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    Auburn
    Auburn
    Auburn
    Ebook154 pages41 minutes

    Auburn

    By Art Sommers

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    About this ebook

    Auburn, the county seat of Placer County, was founded during the Gold Rush in 1848. Unlike many such towns in the Mother Lode, Auburn has remained a vibrant and growing town ever since. This city s relevance since the initial influx of gold seekers is due in part to its location at a nexus of transportation routes, both old and new. Halfway between San Francisco and Reno and at an elevation of just over 1,000 feet above the fog and below the snow Auburn is a very attractive place to live. Furthermore, it is a place with sincere respect for its roots, as evidenced by its restored old town, preserved courthouse building, and other historic structures throughout town.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherArcadia Publishing
    Release dateJul 28, 2008
    ISBN9781439620861
    Auburn
    Author

    Art Sommers

    Auburn native Arthur Sommers received his bachelor of arts in history from San Francisco State College in 1972 and has been collecting historic artifacts of the Mother Lode for more than a decade. In this volume of vintage photography, Sommers presents an Auburn that has evolved from Gold Rush times while retaining much of its identity. The majority of images in this book come from his private collection of early Placer County views of mining, industry, business, and family life in the foothills of California.

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      Book preview

      Auburn - Art Sommers

      1912.

      INTRODUCTION

      The political situation changed quickly in California during a single decade in the middle of the 19th century. During the last months of 1846, the United States wrested control of California from Mexico as a result of the Bear Flag Revolution. The revolution, which lasted less than a year, was part of the larger Mexican-American War fought from 1846 to 1848. The final surrender of Mexican forces in California took place near Los Angeles in January 1847. James Marshall discovered gold while constructing a lumber mill at Coloma for John Sutter in January 1848. Just a month later, the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo ended the Mexican-American War, and Mexico officially ceded California to the United States. The news of the discovery of gold spread throughout the world, and the California Gold Rush was on by the early months of 1849. Thousands were arriving in California from all over the world to hopefully strike it rich in the gold fields of the foothills of the Sierra Nevada. It is interesting to consider the possibilities if Mexico had still controlled California when James Marshall discovered gold at Coloma.

      The mineral wealth flowing out of the newly acquired territory of California prompted U.S. politicians to lobby hard to make California a state. On September 9, 1850, California was admitted into the union as the 31st state.

      Placer County was created on April 25, 1851, from parts of Sutter and Yuba Counties, 2 of the original 27 counties established in 1850. Continued population growth from the influx of immigrants from all over the world led California politicians to create new counties from some of the original counties just a year after California had been admitted into the union. Auburn was fixed as Placer’s county seat. This was not a big change for Auburn, as it had been the county seat of the original Sutter County.

      In the five years from 1846 to 1851, California evolved from a territory of Mexico to a territory of the United States to the 31st state in the union. By 1851, the town of Auburn was the official county seat for the newly formed Placer County. Prior to 1848, the State of California, Placer County, and the town of Auburn did not exist.

      The original center of Auburn was located in what is now called Old Town Auburn at the junction of many small ravines where early miners panned for gold. Two major destructive fires swept through the wooden buildings of Old Town Auburn in the 1850s. There was a concerted effort to rebuild using brick. Many brick buildings constructed during the 1850s still stand today. The roads from Forest Hill, Coloma, Placerville, Colfax, Nevada City, Newcastle, and Sacramento converged at Auburn. The Central Pacific Railroad reached Auburn in 1865, but the train depot was located about a mile from Old Town Auburn. The depot was a magnet for business development, and many store owners in Old Town Auburn relocated or built a second store up near it. This resulted in an area around the depot becoming known as East Auburn. An Auburn post office was located in Old Town and an East Auburn post office near the Central Pacific Railroad Depot on Railroad Avenue. The empty area between Old Town Auburn and the railroad’s depot eventually filled in with businesses opening up all along High Street and Lincoln Way.

      One

      OLD TOWN AUBURN

      Old Town Auburn is the oldest part of Auburn. It is located at the juncture of many small ravines that drain the hills around Auburn. These ravines join the Auburn Ravine near where all the waters pass through a small gap in the hills to flow down through the town of Ophir and on past the town of Lincoln. This gap is now crossed by the Union Pacific railroad trestle. All of the waters from the many ravines are now routed through large pipes under Interstate 80. In 1848, Auburn was known as North Fork Dry Diggins and Woods Dry Diggings, but by the summer of 1849, the name Auburn cropped up, and this name was used two different times the town was incorporated. The early structures in Auburn were all made of wood, but they were built so close to each other that two major fires in the 1850s nearly wiped out the town. These blazes led many business owners to build new structures using brick.

      Old Town Auburn started drying up after businessmen began relocating to East Auburn during the first part of 20th century. The fire of 1905, which destroyed the city hall building, was just another nail in the coffin of Old Town Auburn. The Great Depression of the 1930s precluded any revival efforts. The 1960s and 1970s put an emphasis on new growth, with little thought to maintaining what already existed. Saving old buildings was not a high priority in most communities on the West Coast during first half of the century. Many buildings in Old Town Auburn that had not been torn down stood empty or experienced a high turnover rate of businesses. In the 1970s, an exodus of people out of the Bay Area into the

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