In a small corner of Lunigiana, in the extreme north-western tip of Tuscany, lies a remarkable story bound up with the founding of a Wild West town in America.
An area of outstanding natural beauty bordering the Apennines on the north, Liguria on the west and the Apuane Alps on the south, the region of Lunigiana was home to the Luni people, moon worshippers. That was in ancient times.
In the 18th century, the locals began to flee their depressed land. In the years, they formed communities in Northern Italy, Corsica, Switzerland, Belgium, France, and England. Between 1880 and 1920, especially the inhabitants of Bagnone, a village of this enclave located in the Massa Carrara province, emigrated to America. They had to leave the magical valleys of the river Magra with its tributaries sprinkled with medieval villages, castles, and mills along the ancient pilgrimage trail of the Via Francigena. Beauty was not enough. They had to earn their daily bread somehow. But homesickness never went away.
What part of America did the Bagnonesi pick out? They chose Northern California, where jobs were plentiful. Like many European immigrants to North America, they thought to find streets paved with gold. But no, life was harsher than they expected, for at least several years ahead.
The Bagnonesi settled in a town in the wild west that was just born. It was a company town founded by Abner Weed, a former soldier for the Union in the Civil War. At Appomattox Court House, Virginia, he witnessed Confederate General Robert E. Lee surrendering to Union General Ulysses S. Grant, April 9, 1865.
At 27, in 1897, Mr. Weed bought his lumber business (the Siskiyou Lumber and Mercantile Mill) and 280 acres of land that is now the city of Weed for a sum of $400. The scenic area nestled at the base of Mount Shasta among the sequoias of the Siskiyou National Forest is halfway between San Francisco, Ca. and Portland, Or.
Those forests promised a bountiful supply of timber. Mr. Weed needed strong men to cut down trees, chop wood and haul lumber. The lumberjacks were uneducated, low-skilled migrant workers who undertook an enormous amount of labor.
When the first Bagnonesi arrived between 1890 and 1910, the area was a giant construction site: roads, railways, bridges were taking shape, says historian Adriana Dadà, author of La Merica, a book that gives voice to the Bagnonesi migrant laborers in Northern California. “In 1914, Weed turned into a magnet town for the workers from the surrounding area because of the saloons and dance halls where men spent hours of leisure and pleasures at the end of the day”, Addà says. The lumber and milling businesses brought a high number of nefarious characters to the locale, and the Redding Free Press described Weed as the “Sodom and Gomorrah of Siskiyou County.”
The Bagnone lumberjacks would live together in rough wooden shacks, get up at five in the morning, scarf down mounds of food and go out into the woods to fell, strip, and stack logs.
Among the first settlers of Weed and the Siskyou County were the Bernabovi, the Luigi, and the Barberi families. Carmela Luigi was a beloved character. In 1907, Carmela fled to the US with several other Bagnone men. She had to join her fiancé Luigi Barbieri, who three years earlier was hired with his brother Antonio by the Long-Bell Lumber Company in Siskiyou County.
“Carmela was a real pioneer. She was the second woman to arrive in Weed when the town hardly existed on the maps,” says Dadà. “One of the first things her boyfriend did was to build an oven so she could make bread for the family.”
Carmela had seven children and lived to be 100 in Weed. The day she hit 100, on March 26, 1986, the local newspaper, Weed Press, wrote: “Ms. Barbieri was the second woman to become a resident of our city. She was a personal friend of our founder Abner Weed.”
That day she received congratulatory phone calls from her relatives in Bagnone, other family members in Indiana, and from US President Ronald Reagan. Carmela died in Weed shortly after.
Besides devoting her life to her husband and their children, Carmela provided a room and board to workers. She was a kind boarding house proprietor to her Italian guests with no family in the US. “She made bread in a brick oven twice a day. Weed residents and the nearby communities loved her delicious bread and Pan di Spagna or sponge cake,” reported the local newspaper.
At 90, she wrote a letter to her relatives in Italy communicating she had left to go and eat “il pane dalle sette croste” or the bread with seven crusts – meaning, the daily migrants’ life is hard work in difficult condition. When you bite the first crust off, a second, then a third and a fourth crust, and so on, will follow. The harsh search for a better life, the soft inner part of the bread or the crumb, requires a lot of patience, resilience, and endurance.
In 1947, Carmela’s daughter Katie became the owner of the Weed Steam Laundry & Dry Cleaners. She and her husband worked together for the next 33 years without taking a vacation.
Except for her sister Ines who settled in San Leandro, all of Carmela’s siblings lived in Weed. Her cousin Giuseppe left Weed for San Francisco to be a waiter at the world-famous Fairmont Hotel at 950 Mason Street.
Today, Carmela’s great-grandchildren are successful professionals. They have visited Bagnone and its sights that include three castles, the churches of San Niccolò, San Leonardo, and San Terenzio.
The local heritage museum, the Museo Archivio della Memoria, organized a photographic exhibition on the families portrayed in the book La Merica. The Bagnonesi combine two cultural identities. “We feel half Tuscans and half Ligurians,” explains Francesca Guastalli, director at Il Museo Archivio della Memoria. “We maintain an orientation toward both cultures. Due to cultural reasons, we are Tuscans but genetically we are a Ligurian ethnic group descending from the ancient Apuan Ligurians,” she says. “You can tell by our cuisine.” Their gastronomy is authentic Liguria’s cucina povera or the cooking of the poor. And it is terrific as evidenced by their specialties: the Testaroli, huge pancakes cut into pieces and served with pesto, the Lasagne Bastarde, a flavored dish made with chestnut flour, tossed with sausage, leek, and Parmesan cheese. As well, it is worth trying their savory cakes stuffed with Swiss chard and herbs.
Castagneti or chestnuts woods surrounds Bagnone. Through forested hills, you can walk along the Via Francigena. Each stage of the route connects to a historical town such as Pontremoli, a must-see. It is the quintessential heart of Lunigiana designed around Baroque palazzos with balconies overlooking winding alleys. The solid heart of Italy beats to its timeless rhythm in Pontremoli. Its slow time promises respite from the urban rat race.
This locale seduced the international singer-songwriter Zucchero “Sugar” Fornaciari, who has been living here since 1993. The musician from Reggio Emilia chose Pontremoli for his home in a difficult period of his life. “When I am out of ideas and lack inspiration, I walk out to the courtyard to look at the chickens,” he told the Italian press. “In the early 90s, I was dealing with serious existential depression. I was in a dark place: too many unanswered questions,” he confessed from his farmhouse named Lunisiana Soul that he shares with his second wife. “I had just released my album Miserere, a resounding success. But, as a man, I no longer knew where to stay or where to go. I had separated from my first wife,” he explained. “One day, I started wandering around the countryside of Lunigiana. It is such a mysterious corner of Italy, perhaps better known abroad than domestically. I was mesmerized by the beauty of nature. I wanted to find a farmhouse to renovate and do the construction work myself to improve my mood, distract myself with physical work, and move on. The moment I was about to give up, from a road up high in the mountains, I saw what I was looking for. A ruin to rebuilt sat in the middle of the valley. Well, this home saved my life. It saved me from depression.”
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