A spot somewhat distant from the regular cemetery was chosen for the burial place and it became known as Jim Bruce’s private graveyard.
Remi Nadeau, a French Canadian, was the first to haul freight into Panamint City. Nadeau was a genius of transportation. There was no country too rough, too remote, too wild for him. He came to Los Angeles in 1861 from Utah and teamed as far east as Montana.
The Cerro Gordo mine, on the eastern side of Owens Lake in Inyo County began to ship ore in 1869 and Nadeau obtained a contract to haul the ore to Wilmington where it was shipped by boat to San Francisco. He soon had to increase his equipment to 32 teams, using more than 500 animals. For his return trip he bought such commodities as he could peddle or leave for sale at stations he built along the route.
In 1872, the contract having expired, Judson and Belshaw, owners of the mine, received a lower bid and Nadeau was left with 500 horses on his hands and heavily in debt. He wanted to dispose of his outfit for the benefit of his creditors but they had confidence in him and persuaded him to “carry on.” Borax discovered in Nevada saved him. Meanwhile the lower bidder on the Cerro Gordo job proved unsatisfactory and Judson and Belshaw asked Nadeau to take the old job back. But now Nadeau informed them they would have to buy a half interest in his outfit and advance $150,000 to construct relay stations at Mud Springs, Mojave, Lang’s Springs, Red Rock, Little Lake, Cartago, and other points. They gladly agreed.
Shortly after Nadeau began hauling across the desert, he picked up a man suffering from gunshot and crazed from thirst. Taking the victim to his nearest station, he left instructions that he be cared for.
Sometime afterward, one of Nadeau’s competitors whose trains had been held up several times by outlaws, wondered why none of Nadeau’s teams or stations had been molested. At the time, Nadeau himself didn’t know that the fellow whom he’d picked up on the desert was Tiburcio Vasquez, the bandit terror.
Vasquez naively condoned his banditry. It disgusted him at dances he said, to see the senoritas of his race favor the interloping Americans. He had a singular power over women. When Sheriff William Rowland effected his capture, women of Los Angeles filled his cell with flowers. He was hanged at San Jose.
Nadeau was now hauling ore from the Minnietta and the Modoc mines in the Argus Range on the west side of Panamint Valley. The Modoc was the property of George Hearst, the father of the publisher, William Randolph Hearst. These mines were directly across the valley from Panamint City and because of Nadeau’s record for building roads in places no other dared to go, Jones and Stewart engaged him to haul out of Surprise Canyon, which was barely wide enough in places for a burro with a pack.
On a hill, locally known as “Seventeen”—that being the per cent of grade, located on the old highway between Ballarat and Trona, one may see the dim outline of a road pitching down precipitously to the valley floor. This road was built by Nadeau and one marvels that anything short of steam power could move a load from bottom to top.
Acquiring a fortune, Nadeau built the first three-story building in Los Angeles and the Nadeau Hotel, long the city’s finest, retained favor among many wealthy pioneer patrons long after the more glamorous Angelus and Alexandria were built in the early 1900’s.