An old gold-mining town in eastern California. Not far from Aurora Nevada where Samuel Clemens - before he became Mark Twain - almost made it rich as a miner, not writer. Prospectors were in the area by the late 1850s; it became a formal town in 1876. The population peaked near 10,000 people during the boom years of late 1870s/early 1880s. The mines were productive up to the beginning of WWII but the population had fallen to below 700 by 1910. Considered a semi-ghost town by 1915, a fire destroyed much of the town in 1932, the last resident left in 1943, and it became a California State Park in 1962.

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