When the narrow gauge San Joaquin & Sierra Nevada Rail Road arrived just across the western Calaveras County border in October 1882 on its way east from Lodi, the railroad honored John Wallace
The histories of Angels Camp and Altaville are typical of many other towns in the California foothills, with their booms and busts, colorful characters, and almost century-long dependence on mining.
The first non-natives to live in the area were reputedly French trappers who settled in Happy Valley in the 1830s. Leading the Gold Rush miners to the area was Captain Charles M.
The history of Douglas Flat is typical of many other towns in the California foothills, with its booms and busts, colorful characters, and reliance first on mining and then on agriculture (Figure GLO)
Until quite recently, archaeological researchers developed culture-histories for the Sierran foothill region based on the more studied areas of the western Great Basin and California Central Valley.
The proto-historic is the period of European-Native American contact—the time between the prehistoric period with no written records, and the historic period when written records became common.
Close behind the prospectors and miners came the agriculturalists, families from the eastern states and Europe who saw opportunities for stock-raising and truck garden operations on the open grassland
Gold was first found in Calaveras County along the banks of the Mokelumne, Calaveras, and Stanislaus rivers, as well as in virtually every stream drainage.
Close behind the prospectors and miners came the agriculturalists, families from the eastern states and Europe who saw opportunities for stock-raising and truck garden operations on the open grassland
For many years Calaveras slumbered, but beginning in the 1920s and continuing to the present, water storage and hydroelectric generation began to play major roles in the economy.
Early Archaic deposits are quite rare in the Sierra Nevada foothills, identified locally at two sites, both discovered in buried stratigraphic contexts.
