Some of the lands in the Flowers Ranch area near Copperopolis were taken up in the 1850s, with farms and dwellings located on the ferry roads and along Littlejohns Creek. These farms tended to encompass large acreages, with livestock grazing the primary occupation. Shortly after the discovery of copper at Quail Hill, Napoleon City, and Copperopolis in 1860, however, more settlers moved to the area. The rush for gold that had begun with such enthusiasm in 1848 had ended by the mid-1850s, and unemployed miners and merchants were looking elsewhere for their livelihood. The copper discoveries, coupled with the unprecedented need for copper for shell casings for the Northern cause in the Civil War, created a boom that brought miners, laborers, merchants, saloon keepers, hotel keepers, and trades people to the burgeoning Copperopolis community.
An outgrowth of this boom was the settlement of the surrounding lands for agricultural purposes, as farmers scrambled to produce livestock, grain crops, fruit, and vegetables to provide foodstuffs for the hungry hordes. It is interesting to note that many of the early settlers in the Flowers Ranch area were natives of Ireland, perhaps drawn to the area by Thomas McCarty, proprietor of the nearby Log Cabin Ranch and Store, which provided provisions for both local miners and travelers on the Shirley Road to Angels Camp and the Stanislaus River ferries. In addition to farming, however, all of the landowners mined at one time or another 1.
- Charlie Stone (Copperopolis native and local historian) Interview of 1992. Notes on file, Foothill Resources, Ltd., Murphys,CA
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