Left Photo:  Saint Joseph Church, Information Stop #6 Information Stop #6, Saint Joseph Church, the first permanent Catholic Church in Mariposa County, was dedicated on January 18, 1863. When John C. Fremont heard of the California gold discovery, he rushed back to his Las Mariposas Rancho. Fremont's scouts, Kit Carson and Alexis Codey, both Catholics, brought 28 experienced Sonora miners from Mexico to help them recover placer gold which had been discovered at Agua Fria. Many teachers are accompanied by family members and/or friends as they take an Independent Self-Directed Study Course. This photo shows a teacher and his family listening to their tape recorder as they enter the church. Center Photo. Important Note:  This is the last Information Stop the teacher is required to make in the town of Mariposa. After completing the assignment at the Catholic Church, the teacher is instructed to look at the Route Map in the Course Booklet and proceed to Hornitos, Information Stop #7. Most teachers plan in advance to spend the night in Mariposa. There are many motels and camping accomodations in the area. Hornitos is about 25 miles from Mariposa, and there are few (if any) stores along the route. Hornitos probably has a population of less than 30 people! It would be wise to plan accordingly! Left Photo:  The teacher, seated on the rock fence, is listening to the same taped interview each teacher listens to at Information Stop #6. (This instructor and Monsignor Francis E. Walsh, author of "The First Hundred Years Plus Twenty Five of Saint Joseph Church," discuss "Religion During the Gold Rush.") Note:  The outstanding California State Mineral Exhibit is about one mile from the Catholic Church, and it is definitely worth visiting! There is an admission fee.

Mariposa's four cemeteries attest to the hardships early settlers were forced to endure. Many did not survive. The Feldhouse family (father, mother, and several small children) is buried within the wrought-iron enclosure. Father Walsh's taped interview informs the teacher that unsanitary conditions during the Gold Rush, often due to flooding, resulted in many people dying of typhoid.

Headstone of Bridget McGreer. Bridget died at the young age of seventeen during childbirth. Due to the year and her age at death, Father Walsh theorized that Bridget might have been the first to have been married in the church. Marriage records were not kept during that period.

The house-like structure, resting on a tree stump, contains a plaque which reads: "The great and sad mistake of many people -- among them even pious persons -- is to imagine that those whom death has taken, leave us. They do not leave us. They remain! Where are they? In the darkness? Oh, no! It is WE who are in the darkness. We do not see them, but they see us. Their eyes, radiant with glory, are fixed upon our eyes full of tears. Oh, infinite consolation! Though invisible to us, our dead are not absent.

I have often reflected upon the surest comfort for those who mourn. It is this: a firm faith in the real and continual presence of our loved ones; it is the clear and penetrating conviction that death has not destroyed them, nor carried them away. They are not even absent, but living near us, transfigured: having lost, in their glorious change, no delicacy of their souls, no tenderness of their hearts, nor especial preference in their affection. On the contrary, they have, in depth and in fervor of devotion, grown larger a hundredfold. Death is, for the good, a translation into light, into power, into love. Those who on earth were only ordinary Christians become perfect... those who were good become sublime." (Author unknown)