HISTORY OF BEAR VALLEY SPRINGS Chapter 1

Frederick William Fickert probably never expected to become a California cattle baron. He was born August 27, 1830, in Prussia of German parents. A restless and ambitious Fred Fickert left home at the age of fifteen and went to sea. Five years later, in 1850, after a voyage from Hamburg as provision master on a merchant ship, he arrived in New York. Within a month he was aboard a ship to San Francisco by way of Cape Horn. The young man had decided to leave seafaring life and seek his fortune in the mining regions of California. He spent most of the next nineteen years pursuing the ever elusive promise of riches which beckoned from the gold fields of Sierra, Butte, Yuba, Inyo, and upper Kern counties.

Mary Glynn Fickert was born in Barney's Slough, Ireland, on March 27, 1839, the daughter of Thomas Glynn and Mary Toohey Glynn. One of six sisters who emigrated to the United States, she arrived in New York in 1859 accompanied by her brother-in-law, Charles Boland. From New York she traveled by sea and land across the Isthmus of Panama to San Francisco. There is no record of Mary's life in California in the year or two after her arrival, or any record of when and where she met her future husband, but on December 19, 1861, Mary and Fred were married in San Francisco.

Marriage evidently didn't dim Fred's dream of the wealth to be found in mining. That he was a persistent hard-working man is confirmed by the many years he spent struggling as a miner. An 1891 biography....relates that he discovered the "world renowned" Sierra Gorda mine in 1863 and formed a mining district. The biography stated that Fickert abandoned the Sierra Gorda because he feared for the safety of his family. In the 1860s it took courage to follow your husband to a desolate mining camp, but Mary was also practical, and she persuaded Fred to move to the safer slopes of Kernville.

After a short stay in Kernville Fred moved the family to Havilah where he once again engaged in mining, and, in addition, took on the operation of a livery stable. Unforturately the livery stable burned down in 1868 and again in 1869. Since Fickert's mining ventures in Kernville and Havilah had only been moderately successful, after the second loss of the livery stable he decided that ranching might be more profitable and began looking for suitable land.

Traveling over the mountains and into the Tehachapis Fred found Bear Valley and was impressed by its beauty, fertile soil, and excellent grazing land. He had found his "Garden of Eden" as he later called it. The first Fickert land in Bear Valley was purchased from James Williams, Esq. in 1869. It was a squatter's right to 160 acres.

The 1981 biography concludes with this charming account, very likely written by one of the Fickerts since families furnished the information and paid to have their biographies published: