Written by Rick Rockwell• November 26, 2022• 5:17 pm• Gold Rush, History and Mystery, Regional Park, Roadside Attraction

Last Updated on: August 12, 2026

Tragedy Spring looks like a quiet stop in the high Sierra today, but its name comes from one of the darker stories tied to the Mormon Emigrant Trail. In 1848, three Mormon Battalion veterans — Daniel Browett, Ezra Hela Allen, and Henderson Cox — rode ahead of their company to scout a wagon route across the Sierra Nevada. They never returned.

Weeks later, their companions found signs of a violent struggle near a spring in the forest: a campfire, bloody arrows, blood-stained rocks, and a grave holding the bodies of the three missing men. The company buried them again, carved their names into a tree, and gave the place the name it still carries: Tragedy Spring.

Today, Tragedy Spring is a small historic site and picnic area off Highway 88 near Silver Lake. It is easy to miss if you are speeding toward Carson Pass or Kirkwood, but it is one of the most meaningful roadside history stops along this old emigrant corridor. 

June 14, 1846 — On This Day in the American West™

The Bear Flag Revolt Begins in California

On June 14, 1846, a small group of American settlers rode into the Mexican town of Sonoma, arrested General Mariano Guadalupe Vallejo without bloodshed, and raised a hastily made banner depicting a grizzly bear and a single red star. The action marked the beginning of the Bear Flag Revolt, one of the most famous—and controversial—episodes in the history of the American West.

At the time, California was a remote northern province of Mexico, sparsely populated and only lightly governed. Yet thousands of American emigrants had begun arriving overland, encouraged by reports of fertile valleys, abundant resources, and the growing belief that the United States was destined to expand from coast to coast. Tensions between Mexican authorities and the increasing number of American settlers had been rising for months.

The rebels, numbering little more than thirty men, feared that Mexican officials planned to expel foreign settlers from the region. Acting on that belief, they seized Sonoma, captured several military officers, and declared California an independent republic. They adopted a homemade flag featuring a crude image of a grizzly bear beneath a lone red star, giving the uprising its enduring name.

Book Review: The Power of Fun by Catherine Price

Encouraging you to have FUN with your goals has always been a hallmark of the PowerSheets® process—after all, if goal setting is mostly drudgery, duty, and boredom, who'd stick with it?! 

We do things differently around here. We know the truth about how goals really get accomplished—and how to actually follow through. The PowerSheets proven process works because it includes celebrating the small wins, focusing on what matters most, and lots of fresh starts along the way! And FUN, of course!

But, even though we know fun is an important part of goal setting, it can sometimes be hard for this community to prioritize it. Many of us are recovering perfectionists, we all have full lives, and sometimes our (good!) desire to make each moment intentional and meaningful edges out the lighthearted and silly. 

That's why I think Cultivators will love Catherine Price's book The Power of Fun. It's split into two parts. 

from California Pioneer Heritage Foundation Phone: 435-215-1417 or 530-308-3036 Email: cphf1@sbcglobal.net

One of the main purposes of the Mormon Battalion was to provide Gen. Stephen Watts Kearny, Army of the West, with vital military manpower to back his assignment as military governor of Alta California. Kearny determined to employ his assets: The Mormon Battalion, 1st Dragoons, and 1st New York Volunteers (arrived by ship at Monterey, CA) to garrison duty at various key locations from San Diego to Los Angeles to put down any potential Mexican-Californio revolts to American occupation.

This is a classic "Phone Home" design. Because the NAT firewall blocks incoming connections to your Raspberry Pi, the Pi must be the one to initiate the conversation.

The Design Overview: Reverse SSH Tunneling

Think of this like a two-way bridge.

1. The Raspberry Pi (the client) initiates an outgoing connection to web3us.com (the relay).

2. Within that connection, the Pi tells the CentOS server: "Any traffic you receive on your local Port 2222, please forward it back through this tunnel to my Port 22."

3. When you want to access the Pi, you SSH into web3us.com and then SSH into that "forwarded" port.

Step 1: Set up Passwordless Login (Pi to CentOS)

For a tunnel to stay up automatically, the Pi must be able to log into your CentOS server without you typing a password every time.

Script that is called from Cron

cat /home/pi/send_ip.sh

#!/bin/bash
echo -n "$(date '+%Y-%m-%d %H:%M') "
hostname -I | awk '{for(i=1;i<=NF;i++) if ($i ~ /^[0-9]+\.[0-9]+\.[0-9]+\.[0-9]+$/) printf "%s ", $i; print ""}'

Run this in Cron

$ crontab -e

# +---------------- minute (0 - 59)
# |  +------------- hour (0 - 23)
# |  |  +---------- day of month (1 - 31)
# |  |  |  +------- month (1 - 12)
# |  |  |  |  +---- day of week (0 - 6) (Sunday=0)
# |  |  |  |  |
# *  *  *  *  *  command to be executed
#  0 8  *  *  * /opt/scripts/down.sh >> /home/pi/log/shade.log 2>&1
#  0 11  *  *  * /opt/scripts/up.sh >> /home/pi/log/shade.log 2>&1
1 7 * * * /home/pi/send_ip.sh | ssh shade@server "cat >> /home/shade/log/shade.log" 2>> /home/pi/cron_debug.log

Show the file on the server that logs the IP address each day

ls -l /home/shade/log
total 4
-rw-rw-rw- 1 shade shade 2519 Sep 19 07:40 shade.log

Show the contents of the shade.log file

$ cat shade.log

# log file for host IP of shade Raspberry Pi  Started out as 192.168.1.118 Jun 9, 2025

2026-02-11 08:21 | Int_IP: 192.168.86.52  | Public IP: 136.26.7.34
2026-02-11 16:05 | Int_IP: 192.168.86.52  | Public IP: 136.26.7.34
2026-02-11 17:21 | Int_IP: 192.168.104.227  | Public IP: 75.25.171.132
2026-02-11 18:05 | Int_IP: 192.168.104.227  | Public IP: 75.25.171.132

Get Internal and External IP and date and time

It appears that AI wants a table with either 24 or 25 cells and AI will get lost trying fill the table. With a smaller set like 6 letters is does not get lost and can be accurate, See my last example on this page

I have created infographics on subjects that are interesting to me.  I hope your enjoy them.

Jesus Christ	Scriptures	Mormon Battalion	Kids