This documentary explores the history of Nevada City, California, a prominent city during the Gold Rush era. It begins by describing the initial discovery of gold in California by James Marshall in 1848, which led to a massive influx of prospectors. Nevada City, initially known as Deer Creek Dry Diggins, quickly became a central hub for mining activity due to its rich gold deposits. The documentary details the challenges faced by early miners, including the transition from placer mining to more complex techniques like hydraulic mining. It highlights the contributions of individuals like E.E. Matteson and Eli Miller, who developed innovative methods for gold extraction. The narrative also touches upon the transformation of Nevada City into a bustling town with a diverse population, including a significant Chinese community. The establishment of essential infrastructure, such as the Nevada County Narrow Gauge Railroad, further solidified the city's importance. The documentary concludes by emphasizing Nevada City's enduring legacy as a well-preserved example of Gold Rush-era architecture and its continued efforts to honor its historical past.

Full Transcript of the Video:

[Music] In 1849, California was a land of golden dreams and rich opportunities.

Gold-hungry prospectors flocked to the sea on Nevada foothills, anxious to grab up nuggets from cold rushing streams.

Overnight, mining camps became towns, and almost as quickly these towns were abandoned.

The lure of easier pickings up the road made a gold town a ghost town within months.

But there was one great city which endured, a city that became the queen city of the gold rush, Nevada City.

[Music] Hello, I'm Tim O'Connor.

California virtually was the center of the world during the gold rush era period of between 1848 and 1856.

I mean thousands of gold seekers came from all over the world to the Sierra Nevada foothills here.

And these migrants built and established hundreds of towns up and down the 49er Trail.

I guess just following the next call for the next gold strike.

Most of these towns today would just be colorful names on a historic map.

But not in Nevada City.

This center of the gold rush thrives today as a modern day tourist mecca, while it still clings very, very tightly to its historic past.

I mean this city has preserved so many of its gold rush era buildings that downtown is listed on the National Register for Historic Places.

Why did Nevada City become the most famous and influential of all the gold rush era cities? Well, come along with me.

I'll introduce you to some colorful characters and some famous faces and some golden discoveries that led to her fame and fortune.

And also to her indelible mark on California.

[Music] One of California's earliest pioneer businessmen was Captain John Sutter.

He was building a sawmill along a fork of the American River at Coloma near Sacramento.

In charge of the mill was his partner, Marshall from New Jersey.

One winter morning, Marshall had his Mormon workers shut off the water to the mill race they were digging.

He walked the shallow water of the mill race, checking the depth of the ditch.

Marshall noticed small pebbles of a dull gold color under the water.

As he gathered the small pebbles and flakes, Marshall was hopeful it was real gold he held in his hand.

It was January 24, 1848.

Within the year the world would hear about the gold discovered in California and the world would come.

[Music] As thousands of pioneers crowded the overland trails or sailed into San Francisco Bay, every creek and river in the foothills became crowded with prospectors.

These gold seekers of 1849 blazed their own 49er trail through what today is known as California's gold country.

There was talk that a creek up north was yielding over a pound of gold a day.

Thousands rushed to the new strike at Deer Creek Dry Diggins, soon to be called Nevada City.

They found a pretty good supply here on the banks of Deer Creek, right here in Nevada City.

And so they concentrated and they built a settlement here in Nevada City.

[Music] Things very happened very, very drastically overnight.

Suddenly there were streets that appeared or so many camps, so many tents were set up, so many saloons naturally.

It just happened basically overnight.

I mean at one time between Grass Valley and Nevada City or vice versa, I mean there were 20,000 people living here.

The gold fever rages as bad as ever and the quality collected has not diminished but increased.

Provisions, clothing and all the necessities of life are the most exorbitant prices.

Living was always expensive in this country, but now it passes all reasons.

William Rich.

Within the first year, the gold camp along Deer Creek had two names.

Caldwell's Upper Store, Deer Creek Dry Diggins.

Finally the name Nevada, which means snow covered, was chosen in 1850.

After the state of Nevada took the same name in 1864, the town officially became Nevada City.

[Music] The first mining that was done in California was all placer mining.

Placer mining involved washing dirt to separate gold.

Gold is heavier than most other kinds of materials that may be common in most minerals and certainly most dirt.

And so that's one of the ways that you can use gravity and water to separate these two things.

When that had been pretty well played out, or at least the miners thought so, they moved further and further away from water because they had reasoned by looking and observation, empirical methods, that the gravel surrounding and nearby creeks also contained gold because they too were at one time part of the water courses.

So they did their dry diggings, their dry mining.

They also dug deep into the ground straight down vertically and that was called coyote and coyote holes.

Then they went straight down in the ground and brought the up, but it all depended on water.

Once they got the gravel, they took it to water and took it to water is the key.

[Music] Prospectors had dug up great piles of gold-rich dirt.

Now their task was separating the tiny gold flakes from that dirt.

But the current method of hauling the dirt to the water, then pouring water into the sluice box was slow and back-breaking work.

There had to be a better way.

It took a couple of enterprising Nevada City prospectors to find a more efficient method of taking gold from the earth.

And California's terrain would be changed forever.

[Music] So a guy named E.

E.

Madison, a fellow from Connecticut, said, "Well, look, why don't we put a nozzle on this hose and blast down the dirt and it'll all run down these ditches and so on.

We won't have to work so hard.

" Eli Miller fashioned a nozzle of sheet metal, which E.

E.

Madison attached to a hose, which had been perfected by Antoine Chabot, and washed down hillsides of gravel for small little hills and then later on, the whole mountains.

But the hydraulic method was also very destructive, as one in two men operations gave way to huge conglomerates and millions of dollars were invested in building dams and reservoirs.

[Music] With all this water power needed for mining, a young Nevada City miner switched from gold digger to water supplier.

Charles Marsh found that prospectors too impatient to build their own water systems would pay Marsh for his water.

Charles Marsh then embarked on a business venture that would one day switch electric power on in California.

A man named Charles Marsh, who incidentally also apparently was the first white miner to arrive at Nevada City on July 30, 1849, and stayed here.

And stayed here for the rest of his life, at least until the last two or three months of his life.

And he made a career, among other things, of developing water sources and creating mining ditches.

And one of the very first ditches bringing water into the diggings near Nevada City was one that he and some partners who put up the money and did some of the work put together in the fall of 1850.

And it ended up bringing water into a reservoir up about where the county building is now the Rood Center, up in the hill above Nevada City.

There are different ways of carrying water.

You couldn't always run it along in dirt bottoms because oftentimes as you came down the mountain you, for instance, crossed a ravine where a stream was coming down there, where water drained down through.

So every time the crossed a ravine, every time they crossed a channel, they would build a flume, which is essentially a trough.

It's like a watering trough with no end.

The water that spilled down the great flume works to the mines came out of dams high in the Sierra, dams built by Charles Marsh of Nevada City.

By 1854 he owned the Consolidated Rock Creek, Deer Creek, and South Yuba Canal Company.

His company would eventually become the first of more than the 500 corporations today that make up Pacific Gas and Electric Company.

In the 1850s Nevada City prospectors were looking for gold nuggets, flakes, and dust.

They panned streams or dug into the dirt.

Then in June of 1850, George McKnight stumbled over an outcropping of quartz rock in neighboring Grass Valley.

The rock was ribboned with gold.

It was the first discovery of gold in quartz in the area.

A few months later another ledge of gold in quartz was discovered, and this ledge would lead to an underground mountain of gold and the greatest gold mine in California, the Empire Mine.

Arguably it could be the greatest quartz mine.

It was certainly one that operated off and on over a longer period than any other mine.

It was closed for, like most mines, it was closed for long periods at times, but it was first discovered about 1850 and it did not actually stop producing gold until about 1956.

So that was more than 100 years.

Every morning before sun up we crowd on the skiff that takes us hundreds of feet down.

When we get out it's night.

I never see daylight except on my day off.

In its more than 100 year reign as the greatest gold mine in California, the Empire brought forth more than 6 million ounces of gold.

This contributed greatly to the more than 17 million ounces of gold taken from Nevada County since 1850.

Nevada County mines produce more gold than any other area of California.

This made Nevada City the richest city of the California gold rush.

As a result people wrote about this.

They talked about this place and more people came just because they had the seed.

The people who came would add their own mark on the Queen City of the gold rush and some made their mark on the entire state of California and the world.

A young mining engineer named George Hurst came west from Missouri during the gold rush.

He came to the gold seekers destination city Nevada City.

Because of his education in mining he was able to invest wisely in local mines, but it was his insider friendship with the local assayers that would seal his fate as one of the richest men in the west.

In 1959 when the assays were made or that damn blue stuff as it was referred to from the Comstock area of Nevada, which is now Virginia City, was assayed here in Nevada City and also simultaneously it was confirmed by Atwood in Grass Valley.

Here it was James J Ott the assayer in Ott's Assay office.

He was the first that got wind of that and he was one of the ones that took off for the Comstock and there's where his big bucks were made.

This Nevada City miner would eventually establish the University of California and one of the greatest family fortunes in the world.

He would one day be known as the greatest American author of his time, but when Samuel Clemens arrived in Nevada City he was taking his first steps on the long road to fame and fortune.

There's no doubt about it that Sam Clemens, Mark Twain was the most famous person ever to sign the register at the National Hotel.

He returned from the Sandwich Islands in 1866 and landed in San Francisco where he had worked in the newspaper business prior to going to the islands.

His buddy said, "Well look, why don't you lecture about what you've seen over there.

You talk a good line.

" Now let's keep in mind that Mark Twain was in his 30s.

We always think of Mark Twain as the big white mustache, white haired sage in a white linen suit with a big black cigar.

All historians agree that Mark Twain was one of the finest platform lecturers that this country ever developed as well as being a literary genius.

She was a great beauty of the gold rush era who came to perform and then stayed for several years.

Dancer Lola Montes was already a legendary femme fatale when she arrived in July 1853.

Her famous act was called the Spider Dance because she would knock imitation spiders off her hoops as she danced in quite daring attire.

She was also noted for her affairs with the rich and the famous.

She was credited with starting a revolution in Bavaria as the mistress of King Ludwig.

Lola encouraged scandal but may have grown tired of being notorious when she decided to retire for a few years near Nevada City.

She was quite a celebrity during her stay between 1853 and 1856.

Women were rare in California during the early years of the gold rush.

The miners felt this keenly.

Of all the hardships their diaries spoke of, being without female companionship and their cooking was high on the list of complaints.

This meant great business opportunities for women.

Another entrepreneur in Nevada City in the 1850s was Eleanor Dumont, a French lady who arrived by stagecoach from Marysville.

She was very nice, well dressed in her 20s.

No one had any idea what was going on.

A few days later she had rented a storefront on Broad Street and opened a gambling hall.

And my goodness, what in the world was this? A woman running a gambling hall? She was very popular because she was a gambler.

And you must remember that the population in those days was basically 80-85% or more.

A single man and of course they like to gamble.

She introduced the well-known game of Ventières, which is 21, along with other types of games.

She was also known as a.

.

.

she didn't take any hassle from the miners.

She ran a clean house.

She served the best champagne, French of course, imported.

It was kind of like.

.

.

like creme de la creme, shall we say.

Eventually, Eleanor left Nevada City and fell on hard times.

As she grew older, a light fuzz developed over her lip.

The once great beauty of Nevada City became known as Madame Mustache.

As Nevada City grew rich in gold, the Queen City of the Gold Rush also grew rich in cultures.

The most colorful and dominant of all the new immigrants were the Chinese.

Well, there was Chinese arriving here in 1849, 50, 51.

Roughly about 68,000 arrived by 1852.

They were kind of late comers on the Gold Rush.

Then in 1852 about 20,000 Chinese came over.

Most Americans thought it was their gold, and they weren't going to let these guys get any of their gold.

So they would come up to Deer Creek, the Yuba, and start just working for gold.

And the white guys would chase them off and tell them to leave and destroy all their things.

The Chinese were tolerated in Nevada City.

During the Gold Rush between 1849 and 1856, they were needed as laborers to build the ditches, flumes, and dams for hydraulic mining.

A good portion of Commercial Street in Nevada City became Chinatown.

Through my research of the whole gold country, Auburn and Nevada City are the only two towns that really have anything left that was Chinese.

The Chinese were always an important source of labor for building projects.

In addition to building the intricate flume and ditch systems during the Gold Rush, their labor talents were also needed for Nevada County's biggest project of the 1870s.

A railroad line was finally going to be built linking Nevada City and Grass Valley with the Central Pacific Line to San Francisco.

The Chinese were needed to help lay the tracks over steep mountains and around sheer cliffs.

Tracks for the new Nevada County narrow gauge railroad.

Nevada County Grass Valley and Nevada City long felt the need for better transportation.

Their goods came by boat to Marysville and then by stage freight wagon from Marysville up through Newtown into Nevada City.

And then there was the spur that went through rough and ready and on to Grass Valley.

It was a very small line in the summer, but in the winter when the mud was axle deep, it was really rough.

As I said, a railroad was a status symbol and also was an absolute economic necessity.

They had a big building in 1874 and of course they built some coal facts toward Grass Valley and Nevada City.

They had to do that for obvious reasons.

The rolling stock and the rails and so on came off the Central Pacific freight trains at coal facts.

They built a large trestle across the Bear River and in 1876 the railroad was ready to operate and it was certain narrow gauge 22 miles long and it served the community well clear up until 1942.

[music] Nevada County narrow gauge's famous engine number five found a new home in Hollywood and has appeared in many movies.

However, Nevada City citizens brought the steam engine back home in a continuing effort to preserve the Queen City's historic past.

Well, Nevada City, I think, could still be called the Queen of the Northern Mines.

I mean the architecture is still there thanks to a great ordinance which was passed several years ago and works by several individuals as well as the historically minded persons who devolved all the energy to make this town what it is today.

The University of Historic Places, National Places, it's a unique town that there is none like it up and down the model road.

I mean the architecture of some of it actually is the same as in Sonoa or Jackson or Boon or Prasoville or whatever but nevertheless it is truly unique.

Today, Nevada City is an outstanding, if not the outstanding example of gold country architecture in the state of California.

The League of California Cities selected Nevada City as a prime example of a town pulling itself up by its own bootstraps.

The buildings in downtown Nevada City are historic not only in fact but in terms of being registered with the federal government and the state government.

There's a national registry in which the whole district is a historic district.

There aren't very many places in this country where so many blocks are set off that way.

If somebody from 150 years ago were to be able to come here now, you or they could find their way around.

You can look out here and you will see the same hills, you will see the same creeks, you will see the same buildings and streets that you will see in the old old photographs.

I often will stand at the top of Broad Street early on a Sunday morning.

Nobody's out, nobody's about and I can imagine myself a hundred years ago or 60 years ago or 130 years ago.

You can actually put yourself in any part of this time.

The street is just simply out there being used as it was before.

There are stores that were stores then and that are stores now and that look not a lot different physically from the stores that were here a hundred years ago.

There are hotels still acting as hotels.

We not only have people walking on the streets and driving cars on, but we actually still have horses pulling carriages on the streets.

And so that you can get a feel, you can get a look at it.

Instead of it, unlike a Disneyland, which is fabricated, which is invented, which is all a myth based on a reality that maybe existed somewhere else in some past country.

This is at least based on a real place, a real time, real things that did happen.

Yes, Nevada City was a place where things happened.

A place where the largest gold mines operated, where just young prospectors could become great men and establish the very foundations of our state.

A city that gold seekers the world over made their destination.

A city of rich culture and historic beauty where the past is preserved for the future.

Nevada City is truly the queen of the gold rush.

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