The historic marker in front of the eponymous family home is just to the right when traveling East on Chiriaco Road. It was placed there in 2003 by the Billy Holcomb Chapter of the Ancient and Honorable Order of E Clampus Vitus, a fraternal organization dedicated to preserving Western American history.
E Clampus Vitus is known as a “drinking society with a historical problem,” and erects plaques at obscure, often overlooked historical sites. Founded in 1851, the all-male group operates with mock rituals and “equal indignity” for all members. E Clampus Vitus initiates invitation-only, new members by “clamping,” an outdoor cookout with whimsical rites conducted at amusingly unusual sites.
Hailey Branson-Potts writing in the Los Angeles Times in 2017 profiled the group under a headline that read, “The Clampers: A historical drinking society or a drinking historical society?” She noted that the origin of the group was in Northern California Gold Country. “America is full of memorials for epic battles and soaring monuments and somber cradles of famous historical figures. The men of E Clampus Vitus – a.k.a the Clampers – don’t bother with those.”
Instead, they commemorate the odd, the peculiar, and the amusing. And they do it with plaques and bronze markers, hundreds of them, “from ghost towns to saloons, from bordellos to ranchos, from heroes to madmen.”
The Clampers are proud of their mottos like, Credo Quia Absurdum, sort-of Latin for “I believe because it is absurd.” Branson-Potts notes, “Chapter presidents hold the ceremonial title of Noble Grand Humbug. The sergeant-at-arms is the Damfool Doorkeeper.”
Despite the silliness, the group has done interesting and important historical work in the Coachella Valley, while seeing humor in everything, they’ve duly recognized several unusual spots in the desert.
The Chiriaco marker is a perfect example and recognizes delightful serendipity in life.
Joe Chiriaco came West in 1927 to see his home state team Alabama play Stanford in the Rose Bowl. The game ended in a 7-7 tie, (the last time ever) and Chiriaco never went back home. Finding work with the Los Angeles Bureau of Water and Power as a surveyor, he made his first trek to the Coachella Valley to the deserted desert area known as Shaver Summit. He purchased a plot of land there from J. E. Cram of Mentone, California near the gravel road out of Box Canyon that headed east toward Blythe.
Rumors of a new paved road between Indio and Phoenix had encouraged him, and on Aug. 15, 1933, Chiriaco opened a gas station and general store on the spot. The rumor was true and when U.S. 60, the new two-lane asphalt highway opened, it brought plentiful customers.
According to family history and the plaque, early in Chiriaco’s surveying days, he met a beautiful, blond Norwegian nurse from Minnesota, named Ruth Bergseid, who worked at the Coachella Valley Hospital in Indio. They married in 1934 and had four children.
The first years at the store and station were mighty rustic. Long days were punctuated intermittently by hungry and tired visitors. There was no air-conditioning, and power came only from generators. And most harsh of all, there was little water.
Nearby, Los Angeles’ Metropolitan Water District had been busy constructing the Colorado River Aqueduct to carry precious water from the Colorado River to the Los Angeles area. In the veritable middle of nowhere, surrounded by vast emptiness, the store and station survived providing for construction workers and wheeled passersby and hurried travelers.
World War II unexpectedly produced a boon for the store and station when Major General George S. Patton established The Desert Training Center. The largest military training ground ever to exist, it covered 18,000 square miles and trained over 1 million men in its eleven sub-camps, seven of which were in California. The massive enterprise was directed from its headquarters, Fort Young, (named for Samuel Baldwin Marks Young, the first commandant of the Army War College and the first Army Chief of Staff) at Shaver Summit.
As a native of Southern California, Patton knew the area well from his youth and from having participated in army maneuvers in the Mojave Desert in the 1930s. He returned with the world at war to train troops for the arduous campaign looming in the North African desert and would command all from Shaver Summit.
The little gas station and general store outpost were the only sort of non-Army commissary or dispensary for many miles. Paul Wilhelm, a former World War I soldier and the founder of the Thousand Palms Oasis said at the time, “Everything about Shaver’s Summit-of-the road dispensary drew us like bees to blossoms.”
In 1945, the Chiriacos established a small memorial to Patton and the tremendous effort that had been undertaken in the California desert. The resulting General Patton Memorial Museum pays tribute still.
The area finally got its own U.S. Post Office in 1958, and the occasion caused the name of the place to be changed to Chiriaco Summit in honor of the store and station and the family that made it special.
The E Clampus Vitus plaque calls the Chiriacos true pioneer spirits. There are over 40 active chapters of E Clampus Vitus in California and other Western states. The Billy Holcomb Chapter 1069 has placed a few other plaques nearby the Chiriaco family home and all over the Coachella Valley, San Bernardino and Riverside counties.
Their gatherings, Clampouts, are documented on YouTube, even those of the Billy Holcomb Chapter. William Francis “Billy” Holcomb arrived in California in 1850. However unlikely, he struck gold in the San Bernardino mountain valley which now bears his name, and he is immortalized in the E Clampus Vitus chapter, despite its distinctly Southern, not gold country, locale.
The ancient and honorable order espouses the Clampers Creed which seems sensible:
As I pass through life, may I always be humble; May I never take myself seriously;May I always appreciate a little of the ridiculous; May I always be a two-fisted Clamper When the bottle passes my way and if I imbibe, and can’t hold it like a man, Then may I always be able to pass it to the next brother; May I never forget the stout-hearted men who settled a great western wilderness and the heritage we have today.May I never fail to appreciate a bit of western lore.
For those who also appreciate a bit of western lore, The Historical Society of Palm Desert’s lecture series at the Palm Desert Library this Friday, April 17, at 5:30 p.m. features Margit Chiriaco Rusche speaking about her stout-hearted family and their desert adventure commemorated on the bronze plaque in front of her family home placed there by the Clampers.
Find more information at HSPD.org.
Tracy Conrad is president of the Palm Springs Historical Society. The Thanks for the Memories column appears Sundays in The Desert Sun. Write to her at pshstracy@gmail.com.
This article originally appeared on Palm Springs Desert Sun: The Clampers: A ‘drinking society with a historical problem’
Reporting by Tracy Conrad, Special to The Desert Sun / Palm Springs Desert Sun
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