The history behind Big Oak Flat’s ‘Scar’ property
Early Big Oak Flat and Groveland pioneers faced many hardships, ranging from battling the physical elements to scratching out a living in a remote region.
While these challenges certainly made day to day life difficult, they also made families strong and resilient and brought communities together to support and serve one another.
Virginian John W. Scofield came to California and in 1884 filed an agricultural patent or homestead on about 158 acres below the Divide Cemetery that, today, we commonly call “The Scar” in Big Oak Flat.
The two youngest sons of Scofield’s 10 children left California to fight in the Spanish American War in Cuba in the late 1890s. The older of the two brothers was James J. Scofield, known as Jody, and the younger brother was John Bright Scofield.
In 1898, after the war, John Bright Scofield met a Pennsylvania-born school teacher named Winnie May Douglas and married her in Elmira, New York. The couple returned to Big Oak Flat and settled on the family homestead and had four children over the next eight years, two boys and two girls, and lived in a log home on the family homestead.
Meanwhile, Jody Scofield married Winnie’s younger sister Adeline “Addie” Douglas in Big Oak Flat in 1903, had two sons, and worked as the night shift boss for the Longfellow Mine in Big Oak Flat.
Jody Scofield filed the agricultural patent for the section of land north of his brother’s property.
Sadly, while John Bright Scofield was in Nevada working as a silver miner in 1909, his then 32-year old wife died and left four young children aged 1 to 9.
The four children were sent to an orphanage in Santa Rosa, where they were badly treated. Learning of this, Winnie’s parents, Alinas and Florence Douglas, and their 14-year old daughter, Nellie, left Pennsylvania and came to California to care for the children.
The Douglases moved to the Big Oak Flat homestead, where Alinas Douglas added three rooms to the log house and built a large barn for a dairy operation that supplied milk to local businesses, including Priest’s Hotel.
The Golden Rock Ditch crossed the homestead, and both Alinas Douglas and sonin-law Jody Scofield worked as caretakers for the Golden Rock Water Co. The ditch watered a huge garden and apple orchard on their wooded property.
Nellie, the youngest Douglas daughter, married Clarence Lebow, a brakeman for the Santa Fe Railroad in 1913. They had two daughters, Winifred and Dorothy, before the marriage ended in divorce.
In 1920, Nellie married Budd Eaton, who had moved from Pennsylvania to woo her. Their son Harold was born the following year in the family home on the north side of Highway 120.
Budd Eaton worked as a surveyor for the City and County of San Francisco for 33 years, from 1915 to 1948, as did son Harold who was Hetchy’s mechanical shop superintendent from 1948 to 1983.
One of Winnie and John Bright Scofield’s sons, Raymond “Ray” Scofield, was foreman of the Tuolumne County Road Department, which operated out of the Groveland building that is now the Helping Hands Furniture Barn.
Ray Scofield married Martha Alexander, a well-loved local school teacher. His son Darrell worked for the Tuolumne County Road Department, California Department of Fish and Game, and California Division of Highways. Darrell’s son Lester managed the stables at the Pine Mountain Lake Equestrian Center for many years.
The Scofield homestead supported Jody and John Bright Scofield’s descendants for over 100 years as they worked in the area and made lasting contributions to our community.
According to Harold Eaton, “The Scar” site first sold in the early 1930s for about $600. The buyer resold it 15 years later for $35,000. County Historian Carlo De Ferrari wrote, “about 1979 it appeared the area would be adorned with a 37-acre development containing a 200-room hotel, service station, theatre and bowling alley.”
In 1988, a gas station was built, although it never opened. Grading removed the vegetation, and the nickname “The Scar” stuck.
Other proposed ventures have come and gone but one thing is certain, a development of this nature could impact this community’s economy, growth, traffic, and historical complexion dramatically. Only time will tell.
Editor’s note: The current owner of “The Scar” property, Mary Curtis, of Los Gatos, is working with a group called Yonder Yosemite that has proposed a hospitality project at the site that would feature up to 200 freestanding cabins, an events pavilion, lodge, and on-site employee housing. It is currently going through the county permitting process.
(This article is from a Southern Tuolumne County Historical Society publication “Historical Buildings in Groveland and Big Oak Flats,” which is available for purchase at the Groveland Yosemite Gateway Museum.)