>I am writing a preliminary research design for a project in northern
>California, and am looking for reports on similar sites so that I can pose
>intelligent (or at least that's the idea) research questions to guide
>possible test excavations and frame significance evaluations.
>
>The site is in the foothills of the Sierra Nevada--mining country--and is a
>roadhouse dating from ca. 1875 to 1910. Travelers stopped here for a night,
>or a meal, or maybe just to change horses. It was, of course, connected to
>a homestead.


I don't know about California, of course, but "taverns" were licensed in
most states. The licensing authority would have set rules and regulations,
and individual licensees would have been examined.

Here in Delaware, the county posted the rates that could be charged, and
required certain services to be provided. Each year the licensee was
required to grovel for a renewed license, which prompted quite a literature
of good-natured perjury.

After several encounters with nineteenth-century taverns, I have more or
less come to the conclusion that you can't transfer our post-Prohibition
concepts to a time and place where the Anti-Saloon League never reached.

In one case, the licensee's inventory included exactly one bed¡


Ned Heite ([log in to unmask])
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