Wonders Of The Golden West Part 10.....

Continuing our journey west on the Gold Rush trail over the Carson Pass Highway, Sierra Nevada mountains, site of the Maiden's Grave,  burial place of Rachel Melton (d. 1850), a young girl who died while traveling to California via covered wagon.

Our first stop of the day was Columbia.

 Columbia is a former California Gold Rush boomtown located in the Sierra Nevada foothills and is preserved as a California state historic park and a National Historic Landmark that preserves the original, gold-rush-town flavour.

Founded in 1850 when gold was discovered, at its height it was California's second-largest city. It was even considered briefly as a site for the state capitol of California.

Columbia's main street, part of the Columbia State Historic Park, is closed to automobile traffic but is open to horses, carriages, bicycles and pedestrians.

Within weeks of the discovery of gold in the vicinity of Columbia, thousands of miners arrived and the population climbed to 5,000.

 1852, there were 8 hotels, 4 banks, 17 general stores, 2 firehouses, 2 bookstores,

 1 newspaper, 3 churches, and over 40 drinking/gambling establishments.

 In 1854, Columbia's first fire destroyed 6 city blocks.

 The town was rebuilt using brick and iron materials. In 1857, another fire burned down nearly everything else, except the brick buildings. Columbia never became a ghost town.  In 1945, California created Columbia State Historic Park from the remains of the historical buildings of the city.

Columbia has been used in many films such as Little House on the Prairie, The Lone Ranger, Wells Fargo

and High Noon.  In fact the photo below is the house where Will Kane (Gary Cooper) and Amy Fowler (Grace Kelly) lived in the film.

This post was supposed to be about Lake Tahoe but I forgot just how many photographs we'd taken on the way when we stopped at Columbia, so I hope you'll join me for Wonders Of The Golden West Part 11 when I will show you Lake Tahoe I promise.