Testosterone Replacement Therapy in Coarsegold, CA

Celebrate Art!SIERRA ART TRAILS 2014Yosemite Foothills Open Studio Tour

Friday, Saturday and Sunday, October 3rd, 4th, & 5th, 2014

This years 2014 Sierra Art Trails open studio tour has many talented artists. The Sierra Sun Times will be featuring a sampling of area artists leading up to the show. Check back regularly to see who the next featured artist will be.

Anita Stoll Pastel Artist

I paint simply because it gives me pleasure. I paint from my reaction to what I see in nature. I paint from feelings and emotions. My paintings start a story and it is up to the viewer to finish it. Leaving in mystery is vital to me.

A little break from the everyday, a little pause, a moment of reflection to myself and to the viewer. This is my commitment.

Anita is known for her ethereal pastel landscapes and florals. Her paintings are inspired by what she observes in nature.

At the age of 50 she and her husband moved to the High Desert where she was immediately struck with the open expanses of sky and land. She was overcome by an urge to create. She started taking classes and painted every chance she could in her spare time while working at her day job as a buyer for one of the major aerospace conglomerates. It wasn’t long before she became an artist full time. She got into galleries in major cities across the west.

After moving to Coarsegold in 2004, she became internationally known by having a feature article in International Artist and the Pastel Journal. Her works are published in Best of America Pastel Artists vol II. and Eyes on Landscapes. Her artwork is on the cover of Canson Mi-Tientes Earth and Gray Tone pastel pads. Her work has been featured in the Dick Blick catalogue and in full page ads in art magazines.

Anita is currently represented at Timberline Gallery in Oakhurst, CA. She teaches and shows her works at her home studio in Coarsegold, CA. She offers private and group classes.

Anita is listed in the Sierra Art Trails catalogue as #15, page 78.

Anita can be reachedat her home studio in Coarsegold: Call (559) 658-7281 or email: anitastoll@yahoo.com.

You can also visit Anita's website at: www.anitastoll.com or her blog at: www.anitastollpastelssublime.blogspot.com.

COARSEGOLD — Dust off your boots and join us at the Coarsegold Rodeo Grounds for the annual Coarsegold rough stock cowboy tour California Cowboys Professional Rodeo Association (CCPRA) rodeo. The CCPRA is an all-volunteer organization devoted to preserving the western heritage and proud mountain tradition of the sport of rodeo. There will be live music, vendors, and lots of great food and drinks. We’ll see you there!

Dates & Times: Friday, May 5, & Saturday, May 6, 2023.

Gates open 4 p.m. on Friday, May 5, and noon on Saturday, May 6.

May Day roping event is on Sunday, May 7. Free entry to the event with your ticket purchase to the Rodeo.

Tickets are $20 for adults and $5 for kids 13 and under.

Tickets can be purchased at the gate or online here.

Coarsegold Rodeo Grounds 44777 Rodeo Grounds Lane Coarsegold, CA 93614 559-281-5619

About the California Cowboys Professional Rodeo Association (CCPRA)

The California Cowboys Professional Rodeo Association (CCPRA) is a non profit organization dedicated to promoting the sport of rodeo.

Formed in 1966, this regional organization sanctions rodeos throughout California, with numerous co-approvals in Nevada, Washington and Oregon.

A steady growth in membership over the years has made the CCPRA the leading rodeo organization in the state of California. Cardholders include cowboys, cowgirls, judges, clowns, bullfighters, photographers, secretaries, announcers, timers, contractors, committee members, and fair managers.

These members come from all walks of life. They are teachers, salesman, bank executives, veterinarians, peace officers, students, ranchers, etc. They are people who can usually rodeo only on the weekends, but all have a love for rodeo.

The contestants at CCPRA rodeos are trying for about $500,000 in prize money each year. The money comes from entry fees and added purses. Points are awarded on a point per dollar system. Of the total fees from each rodeo, 5% is deducted, with 2% held in the trust and added to the finals purse, 2% going to awards and promotion, and 1% into the general fund.

The year’s championships are up for grabs at the finals rodeo, include the state queen competition. The weekend concludes with an awards presentation and celebration. The CCPRA continues the tradition of rodeo excitement for young and old alike.

Think you got what it takes to be a bull rider? Watch this video first!

People near Coarsegold were under an evacuation warning for a couple hours early Sunday night for a wildfire threat off Highway 41, with four separate blazes said to be burning.

Among the four fires, the School Fire — near Road 415 and Bohna Ranch Road and Coarsegold Elementary — was said to be the largest at about 5 acres. The others were called the Coarse, Trabuco and Gold fires.

The three smaller fires were fully contained just before 8 p.m., according to Cal Fire Capt. Richard Chow, and the School Fire’s forward progress had been stopped.

The warning — a voluntary level of alert indicating a potential threat to life and property — was first put in effect just after 6 p.m. for areas off the highway and Road 415, according to the Madera County Sheriff’s Office.

At 6:45 p.m. a second warning was issued for those living on and around Penny Lane and Dollar Court. At 8:30 p.m. both warnings in the areas had been lifted.

As usual in the case of a warning, the Sheriff’s Office cautioned people not to wait for a mandatory evacuation order to leave if they feel threatened. Those with pets or livestock also are always encouraged to allow for extra time to make their way to safety.

Anyone in need of evacuation assistance can call 559-675-7770.

The wildfires are the latest in a series of smaller blazes that have kept firefighters busy in Madera and Fresno counties and throughout California as the state deals with growing drought conditions.

Extreme hot weather, which saw high-temperature records fall in Fresno and elsewhere in the central San Joaquin Valley on Friday and Saturday, add to the danger as well as the challenges facing firefighters battling the flames.

Cal Fire reports 19,070 acres have burned in 3,432 incidents across the state this year. No deaths have been reported, but 20 structures have been damaged or destroyed.

This story was originally published June 20, 2021, 7:13 PM.

UPDATE — December 8th, 2022. The event has been rescheduled due to the winter storm expected to hit us this weekend. The Christmas Tree Lighting will now take place on December 17th from 3 pm to 7 pm.

COARSEGOLD — Get ready, everyone! There will be an awesome Christmas tree lighting, craft fair, AND chili cook-off this Saturday at the Coarsegold Historic Village! Who could ask for more!

Christmas Tree Lighting, Craft Fair, and Chili Cook Off at the Coarsegold Historic Village!

Saturday, December 17, 2022, 3 p.m. – 7 p.m.

The craft fair starts at 10 a.m.

$10 for adults, $5 for kids 10 years old and under.

Includes chili, crackers, drinks, dessert, and hot chocolate.

Live Music!

For more information about signing up for vendor space or on how to enter your chili in the cook off please text Laura at 559-760-0806.

Click here to check out all the other great upcoming events at the Coarsegold Historic Village!

Check out the Village on Facebook!

Coarsegold Historic Village 35300 CA-41 #204 Coarsegold, CA 93614 559-683-3900

The History of the Historic Village

In the mid 1800’s, this town was known as ‘Coarse-Gold Gulch,’ named after the coarse nuggets the miners found in the nearby streams. Over one and a half million dollars have been mined from the creeks in this area. The Texas Flat Gold Mine is the best known and was the most extensively worked mine in the Coarsegold vicinity. Two Texas brothers started the mine when they found a single nugget, about a mile west of here, worth $15,000. By 1850, 10,000 people lived in the fields and hills behind downtown Coarsegold.

Besides Texas Flat, there were 18 other recorded mines in this district. Today, locals and tourists still dig up the occasional nugget in Coarsegold Creek, less than 75 feet from the Coarsegold Village parking lot.

The well house, built in 1852, is on display in our courtyard. It served as a major watering hole for weary and dusty travelers on stage coaches and horseback. It sat in the center of Highway 41 for years.

The grapevine arbor, next to the well house, has the oldest and largest vines in the State of California. These grapes came from cuttings from a Southern California Mission back in 1862.

The granite benches came from the Raymond Quarry and were a part of the Old Inns garden area.

Coarsegold Village is also the site of the former Coarsegold Inn, a world famous restaurant, saloon, hotel and theater. First built in 1880, the Inn burned to the ground three times, every 30 years or so. The last fire was August 9, 1989. Some of the finest musicians in the U.S. have performed on the Inn’s stage. It may someday rise again.

The Wild Fig Kitchen operates in the ‘Old Inn’ bath house, and our two story building next door is known as “The Hoot Gibson Card Room.” It was also an annex to one of the early Inns, offering special accommodations with the ice and meat storage rooms below.

The Pharmacy, in the building next to the grape arbor, was a dining room for the Old Inn. Before that, it was one of the old Coarsegold Post Offices. It was opened in 1885 as Coarse-Gold Gulch. It was changed in 1885 to Gold Gulch, and in 1895 to its present name.

The three remaining cabins were built around 1939 and served as guest cabins with rates of $2.50 for a single and $3.00 for doubles. The rock walls were built in the early 1900’s by Mr. Mudge with Chukchansi labor.

The old white building now being renovated, was the old Coarsegold schoolhouse located on the other side of the highway in the late 1800s. It has now been converted to an antique store with many relics from the past.

The Chukchansi and Picayune Indians still reside in Coarsegold. They are best known for their intricate basket weaving, with the older ones valued up to $5,000. This was their land long before the rest of us arrived, and their heritage and culture continues to enrich us all.

The history of Coarsegold encompassed all of the traditional folklore of the Old West: gold, timber, cattle, ranches, cowboys, and Indian tribes.

Since the road to Yosemite, Hwy 41, was completed in 1876, the oncoming rush of travelers from all over the world has done little to change this quiet area. For 144 years, Coarsegold has been known as a peaceful place to stop and rest while looking for gold.

Richard and Diane Boland and family, owners of Coarsegold Village, welcome each of you to enjoy the warmth and richness of Coarsegold Historic Village.

Check out this short video about Coarsegold and Coarsegold Historic Village!

Members of the tribe that operates the Chukchansi Gold Resort & Casino in eastern Madera County are poised to receive a major influx of income after more than $220 million in debt against the casino was paid off this spring.

But the benefits of that windfall may be blunted by another round of infighting within the Picayune Rancheria of Chukchansi Indians over who is an official member of the tribe — and therefore entitled to receive cash disbursements and other perks of membership.

Sources within the tribe and its administration who spoke on condition of anonymity said that since the majority of the seven-member tribal council changed hands last fall, the board under the leadership of new tribal chairperson Janet Bill has moved to amend the enrollment ordinance.

Those rules govern who may be approved for membership and the conditions under which members can be removed from the membership roll.

The tribe’s election ordinance establishing the process for electing the tribal council was also changed.

On March 10, tribal administrator Robert Reyes was removed from his position, according to a council update, and Michael Wynn was appointed as an interim replacement. A week later, the tribal council announced that enrollment director Martha Rodriguez was no longer in her role.

Earlier this month, a tribal council update reported the leadership took action “to terminate benefits for all descendants of petitioners, effective immediately ...” under membership provisions of the constitution.

Sources within tribal administration told The Fresno Bee that meant suspension of about 70 members from receiving any tribal benefits — not just per-capita payments of casino revenues, but also assistance for housing, health care, education, clothing allowances for children, or tribal elders benefits.

Multiple sources within the tribe told The Bee that Claudia Gonzales, an at-large member of the tribal council who was its chairperson until last fall, was suspended from her seat on the council. Gonzales did not return a phone message seeking comment.

The latest developments follow a string of messages to tribal members in recent monthly newsletters by treasurer Marco Alcantar and at-large board members Joshua Herr and Thomas Pisano urging unity among the membership and discounting rumors of disenrollments.

“I know there was a concern that change in leadership would only create instability and lead to more turmoil for our tribe as we’ve experienced in the past,” Alcantar wrote in February.

He followed that up in the March tribal newsletter, asserting that “rumors have recently spread throughout our tribe suggesting that with the change in Tribal Council members, disenrollment will soon follow.”

In the April newsletter, Herr weighed in with a note of hope and unity. “This is an important moment for the tribe as we make our final debt payments made possible by our debt restructure last year,” Herr wrote. “As a petitioner who was disenrolled in the past, I pray we can stay united to share in the new prosperity we have achieved.”

“We need to strengthen our tribal laws including our Enrollment Ordinance and our Constitution to guarantee the rights of our enrolled members to be equal citizens of this Tribe,” Herr added. “We are all equal in the eyes of our Creator, and our Tribe will be stronger together.”

Neither Alcantar nor Bill responded to a request from The Bee to discuss the payoff of the debt, what that would mean for cash payments to tribal members, or how suspending or disenrolling members would affect distributions to the remaining members.

Sources within the tribe said the “petitioners” for whom payments and benefits have been cut represent one of three membership tiers within the tribe.

Of approximately 1,700 to 1,800 members of the tribe, most are “allotees” who under a federal allotment act in the late 1800s were granted land that has been passed through the generations.

Others are “distributees,” or people of native descent whose ancestors either turned down the original federal land allotments or never received land who later sought or won distributions from the federal government.

Petitioners are also people who did not receive land, but if they could prove Chukchansi bloodlines or heritage, they could petition to become official members of the tribe in the years following the adoption of the tribe’s constitution in 1988.

At fewer than 200 members, petitioners are the smallest share of the Picayune Rancheria membership.

The U.S. Bureau of Indian Affairs did not respond to a query from The Bee about what role the agency plays in overseeing tribal enrollment ordinances or mediating disputes over tribal membership. Tribes are considered sovereign to govern themselves, and a tribal member who has been disenrolled generally has little recourse under U.S. law, according to attorneys who deal with tribal laws.

In the tribe’s March newsletter, Alcantar reported that the casino made its final payment in January on about $193 million in bond debt against the casino. Payoff of another $30 million loan was completed last week.

While the bonds and other debt were being paid off, all but about $11 million in yearly casino revenue was required to be used to retire the debt, Alcantar wrote. That money, under the tribe’s current revenue allocation plan, was split four ways:

Now that the debt is paid, the casino and tribe will have a lot more money at their disposal. Alcantar said January’s revenues alone amounted to $9.8 million before interest, taxes, depreciation and other factors. “That’s in a single month, compared to $11 million for the entire year,” he said.

Based on the current allocation plan, Alcantar wrote that those January revenues would have created:

Save for the glimpse that Alcantar offered about January’s casino revenue, it’s unclear just how much income the tribe receives from its gaming operations. Tribes that operate casinos are required to send audited financial statements to the state Department of Justice’s Bureau of Gambling Control and to the National Indian Gaming Commission, but those documents are confidential.

The Picayune Rancheria of Chukchansi Indians is one of 63 tribes operating casinos in California. The Coarsegold-based tribe has had a gaming compact with the state since 1999, and opened the Chukchansi Gold casino in 2003.

While the annual revenue is confidential, the tribe’s compact requires it to make quarterly license payments to a tribal revenue sharing trust fund based on the number of licensed slot machines and other gaming devices.

Since the Chukchansi Gold casino opened, the Picayune Rancheria tribe has paid nearly $48 million into the trust fund as of the end of 2021, according to a report by the California Gambling Control Commission. Among the 63 gaming tribes in the state, only five have paid more into the trust fund.

The reported new suspensions of dozens of tribal members — cutting them off from a share of casino revenues and other benefits — are the latest round in a long series of back-and-forth leadership disputes when majority control of the tribal council changes as a result of annual fall elections. It’s a scenario that has been repeated as different tribal factions jockey for control of the tribe and its lucrative gaming operation.

In 2019, the memberships of at least 60 people who had been granted tribal status just two years earlier were suspended. And at least one past disenrollment episode in 2016 took aim at families that were among the founding members of the tribe.

Suspension is one step in the tribe’s process toward possible disenrollment, which removes a person from the tribe’s official roll of recognized members. It not only affects current members, but also affects the children and future descendants of disenrolled members. The action can also jeopardize a person’s access to resources from the federal Bureau of Indian Affairs.

The tribe’s 1988 constitution states that its membership shall consist of people listed as distributees or dependents at the time a tribal distribution plan was approved by the U.S. Department of Interior in 1960; “all persons of Chukchansi Indian blood who have a special relationship with the tribe not shared by Indians in general” and who have received allotments of public land under an 1887 law; or direct lineal descendants of people living or dead who are or were eligible for membership and of Chukchansi blood.

The tribal constitution bars membership in the Picayune Rancheria tribe “if she/he is recognized as a member of any other tribe, band, or Indian community.”

Under the tribe’s enrollment ordinance, a member may be disenrolled only if they become enrolled in any other tribe, band or Indian community, or if there is a determination that a person’s eligibility for membership was “based upon a mistake of fact due to erroneous or fraudulent documentation. …”

Critics have described disenrollment not as a move to preserve Chukchansi ancestry, heritage or culture, but as a blow by the tribe against its own people, fueled by greed for casino gaming revenue. The fewer enrolled members there are, the bigger the slices of the financial pie grow for those who remain.

Hence, for a person facing suspension or disenrollment, the situation is often one in which nothing has changed about their ancestry or bloodline except for which tribal faction is interpreting the enrollment ordinance.

The membership roll for the Picayune Rancheria is confidential, and it’s unclear exactly how many official members there are who receive per-capita shares of casino revenue. One source within the tribe estimated the number at between 1,700 and 1,800 people.

One of the people speaking to The Bee anonymously for fear of suspension or disenrollment or possibly losing their job with the tribe say one of their biggest concerns is that “once they start disenrolling, someone’s going to start doing something stupid at the casino and get it shut down like happened in 2014.”

That’s when an armed clash between two tribal factions broke out in the casino offices and spilled out into the casino gaming floor and hotel, prompting a 14-month closure of the casino — the tribe’s primary source of revenue — by state and federal officials.

This story was originally published April 22, 2022, 9:02 AM.