← E Clampus Vitus: the complete record

E Clampus Vitus · Gold Country in 3D

The Clampers’ Gold Country

The Sierra Nevada foothills, from the Feather River to the Stanislaus, raised from the government’s elevation survey: every canyon the miners worked, and the 32 camps and towns where E Clampus Vitus is on record before 1905, each rising in the year of its first record. Press Play and follow the order from Stockton in 1852 up the rivers to the high camps, then the boosters’ lodges of 1915.

Reading the model

• Each pin is a place where the order is on record, raised in the year of its earliest surviving record and coloured by how close that record is to the event: gold for a record written at the time, blue for one cited or seen only as a clipping, violet for one written down years later. Orange pins are the boosters’ lodges of 1915–1917. Press a pin for its first record and the source.
• The ground is real: the elevation of every point, about every 350 metres, from the U.S. Geological Survey, with the heights raised two and a half times so that the canyons read. The streams are traced from the same elevation, wherever enough ground drains through one place.
• The road over the pass. Dr. Evan J. Bonine and Laban Harter of the Cassopolis lodge went overland to California in 1849; a bibliography of the trails lists Bonine’s diary as going by Fort Hall and the Truckee. The line follows the usual Truckee route of that year, down the Truckee River, past Truckee Lake, where the Donner party was snowed in during the winter of 1846–47, over the pass and down by Bear Valley to Johnson’s Ranch and Sutter’s Fort. Those are the road’s usual landmarks, not places named in any Bonine record, and the line is drawn from them, not surveyed.
• Walk the ground puts you at eye level on the land (raised, like the rest of the model). Drag to look round; move with the arrow keys, W A S D or the pad, and hold Shift to hurry.
• Drag to turn the model, scroll or pinch to come closer. With Follow each new place on, the camera flies to each camp as it appears.

Sources: the register of early lodges and the account of the boosters’ revival in E Clampus Vitus: the complete record, each place with its first source. Elevation: U.S. Geological Survey, 3D Elevation Program (public domain); rivers and lakes in the valley, Natural Earth (public domain). Made by Project Scroll in three.js (MIT licence). Project Scroll is independent research. It is not affiliated with, sponsored by or endorsed by E Clampus Vitus, Inc. or any of its chapters, and it does not speak for the order. E Clampus Vitus®, ECV® and Clampers® are registered trademarks of E Clampus Vitus, Inc., named here only to identify the order.