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Making the Grade: FACT & FANCY MIX AS MAN BECOMES LEGEND

Part III of a series on Nate Harrison and the grade named after him.

By DAVID ROSS

There’s a wonderful line in John Ford’s classic film The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance when the town newspaper editor says “This is the West, sir! When the legend becomes a fact, print the legend!”

In these parts, truth and legend do tend to meet in a gray tidal zone, and so with colorful characters like Nate Harrison, it’s hard to tell where the truth leaves off and the fact begins. And, to a certain degree, it stops mattering.

For instance, there’s the legend that when Nate Harrison finally got deathly ill and was checked into a hospital in San Diego, that the nurses had to peel layer after layer after layer of longjohns that he apparently wore until they rotted off his body.

He was supposedly 101 (or so he claimed, but then, does it really matter?) when he finally died in 1920.

But the reaction of his neighbors to his death is a fact not a legend. We still have the monument, made from white quartzite, mined at considerable difficulty and transported by horse drawn wagon to the spot on the grade where the small but dignified pile of rock greets the rare traveler today.

Bob Davis, an 83 year old resident of Palomar Mountain recalls that his father, Stanley R. Davis, built the monument. He also built the oldest remaining cabin on the mountain in 1918, the same year the family brought little Bob to live there. Davis, a contractor, also built the massive fireplace at the Palomar Mountain Lodge.

The monument was erected and a bronze plaque was affixed to it and quite a crowd of people attended the dedication and admired the handiwork. Davis’s grandfather played My Old Kentucky Home and other favorites of Nate’s on the violin.

As Don Seitz, Theresa Gallagher, Petie McHenry and I continued on our drive up the mountain, the desert shrubbery of buckwheat, yucca and stunted trees began to give way to substantial trees like live oaks and to signs warning trespassers away from private property.

“Feel how much cooler it is here. Ten, fifteen degrees,” commented Seitz. He was right, the air temperature felt more like that of a late spring day, than the midst of summer.

Away off to the east and up we could see the burned sides of Palomar Mountain where the disastrous fire of a decade away scarred her flanks.

Higher still, although we couldn’t see it yet, is the abandoned Boucher Heights Tower, the last of the fire spotting towers to be abandoned by the CDF.

We passed a burned tree, entered into a heavier concentration of live oaks and sycamores, turned a corner, a suddenly there it was.

The modest pile of stones used to carry a plaque that read: Nate Harrison’s Spring. Brought here as a slave about 1848. Died Oct. 10, 1920. Age 101. ‘A Man’s a Man for ‘a That.”

We were met at the gate to Nate’s old place by the current owner, who has lived there for 30 years. A friendly, hospitable man in his 60s, he also likes his privacy, which we are respecting by not mentioning his name here.

He led us up a fairly steep hill perhaps an eighth of a mile to a modest circle of stones, all that remains of Nate Harrison’s cabin.

Modest, even “tiny” are adjectives that spring to mind in seeing the stones that outline the cabin and indicate where the fireplace was.

Harrison lived simply, but he lived free and, for a man born a slave, that was probably the greatest gift of all.

Don took a seat on the grass in the middle of the stones to show how small the house must have been while Theresa snapped pictures, and Petie wandered about, speculating about what finds might still be buried in the vicinity of the cabin.

“We’ve actually found quite a few things with the metal detector,” said the owner brightly.

Petie McHenry examines some Nate Harrison artifacts.