Hornitos CA.
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click photo to enlarge |
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. |
click photo to enlarge |
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. |
click photo to enlarge |
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. |
click photo to enlarge |
click photo to enlarge |
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