In the 1850's wagon roads were gradually constructed in the mining regions of the Mother Lode, Linking the mining camps with each other and with larger towns. A road from Georgetown began to expand eastward, eventually connecting with Lake Tahoe. Pony Express riders started using that road as the shortest connection between the two towns in 1860 and 1861. Speed was of the essence for Pony Express riders, and they pushed their horses as fast as possible. Accordingly, they required frequent rest stops along the routes to change horses, and occasionally riders, before the hard ridden mounts dropped from exhaustion.
At the top of a particularly steep pull, approximately twelve miles east of Georgetown and a slightly more than 4,000 feet elevation, just such a rest stop was built. Call twelve-Mile house, the small inn and stable furnished Pony Express riders, later freight wagons and cattle teamsters passing through, with fresh horses, hot meals, and beds.
Eventually, the road use expanded to include stages and travelers who asked for more comfort at their stops. John J Quinn was given a 163 acre land grant in 1889. Quinn took advantage of the swelling coach travel market to expand the Twelve-Mile House encompassed in his land grant, turning it into a larger hostelry and inn. He called it the Quintette Inn, and the small community that grew up around it, Quintette.
The two Barklage brothers from Georgia Slide, established a sawmill near the inn to service their large timber holdings in the immediate area, and also financed the Blue Bird Mine. The mine and logging camp helped support Quintette for several years. In 1889 the Barklage sawmill was one of the largest in the area, employing 23 men. The first lumber to be exported from El Dorado County, probably to Australia, were two railroad carloads of sugar pine from the Barklage Mill. It was reported that many of the logs ranged from 6 to 7 feet in diameter.
Between 1889 and 1901 it was frequently speculated that a survey was being made of the Georgetown Divide for the Southern Pacific Railroad. The proposed route was through Loomis, Salmon Falls, Cool, Greenwood, and Georgetown, then along the Georgetown Ditch eastward into the High Sierra. Frederick Henderson Douglas, one of a group of men cruising timber for a Michigan lumber company along the Georgetown Divide, saw an opportunity in the making if the railroad were to be built, and set out to acquire as much property as possible in the proposed right-of-way. By the, Mr. Quinn was in financial difficulty, and was easily persuaded to sell to Douglas 160 acres with water rights, including the Quintette Inn and surrounding buildings, for a total of $800.00.
The railroad never materialized, but Douglas firmly believed it would ultimately happen. He continued to buy up property until he had over 1,000 acres on the probable route. He moved his family to California, and continued to operate the Quintette Inn as a boarding house and post office every summer, maintaining a large corral near the Inn to fence cattle stopping on the long drive to summer pasture. The wagon road in front of the Inn was extremely wide to accommodate the herds.
As surrounding timber was cut, diminishing the ready wood supply, sawmills were dismantled and moved to new sites. By 1903, the Barklage Mill had been relocated to a site high upon Bacon Creek, and the Blue Bird Mine was closed, leaving the small town to evaporate like so many sister communities. The Quintette Inn, which housed a post office, lobby, kitchen, and rooms upstairs, along with a shed and old barn, were all that remained.
