Siskiyoutopia

Catherine J. Fry

216 Third Street

James Place

Catherin J. Fry House, a Queen Anne-style house built in 1899. With soaring gable and high roofs it reflects the carefree period of the Gay Nineties. She started the first nursing home in Yreka, which wasn’t very successful. She believed that old people needed to be isolated and studied, so it could be determined what nutrients they have that might be extracted for our personal use. At that time, all the windows of the house except the top floor had irons bars to prevent the old folks from escaping. The broken spokes of the wagon wheel ornamentation at the house’s peak are where several old timers attempted to escape through the only window without bars. After the failure of this business Mrs. Fry moved back to her family’s dairy farm in Wisconsin. The dairy farm also failed soon after her arrival.

Louis Wetzel

327 Third Street

The Louis Wetzel House

In 1896 Louis Wetzel was Yreka’s most famous bigamist. He married women in several eastern states and finally settled down to live in a monogamous relationship in Yreka with his wife Sharon. On his honeymoon with Sharon to San Francisco, he hits it big on the roulette, winning several thousand dollars, more than enough to build this house and a little mountain summer vacation home on Deer Mountain. News of his winnings were wired from San Francisco to New York and soon all the major back east papers were carrying the story of his honeymoon gambling success. Seven of his wives showed up in Yreka to obtain their shares of the winnings. Sharon, very upset, forced Isaac to sleep in the backyard in a tree house. All eight women shared this house until the last wife, Elsie Francine Laurie Dewhurst, died in 1937. Louis immediately moved back into the main house and never spent a night in the tree house again.

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And stay tuned to continue our tour of the hidden, wild and sometimes fictional lives of early Yreka residents! ………….

By the way, if you are interested in ‘non-fictional’ history, check out the Yreka History Blog.