The hills west of Auburn cloak golden history

People unfamiliar with the foothills might think all its Gold Rush-era communities survived into the 21st century. But some of the sites of the wealthiest mining settlements now are just knots of rural residential villages strung across the hills west of Auburn.Long before John Marshall?s famous gold discovery in Coloma in 1848, mountain guides, fur trappers, trinket traders and military scouts were exploring the lower slopes of the Sierra Nevada, where Native Americans had ancient tribal roots. As more adventurers arrived in the Western Frontier, trading posts evolved to hubs of development, with boarding houses, stage stops and service businesses forming the first villages.Once word of the region?s golden hills and rich rivers was heard around the world, the outposts burst into boom towns serving the transient population of swarming prospectors. Now cradling contemporary country homes and rustic ranches, the territory hemmed in by Bald Hill, Chili Hill, Crater Hill and Gold Hill held many of the foothills earliest settlements.The area that eventually took on the name Ophir originally had been explored by Spaniards who trained horses there, dubbing it Spanish Corral. But one of the first villages founded by Anglos was Frytown, where a few cabins sat on the banks of the cascading Auburn Ravine creek, about two miles south of modern-day Ophir. Named for a Mr. Fry, one of the owners of the general store in the vicinity, the encampment?s nearest neighbors were settled at Millertown, Dutch Ravine and Doty?s Flat. . The creeks allowed miners to strip gold nuggets and flakes glittering in their beds, but the rounded hills cloaked its caches. Marbled with veins of gold-rich quartz, the low mountains didn?t give up their riches easily, so companies formed with crews of workers hand digging tunnels deep into the hillsides and picking and blasting ore from their bellies.Short rail lines were constructed to load the harvest of quartz ore into carts that were toted to stamp mills where the rocks were crushed, and the gravel washed with mercury, to facilitate the extraction of gold. The hills were peppered with stamp mills erected on hillsides so gravity would drop the smashed pebbles down through slots in the floor of the crushing platforms to cubicles where quicksilver was used to harvest the precious metal.The Three Star near Chili Hill, the Gold Blossom on Crater Hill, and the Hathaway mine near Bald Hill were three of the largest stamp mills, with 20 mallets each. The Oro Fino, a mill on the east side of Bald Hill, was one of the richest mines in the area, bringing in more than $1,280,000 in gold between 1850 and 1900, according to the booklet ?There Lived in the Land of Ophir,? a collection of local history and family remembrances compiled by area residents. About 500 people were living in the Ophir area, tucked into the cleavage of Bald and Crater hills, when the first legislature of the new state of California was divided into 27 counties. Ophir and Auburn fell within the boundaries of Sutter County and they both made bids to be named county seat. Allegedly Ophir lost to Auburn by one vote. One year later in 1851, the state was re-apportioned to add Placer, Nevada, Klamath and Trinity counties, reassigning Ophir and Auburn to Placer.The wealth sitting beneath Chili, Crater, Gold and Bald hills ensured Ophir?s early success, with the population constantly dipping and climbing as prospectors moved down to the lower elevations when winter storms hit and traveling back into the high country after the spring thaw. Ophir prospered until a fire destroyed nearly the entire town in 1853. Although the mining companies continued to glean gold from the hills, the business district never revived.Other mining camps ? such as Gold Hill and Virginiatown ? suffered similar fates: building up to thriving communities and routinely beaten down by fires that razed their stick-frame homes and commercial buildings. Before becoming nothing more than a historical marker along the roadside, Virginiatown was home to enterprising miners who constructed the Gold Hill and Bear River Ditch ? a 14-mile manmade channel that provided a consistent supply of water to miners. Prospecting efforts flourished as the system allegedly spawned the introduction of the sluice box method of gold extraction. Once gold fever subsided, farming and ranching took over as the economic mainstays of the county, with pastures of grazing livestock and blossoming orchards blossoming covering humps of land where stamp mill mallets once pounded out a steady rhythm. Today, the hills west of Auburn clutch handsome new estates, modest bungalows, fruit farms and weekend ranches.Not all Gold Rush settlements are living on as modern communities, but each help form the foundation of foothills history.