Some communities come together via connected histories, common access or linked locales. With the villages of Alta, Dutch Flat and Gold Run, it’s all of the above.
Cradled in the forests about 30 miles east of Auburn, this trio of mountain hamlets grew out of the Gold Rush era. With glittering flakes in its rivers, and hidden lodes in its mountains, the territory was one of the richest gold mining regions in the state.
But the first enterprise that brought commerce to the district was water. Early entrepreneurs recognized the value of water to prospectors working claims at lower elevations.
They founded companies to capture and distribute water via wood flumes and hand-dug canals. They let gravity carry water from the shoulders of the Bear River all the way down to the soles of the foothills. By 1857, there were more than 4,000 miles of waterways supplying the gold camps.
The flumes consumed millions of board feet of lumber annually for new extensions and restorations of existing channels. Heavy snowfalls, spring rains, landslides and falling branches repeatedly knocked down sections of the wood chutes, requiring constant repairs and replacements.
Two brothers, Allen and George Towle, saw potential profits in supplying lumber to the water companies. Holding claim to approximately 19,000 acres of oak, fir and pine forests, they organized a logging operation, built sawmills and eventually had lumberyards buzzing throughout the region. The settlement where the loggers and mill workers lived was a company town called Towle.
A few miles away, German miners had made camp in a basin that became known as Dutch Flat. By 1860, Dutch Flat had the county’s largest voting population at 501, which was nearly one-tenth of Placer’s entire populace.
The town built up with provisions and grocery stores, 17 saloons, numerous clothing and dry goods stores, breweries, blacksmith shops, hardware stores, tin smiths, hotels, three schools, a drug store and one church. In the middle of the decade, during the two years it took to lay the tracks of the Central Pacific Railroad up the western slope of the Sierra Nevada, Dutch Flat became a major freight station and the terminus of the Dutch Flat-Donner Lake Toll Road.
At one time, more than 2,000 Chinese immigrants were living in the vicinity, working on the rail line or paying excessive fees for the privilege of mining. At the crossroads to mining settlements in Foresthill and Iowa Hill, Dutch Flat matured into a little city.
To the southeast, the village of Mountain Springs also was transitioning from a rowdy mining camp to a proper municipality, thanks to Orrin Whitcomb Hollenbeck.
A native of Massachusetts who was a former teacher, Hollenbeck came to California on a steamship in 1854, landing in San Francisco before making his way into the foothills of the Sierra Nevada. He prospected in Mountain Springs, which already was a rough and raucous mining camp, before moving on to Nevada County.
Hollenbeck returned to Mountain Springs 18 months later, intent on turning it into a civilized city. He laid out the streets of town, erected a hotel and lobbied successfully for a post office. In 1862, the name of the prospering city was changed to Gold Run, in honor of the riches reportedly running from its streams.
When the tracks of the Central Pacific Railroad cut through the precinct in 1865, it cemented the prosperity of Towle, Dutch Flat and Gold Run. But nothing stays the same forever.
Dutch Flat and Gold Run relied heavily on hydraulic mining, with water cannons firing thundering streams of water at the hillsides to expose caches of gold-rich ore. The method was efficient, but resulted in rivers of mud and clots of cobbles being washed into nearby creeks and tributaries. Downstream, the Bear choked on the debris and roared out of its natural channel.
After a flurry of lawsuits, hydraulic mining was banned in 1882. The state law that protected the environment dealt a fatal blow to the mining companies operating in Dutch Flat and Gold Run. They never fully recovered. As mining outfits closed down, prospectors moved on.
A railway station was added near Towle which became known as the Alta depot. When the Towle brothers died and their holdings were sold, the company town withered and the borough took on the name Alta.
When the route of Interstate 80 was chosen, it sliced through the heart of Gold Run. Lane construction necessitated the destruction of many of its oldest structures. Alta and Dutch Flat sat beyond the path of progress.
Today, Gold Run and Alta are residential havens, with few commercial enterprises. Dutch Flat miraculously avoided the devastating fires that razed many Gold Rush-era villages and its Main Street still holds numerous buildings dating back to the mid-1800s. The surrounding hills are filled with elderly homes, rustic cabins and beautifully restored gathering spots.
Alta, Dutch Flat and Gold Run are devoid of shopping malls, theater complexes and industrial hubs. But what they lack in contemporary amenities, they more than make up for in quaint charm and rural character.