A bit of local history from the current issue of National Geographic. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Martin, a Marysville package-store owner with a white mustache and a cowboy hat to match, told me that his great-grandfather had made the trek with some forty-niners, probably camping nearby, as many did, at Alcove Spring. During a layover to rest the caravan's mules, Martin and I slipped away and found the place much as the emigrants might have in the 1840's. A large spring, one traveler had noted, "gushed from a ledge of rocks...from which falls a beautiful cascade of water." Although the writer went on, it was "one of the most romantic spots I ever saw." At the edge of the cascade Ken Martin was telling me about his ancestor, Simon Oliver Martin of Bourbonnais, Illinois. "He took off from St. Joe in April of 1849, so that's why in 1999 I basically wanted to follow his footsteps. He went out there and panned for gold northeast of Yosemite for about four years before he came back East." ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Richard Graveline