By Judy J. Pinegar The earliest settlement in Nevada County was made in the summer of 1848 at a place called Rose’s Corral which was located between the Anthony House and Bridgeport. Early in the spring of 1849 a group of mountaineers from Oregon known as the Greenwood Company mined for gold at Illinois Bar [...]
By Judy J. Pinegar This little town in Nevada County is located on the banks of the South Fork of the Yuba River. It is located off Highway 20 between Nevada City and Interstate 80. Washington boasts a population on about 200, but that fluctuates seasonally and the town has a lot of tourist traffic [...]
By Judy J. Pinegar The first residents of the area were the Maidu Indians, who migrated in about 1833 from the Sacramento Valley. The four main areas they lived were the sites now called Bridgeport, Lake Wildwood, Indian Springs and Money Flat. However everything changed with the discovery of gold and the white settlers moved [...]
Picture courtesy of the Rough and Ready Chamber of Commerce By Judy J. Pinegar The first established settlement in Rough and Ready was made in the fall of 1849 by a mining company from Wisconsin known as the Rough and Ready Company. Their leader, Captain A. A. Townsend, named the company after General Zachary Taylor [...]
The Empire Mine is the site of the oldest, largest, and richest gold mine in California. From 1850 to its closing in 1956, it produced 5.8 million ounces of gold.This 5.8 million ounces of gold would fill a box 7 feet on each side. It is estimated that this represented only 20% of the available [...]
Nevada County Narrow Gage Museum, Grass Valley, CA The need for rail service in the semi-mountainous and wooded area of Grass Valley and Nevada City was precipitated by mining operations subsequent to the California Gold Rush. In addition, timber operators wanted to make their land accessible to the Southern Pacific Company in Colfax. On March [...]
This monument to Sheriff David Fulton Douglass is located just off of Airport Road near Nevada City, California. It lays in the woods all by itself, with no houses nearby. The monument represents where, on July 26, 1896, Sheriff Douglass, along with a bandit, shot and killed each other. They are both buried at this [...]
