not too far north of Yuma. 

Then, this past year, I wrote three books for the same series involving stagecoach travel in frontier Kansas in the late 1860s. In the third book, Mail Order Penelope, my mail order bride travels farther west than the other two, and encounters a large rock formation called Castle Rock.

Formed of limestone deposited in a great ancient inland sea, this pillar was formed by weathering of both wind and water after the sea disappeared. It became a landmark for the Butterfield Overland Despatch stagecoach line along the Smoky Hill River in Gove County, Kansas.

About that inland sea. It played a huge role in the formation of the Great Plains of the United States. The Western Interior Seaway, also known as the Cretaceous Seaway and other names, was a large body of water that split the continent of North America into two landmasses. If you look carefully at the map, you can see which states and provinces were affected. It explains why some regions have nice alluvial soil that allows for easy farming, and why other regions have a relatively thinner soil base that is better suited for raising cattle. Also, many of the famous rock formations throughout this region were all formed under the same conditions as Castle Rock in Kansas (and Wyoming, but we aren't there yet).

I have discovered, just in the United States, there are other Castle Rocks.

 

 

There is Castle Rock, Michigan, which is also a geological limestone stack. It is three miles north of St. Ignace, Michigan on Michigan's Upper Peninsula. This particular rock formation came about as a result of post glacial ice melt which eroded much of the land. It has been advertised as "Ojibway's Lookout.” I did write about some Ojibwa characters in my book, Gift of Restitution: A Story for Christmas, However, I did not include any reference to this Castle Rock.

Way to the west, out of the line of the ancient sea mentioned above, there is a Castle Rock at Lake Havasu in Arizona. I did not find a public domain image for it, but you may see it on a website by clicking HERE.

There is Castle Rock near Glenbrook, Nevada.

There is a Castle Rock and accompanying town by the same name along the Columbia River in Washington State.

 

There is a Castle Rock in Colorado. 

This butte, in the Colorado Piedmont region of the Great Plains, was in the land once covered by the great inland sea. About 58 million years ago, a volcanic eruption took place that covered the area around Castle Rock with 20 feet of rhyolite, a mineral that is strongly resistant to erosion.. This butte's caprock consists of rhyolite which meant, even after a few million years of mass flooding and erosion, the volcanic rock gave way to the castle-shaped butte visible today.

I was not done with Castle Rocks during my writing adventures of this year. There is one more in Wyoming next to the Green River.

During a promotional event on Facebook, I announced that I was prepared to write my last book for the year, a Christmas book titled A Shopkeeper for Christmas. I had everything except a locality and suggested two options. The choice by a two-to-one margin was Green River, Wyoming.

Castle Rock near Green River today.

 

The symbol for Green River happens to be—you guessed it—Castle Rock. Even as long ago in Ichabod S. Barlett’s 1890s book about the history of Wyoming, this rock formation was called by that name. 

However, a review of the famous image of the Union Pacific Railroad building the bridge over the Green River identifies it under another name, Citadel Rock.

CitadelRockGreenRiverWyoming 1868 by photographer Russell J. Andrews.-LOC

Citadel Rock is the name I used for this rock formation in my book, A Shopkeeper for Christmas, set in 1872, four years after the Union Pacific built the line. 

 

Green River in 1876

The railroad company originally bypassed the community of Green River because several enterprising men already gained title to the land next to the river before the railroad got there. The UPRR set up their division point and roundhouse several miles away at Black’s Fork where they could control the land sales and the city. However, when Black’s Fork dried up, the railroad company was forced to move their division point to Green River with its reliable water source. It is within months of this move that my story takes place under the watchful guard of Citadel Rock, which, alas, somehow went through a name change and is now known by the name of Castle Rock.

Although I have covered several Castle Rocks, I know there are probably others.

 

 My latest book, A Shopkeeper for Christmas is a more light-hearted romance full of head-shaking moments thanks to Aunt Aggie and a mischievous seven-year-old boy, Willie. Please click on the title to find the book description.

 

 

My other Christmas book, Gift of Restitution, is perhaps a little more thought-provoking, and focuses more on acts and gifts that can bring joy at Christmas. Again, please click on the title to find the book description.

 

To find all my books, including the three that involved stagecoach travel along the Kansas plains, please CLICK HERE.

 

Most of my information came from Wikipedia, Library of Congress, Wikimedia Commons, and http://pleinairjourney.com/2015/01/lake-havasu/

 

Research Patchwork for Gift of Restitution by Zina Abbott

 

Often, a lot of time goes into research both before an author begins writing and during the process. Here are some snippets I ended up "checking out" before and during writing Gift of Restitution: a Story for Christmas.

Fortunately, most of my research regarding Cantonese migration to California, and the state of the tongs in Chinatown in the mid-1880s I did for my previous book, Escape from Gold Mountain. I also did a small amount of research on the Ojibwe tribe for the earlier book. The main reason I chose that tribe for the one to whom my hero, Luke McDaniels' grandmother, belonged was because, in 1884, Minnesota was one of the few states in which Chinese persons could marry a Caucasian/white person, or one perceived to have no Native ancestry.

However, before I started Gift of Restitution, set in Minnesota on one of the Ojibwe reservations, I had more research to do. Where were the reservation/s and which should I choose? I wanted one near a larger city. I discovered that, in Minnesota, the Ojibwe bands were in the north of the state, and Sioux bands were in the south. I decided on the Fond du Lac band, because their reservation is close to Duluth which is on Lake Superior. It fit my scenario of how Luke left his home years earlier, and Duluth was a fairly large city.

One issue of frustration for me was the accepted spelling of Ojibwe. This tribe was also known among the whites as Chippewa. The spelling can also be Ojibwa--the version my Word and Blogger spell-checkers insist is correct, Ojibwe, which is the version I see most often on websites by or about this tribe, or Ojibway. I bowed to technological pressure with my first book and spelled it Ojibwa. For consistency's sake, I did so in my current book, also. I prefer Ojibwe.

 The location of Minnesota, the proximity to a large body of water, and climate information available online confirmed my assumption it is a cold country compared to much of the United States. So, how did the Ojibwe dress? I did a little research on that. The woman, particularly, is dressed for winter.

My Cantonese character, Ling Loi, who, in this book, uses the name Joy, now lives with her husband in her mother-in-law's wickiup. She helps decorate leather goods to be sold in the surrounding cities. I knew Chinese women who were not forced to work in the fields spent much of their time doing embroidery. 

So, how did Chinese embroidery compare to the bead work and stitchery of the Ojibwe? I decided it was close enough, Joy could be a big help to the family this way.

Also, note the style of the moccasins. Most samples online show low-cut moccasins, but these show the "puckered toe" style for which this tribe is known. My guess is, it was developed to keep the water from the wet ground from seeping inside easily. Here is another sample of Ojibwe artwork.

Traditionally, the Ojibwe lived in wickiups. They are round structures made of wood, bark and woven mats. Originally, they had a smoke hole in the top, center of the roof. With progress, many installed wood-burning stoves, as evidenced by this image with the pipe sticking up over the roof of the wickiup.

So, did the Ojibwe invest in those fancy, cast-iron stoves for their small homes? Possibly. I also saw this image which struck me as something a resourceful person without a lot of money would use. I wrote my story with Odette, Joy's "honorable mother-in-law," using a metal drum stove for heating and cooking.

 

In this story, Luke returns by train to the eastern Sierra Nevada Mountain region of eastern California and western Nevada. He had his reasons why he did not wish to go back to California. Initially, I planned to write the story so that he traveled by the transcontinental railroad which had a depot in Reno, Nevada, and that was the end of his journey. He would request to be met there. It was about 120 miles north of the person Luke wished to contact. This 1885 Sanborn map changed my mind.

This snippet shows the Southern Pacific (the Central Pacific RR sold out to them by this time.) Railroad depot. Their tracks are the ones north of the depot. The single track to the south next to the white arrow is the track for the Virginia and Truckee Railroad. That line runs from Reno south a little over thirty miles to Carson City, the capital of the state of Nevada, before it turns east and then north to the big mining communities in Nevada. Luke took this railroad to get as close to California as he could by rail.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I hope you enjoyed this patchwork of research vignettes, many of them discovered "on the fly" while I wrote Gift of Restitution, a Story for Christmas. This book is on preorder and is scheduled for release on Monday, November 16th. Please CLICK HERE. Here is the book description:

     A year after Luke McDaniels broke away from the control of two eastern Sierra Nevada Mountain outlaws and freed Ling Loi from the Chinese brothel in Lundy, one aspect of their escape still plagues his conscience.

     Even though he made a point to take only what was owed him, and he left sufficient funds to cover the cost of anything he took from others without the owners’ knowledge or consent, there had been one exception. He hated short-changing someone, but Loi, who took on the name of Joy when they married, had been his first priority.

     Joy, grateful she has been restored to the way of decency, senses that Luke needs his own restoration. Can she convince him to do what he must to enjoy peace at Christmas?

                                                        ~o0o~

I wrote Gift of Restitution as a stand-alone book. However, if you have not yet read the first part of Luke's and Joy's story, you might enjoy reading Escape from Gold Mountain. CLICK HERE.