An adventurer who rode with Kit Carson, scouted the West in search of buffalo, and mined for gold on the banks of the San Joaquin River was finally tamed by the prospects offered in the new, little lumber town of Madera.
Captain Russel Perry Mace had come to California in 1849 during the gold rush and became a legend in the San Joaquin Valley. He made his mark in Madera, the town he helped to make, but his story began in Boston where he was bon in 1820.
The son of a financially strapped manufacturer of carpenter’s tools, Mace was adopted by an uncle and spent his boyhood days on a farm in Putney, Vermont.