 A brief history of some of the historical " firsts" in Mariposa
Mariposa County started out as the largest and most important county in the state of California.
The name Mariposa means butterfly or "New Beginnings" in Spanish. Mariposa today is a sleepy little tourist town with a lot of interesting history. It is one of the original forty-niner gold mining camps of the California "Mother Lode" gold rush era. It is situated in the foothills of the western slopes of the Sierra Nevada Mountains at the cross roads of state highways 49 and 140.
Mariposa has no stoplights nor does it have any incorporated cities. The sheriff is the local law and a small board of supervisors manage the few small towns in the county.
However, Mariposa is named the "Mother of Counties." In 1850 when California became a state the original Mariposa County included one fifth of the state. It's original size is still the largest county in the world. Parts of the present San Diego, San Bernardino and Los Angeles counties as well as eight other entire counties were birthed from the original Mariposa County. Cities like Lancaster, Palmdale, Santa Clarita, Ridgecrest, Bishop, Bakersfield, Visalia, Merced and Fresno are within the original Mariposa County borders.
Historians say that Mariposa's courthouse is the oldest operating courthouse west of the Mississippi River. It was constructed in 1854 and is still the active courthouse today with no plans for a new one. Also, the Mariposa Gazette is the oldest continually operating newspaper in the state.
In addition to all this, General John Charles Fremont, the famous topographer and explorer, made his home here for many years. He brought Sonorans up from Mexico to work gold on his ranch. They were the first to find the quartz ledge that ran through the heart of gold country that is called "the Mother Lode" ~ the beginning of quartz mining in California. Fremont's Mariposa home was called the "Western White House." He was the catalyst in the Bear Flag Revolt which led to him accepting the surrender of the Mexican army, opening the way for California to become American soil.
Fremont was then appointed the first governor of California. After statehood he was elected the first senator for the state. He was also the American Republican Party's first nominee for president. Abraham Lincoln stumped for him in the election of 1856, four years before Lincoln was elected in 1860. Fremont had actually written the first Emancipation Proclamation for the state of Missouri years before Lincoln's famous document.
The first million dollar corporation in the state of California was the Mariposa Mining Company which was the result of a lease from Fremont to a group of San Francisco bankers.
Why Mariposa Continued
Furthermore, Mariposa's Yosemite Valley and the Mariposa Grove of Giant Sequoias, both in the present Mariposa County, is the first land in the world that was ever preserved by it's government for future generations. Yosemite was originally a federal reserve, signed by president Lincoln during the Civil War, and placed under the Jurisdiction of the State of California. The first federally protected land in world history is in Mariposa County.
Mariposa would seem to be an unlikely place for God to initiate an outpouring for north central California. However, if natural history is any indication of how God comes in the Spirit, and if you have seen the video or have read the editorial "Why Pensacola?" .. maybe Mariposa is a very likely place for "New Beginnings."
Just as God established Abraham's name as "father of many nations" years before the "manifestation" of Isaac ... Could God have had an agenda all these years for Mariposa and this part of California? Could He have had the people calling Mariposa a place of "New Beginnings" to birth a move of His Spirit? Could He have initiated all these 'firsts,' since Alferez Gabriel Moraga, the first Spanish explorer who camped here in 1806 and named the place Las Mariposas, to establish spiritual precedence? Is it unreasonable to consider that He planned all this to "manifest" His latter-day outpouring by beginning in the land of "New Beginnings?"
SEE "THE FIRE FALLS" OF YOSEMITE!
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