Donner Summit is the most historically significant square mile in California and maybe the entire Western United States. Wherever you go there is history. One of the special spots on Donner Summit is Catfish Pond, also known as Maiden’s Retreat. Bring along some bits of bread or cookies and toss them in. Your contribution will be rewarded with a swarm of little catfish.
The curious visitor, knowing that catfish are not native to the area, will wonder about their origin. It has long been an article of faith that the catfish were planted by Chinese railroad workers building the transcontinental railroad in the late 1860s.
However, the story sounds a bit unbelievable. After all, Donner Summit is at 7,000 feet in elevation. We get over 30 feet of snowfall a year and it gets cold. The ice in some lakes on the summit can be between 4 and 5 feet thick. That will freeze smaller ponds solid, and one would think it would make catfish survival problematical and their harvesting dicey. Nonetheless, the catfish have survived and reproduced for more than 160 years, and many historians subscribe to the story.
What’s the evidence for the Chinese actually bringing the catfish to Donner Summit?
In addition to Catfish Pond, the fish can also be found in other small lakes down the western Sierra slope along the railroad line. Many Chinese were part of a large workforce on Donner Summit during the 2-year construction of Tunnel 6. There was a large Chinese workers camp right at the summit. They ate better than the white workers, whose food came from the railroad and was monotonous. The Chinese were divided into gangs and each gang had a cook and someone to procure food. They ate varied, interesting, and healthy diets that included a lot of fish as well as salted cabbage and dried vegetables. Given that the Chinese were on the summit so long and that Catfish Pond is relatively close to the camp, it makes sense to assume that the Chinese could have planted their own fresh fish.
In addition, there is circumstantial evidence. Benjamin Bernard Redding was, among other things, a land agent for the Central Pacific Railroad, and he had a background in fish culture and stocking. He would go on to become the fish commissioner in California. His brother was the first settler at Ice Lakes and arranged the first fish stocking there, hauling several hundred trout up to the lakes.
The story would have ended there had the Donner Summit Historical Society’s history detectives not taken up the challenge of validating the story.
One of the more famous cultural quotes we know goes back to 1920 when Shoeless Joe Jackson admitted he’d helped throw the World Series. Joe was a White Sox and he and his friends became known as the Black Sox for their betrayal of the game, sportsmanship, and their fans. Supposedly, a young fan went up to Joe and said, “Say it ain’t so, Joe.” He wanted his hero redeemed but it wasn’t to be “so.”
This seeming irrelevancy is not from out of left field. That the Chinese planted fish in Catfish Pond is a cherished story and debunking cherished stories can be disappointing.
The story here starts with a short article in the Sacramento Daily Union, April 28, 1882: “Some fine specimens of catfish were received in this city yesterday from Lake Angelina [today’s Lake Angela on Donner Summit about a quarter mile west of Catfish Pond.] Catfish were planted there few years since by Seth Green.”
On June 18, 1881, the Los Angeles Herald carried an editorial advocating for fish planting:
“The movement now apparent all over the United States, of which Mr. Seth Green has been the Prophet, and Judge Redding, of this State, one or the principal Apostles, viz., the intelligent breeding of fish where, either, fish did not exist before … has already been of incalculable benefit to the people of the United States.”
The “piscicultural enthusiasm” advocated by the paper was resulting in the stocking of all kinds so that “the angler may fill a basket as the result of a few hours fishing.”
Then the Weekly Colusa Sun on May 28, 1881, mentioned a Seth Green, too. “The work of the California Fish Commissioners has been attended with the most gratifying results. The best result has been a cheapening of one of the best and most desirable kinds of food. The finest salmon is so cheap in California that it is within the reach of every class …”
Parenthetically, the Sun also mentioned Mr. Redding. This article advocated the stocking of fish, especially white fish, which the article said had been stocked in Donner Lake. Further, searching for Mr. Seth Green turned up a note in the Oct. 1, 1883, edition of the Santa Rosa Press Democrat. Seth Green was, “the veteran fish culturist who is known to the entire world.” According to the paper, he was involved with fish breeding — developing hybrids to improve fish. He was also involved with “propagating mosquitoes,” which should (jokingly) endear him to people on Donner Summit.
So, it looked like Mr. Seth Green or associates of his might have done the planting of the catfish on Donner Summit. Then we found an article in the Truckee Republican from April 19, 1882, titled, Cardwell Planted Them.
“A short time since a railroad man living at the summit sent to a friend in Sacramento a catfish which measured over 2 feet in length. It was taken from one of the small lakes near the Summit Hotel, and the man who caught it writes to his friend that Seth Green was the man who first planted them there, whereupon Jim Cardwell who formerly kept the Summit Hotel, and subsequently the Cardwell House in Truckee, gets mad and rushed into print. In a letter to the Sacramento Bee he says: ‘It is a mistake about Seth Green planting catfish in Lake Mary, or in planting fish of any kind in Lake Mary or Lake Angeline. I put the first trout and chubbs in those lakes in 1872; and three or four years ago O.C. Jackson, of the police force of our city, made me a present of 400 or 500 catfish, and Mr. Jackson and myself put them in Lake Mary. I think that I ought to know something about the matter, as I lived almost continuously at the summit from 1864 to 1877. B. B. Redding offered to stock both lakes, but I thought if he did so the fish would belong to the public and they would soon clean them out.’”
We’ve given Mr. Cardwell the final word.
GPS readings to find Catfish Pond with a map:
Hike start
39° 19.030’N
120° 19.696’W
Catfish turnoff
39° 19.352’N
120° 19.456’W
Catfish Pond
39° 19.354’N
120° 19.404’W
Flora Lake
39° 19.894’N
120° 19.516’W
Azalea Lake
39° 20.044’N
120° 19.647’W
