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). The prosperity of the community was first based on the rich placer gold found in Coyote Creek and its tributaries Wild Goose Gulch, Missouri Gulch, and Pennsylvania Gulch.. First the “easy” gold was found in the streambeds and mined with pans, rockers, and long toms. The miners soon traced the gold’s source to the ancient Tertiary Central Hill Channel beneath the Table Mountains. Shafts were sunk (Figure mining), drifts and tunnels were run under the tables and, when water became plentiful, the hillsides were scoured with hydraulic monitors.
The town, however, developed slowly. The mines were deep, rich, and extensive, with most of the diggings on the south side of Coyote Creek. In 1857, although the camp was described as having “a permanence”—primarily because of its agricultural facilities and conveniences for irrigation—it was also characterized as dull, with few people in town, and having no post office or express office. Most of the families were Welsh or Italian, with 28 children in school (San Andreas Independent). The post office was at Murphys, which also served many of the other nearby placer-mining communities (Heckendorn & Wilson 1856:105).
In the later nineteenth century, several mining companies continued to work their claims on Coyote Creek, including some companies of Chinese. The most extensive mining in Douglas Flat, however, shifted to the Ohio and Buckminster hydraulic claims below Table Mountain northwest of the town. Hydraulicking ceased about 1900 when the tailings pond south of the highway was filled, although a long, north-trending tunnel was prospected intermittently from the 1930s to the early 1950s (Clark and Lydon 1962:201). In the 1950s, a dredge on pontoons worked up Coyote Creek from Vallecito through Douglas Flat (John Davies 2007), erasing many of the features of the early-day placer mines along the creek.
