Hornitos CA.

 

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Hornitos was our first stop in out adventure driving up through the California Mother Lode country. Because it was a ways off route 49 we almost didn't go and would have missed one of the best ghost towns. Like many gold mining towns Hornitos was started in 1849 and by the end of the 1850 has about 6,000 people. Hornitos though was populated by the less desirables evicted from nearby Quartzburg. Hornitos quickly became a rough town.

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Like most towns it of course burned down and was rebuilt using adobe and brick instead of wood. On our trip we would learn that most gold miners barely found enough to get by and the people who really got rich were those supplying the gold miners. By 1870 the population had grown to 15,000 people and had a dozen hotels and 16 saloons. The ground in Hornitos is very hard and the Mexican folks in town preferred to bury their dead above ground in graves built of adobe and rock. The graves were dome shaped and resembled ovens used for baking bread in Mexico. The name Hornitos means "little ovens" in Spanish.

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The first gold to be mined in the gold rush towns would be placer gold, which is gold often found in the streams. Placer mining is the mining of alluvial deposits. After a few years the placer gold would dry up and they would then move on to hard rock mining. The building in the lower left is Ghirardeli Chocolate Company opened in 1856.

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               click photo to enlarge