The year 1865 was a busy one for Havilah and the Clear Creek mining district. It became a heavy gold producer--miners, capitalists, speculators swarmed into it from all over the Pacific slope. I laid out my townsite in due season and sold it out at fancy figures. The main street brought an average of $20 per foot. A boom was on all along the line. I was offered fancy prices for my mining claims. I let them go. My principle was to avoid what is vulgarly known as “hoggishness.” When I could make a million by a business turn I considered it a good day’s work. But as a matter of fact, I only cleaned up with $800,000. That is what I banked in San Francisco long before the end of 1865. The town of Havilah prospered mightily. At one time it must have numbered nearly 3000 inhabitants. It was a brisk center with hotels, livery stables, large merchandise stores, lawyers, doctors, preachers, open gambling houses, hurdy-gurdies, saloons, banks, bagnios and the other evidences of advanced civilization. Not only that, but its enterprising inhabitants appeared before the next legislature and asked for the creation of a new county. Though by that time a permanent resident of San Francisco, I assisted in the passage of a bill that cut off from Tulare the county of Kern, and named Havilah the county seat. It so remained until the decline of mining and the growth of agriculture in the lowlands moved the capital to Bakersfield. These statements can be verified by official records of Kern county and of the town of Havilah, which I presume still exist. Also by the testimony of many people still living. Such were the tricks Dame Fortune played me in a period of a little longer than a year. I was literally chased from absolute poverty into the possession of nearly a million dollars. I discovered a great mining district and founded a thriving town. And if the matter of paternity is ever brought up in court, it will probably be proved to the satisfaction of a jury that I am the father of Kern county. CHAPTER XIV. DECADE BETWEEN 1860 AND ’70, NEXT TO THE GOLD AGE, ONE OF THE MOST STIRRING TIMES IN HISTORY OF STATE. _Realization Had Come That Mineral Riches Formed Smallest Part of Resources; Outlook Was Bright._ Late in the summer of 1865, I took up my residence in San Francisco. The war was over, the country settling down after the intoxication of a terrific struggle. But one fever was only followed by another, so far as I was concerned. I was barely 25, but far older than my years. In fact, I never had any youth at all. From the time when I ran away from college to join Walker’s expedition against Nicaragua, I was called on to meet problems that required a man’s decision, and so became one, long ahead of time. But I was brimful of a restless ambition to make my mark--to become one of the great central figures in working out the destiny of the Pacific Coast.