On this site, Charlotte (Charlie) Parkhurst cast the first ballot by a woman in an American presidential election on November 3, 1868. She masqueraded as a man for much of her life, was a stagecoach driver in the Mother Lode Country during the Gold Rush days, and shot and killed at least one bandit. In her later years she drove a stagecoach in this area. She died in 1879, and not until then was she found to be a woman. She is buried in Watsonville.