This he did for one day, then declared his independence, and went to work on his own, and for years did freighting for the miners. In order to get to make the trip he had promised to work in the mines for the officer. Some say he was the body servant to an Army officer who brought him around the Horn to the gold diggings in the northern part of the state. There are many versions as to how he came to California. When he passed on in 1920 his true story was buried with him. All of his life story was never told, even to his best friends, and, try as hard as they would, no one could ever get him to tell the name of his master, for Nate was once a slave. “Nigger Nate” was a friendly person, yet very little is known of his early life. They knew that they would be met by this small, smiling man who would first hand them a gourd of ice-cold water, then see that their horse was watered, or their boiling radiator cooled, as the case might be. All who traveled this steep grade, which, for years was the only road connecting the mountain with the valley below, looked forward to reaching this spot. In former years here lived at the roadside an old Negro man who was friend to both man and beast. The rocks once formed the walls of a small house, the trees were part of a lovely orchard, and the watering trough once overflowed with cold mountain spring water. You will find a small clearing, a pile of rocks, a few dead apricot trees, and a dry dilapidated watering trough. If you go to Palomar Mountain by the old West Grade road, just as you enter the trees, pause and go back from the road a short distance.
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