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Collection: Directories and Documents > Pamphlets
Trip Teaser - Nevada City to Donner Summit (PH 20-15)(1951) (23 pages)
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Page: of 23
IGHWAY 20 CLIMBS toward Harmony Ridge from Nevada City with Deer Creek,
once fabulously gold-laden, running through its lap.
The little County-seat drops behind you ... gardens, trees blend into solid swaths of
color. Old homes facing crooked, steep streets begin to look like an eighteen century eastern
village, hospitable and quiet.
Imagine, this was once California's third largest city, capitol-hub of the Northern Mines.
Horace Greeley, Senator Broderick, Judge Frank Tilford and lesser national and state politicians clamored for its deciding vote in vital questions . .. Mark Twain, Bret Harte and Joaquin
Miller wrote here . . . Edwin Booth of Shakespearean fame regarded it as a must on his
circuit . . . here George Hearst and Mackay worked as penniless miners.
You'll still find proofs of Nevada City’s former splendor and importance . in its
museums. . . wrought-iron balconied hotels . . . Ott's Assay Office on Commercial Street, the
same today as nearly a hundred years ago when J. J. Ott found that the ore thrown aside as
worthless by the Virginia City and Washoe miners, contained gold and silver to the tune of
$4790 per ton! His assay started a mining stampede never equalled. You'll also find the
proofs in age-greying, idle mine dumps and hydraulic scarred mountain faces.
To the left, just as you leave town, looms old Manzanita Diggings, where hydraulicking
was born, and from whose gravel giant monitors washed millions of gold dollars. Even
today men are struggling to reach the bed-rock of the ancient, dead river-channel to find more
of the nuggets trapped there when the river was alive.