After Sunday’s two-hour talk by historian Don DeYoung, I am bound and determined to find Monte Wolfe’s cabin, which still stands, seven decades after his disappearance, in the rugged Mokelumne River canyon.
The cabin is no longer noted on topo maps. Thanks to the Sierra Club’s Dale Stocking for passing along these marked maps from a 2006 expedition:
The problem, of course, is getting there. You’ve either got to hike in from Highway 4 (which involves a 3,500-foot freefall into the canyon, and thus, a 3,500-foot climb out) or you’ve got to start somewhere upstream (Blue Lakes?) and make your way down from the headwaters of the Mokelumne.
Neither route is easy. Which is probably why Monte built where he did.
Even if you make it to Camp Irene, at the bottom of the canyon, you’ve got to hike back up the Mokelumne — cross-country, no trail — to his cabin on the north bank. And there is the next problem: Monte didn’t build right on the river. The cabin is hidden in the woods. I’m told you could pass within 50 yards and miss it.
Time to invest in GPS.
If you missed Monday’s story, the bombshell dropped at Sunday’s event is that Monte actually was married once, and had a family. After Monte (real name: Archey Wright) broke up with his wife, his children — Norman, Glenn, Goldie Ina and Edwin — were raised in Stockton. They graduated from Stockton High School. At least one granddaughter, Norma Wright Equinoa, and great granddaughter, Alexis Equinoa, also lived here until recently and made the trip to Bear Valley for Sunday’s talk.
Some cool Monte Wolfe stuff that didn’t make it into Monday’s story: (This is, of course, courtesy DeYoung’s tireless hours of interviews and archival searches.)
• His family immigrated from Ottertail Co., Minnesota, in a covered wagon during the last days of the Oregon Trail. His father, Thomas, was a wheat farmer.
• Wolfe, who had a propensity toward actions that fell somewhere between “borrowing” and “stealing,” once entered the cabin of a friend just outside Groveland, took his buddy’s fishing license and left his own there, apparently some kind of joke. That darned Monte Wolfe, his buddy thought. Three days later Wolfe broke back into the cabin and switched the licenses back to their correct owners. Bizarre behavior, but heck, I’m just surprised a guy like Monte Wolfe had a legal fishing license in the first place.
• After pulling a gun on a constable, he was chased up into the mountains during the winter and survived in a cabin where he left behind a pile of deer hides. Monte Wolfe left hides everywhere he went.
• While a highly-sought fugitive, he stepped inside a store in Tuolumne City with a Lugar on one side and a hatchet on the other. A constable saw this, talked with him and became convinced he was the notorious Monte Wolfe. He hauled Monte into town, at which point Monte whipped out his ID — “Archey Wright,” it said – and they thought they had the wrong man. It wouldn’t be the only time that Wolfe’s many names would help him avoid trouble.
• Eventually, Sherwood Morrill, a forensics expert in Sacramento who would later become famous in the case of the Zodiac Killer, confirmed that Monte Wolfe and Archey Wright were the same person. Wolfe was tried on charges of stealing a rifle, but aquitted. While authorities at this point knew he had earlier pulled a gun on another constable, that man had died and there were no longer any witnesses. He was a free man, and he once again headed for the hills and built two cabins, one of which still exists. “He was not in that canyon because he wanted to escape the law,” DeYoung said. “He was in that canyon because he wanted to be alone.”
