Enter a name, company, place or keywords to search across this item. Then click "Search" (or hit Enter).
Volume 060-2 - April 2006 (8 pages)
Go to the Archive Home
Go to Thumbnail View of this Item
Go to Single Page View of this Item
Download the Page Image
Copy the Page Text to the Clipboard
Don't highlight the search terms on the Image
Show the Page Image
Show the Image Page Text
Reset View and Center Image
Zoom Out
Zoom In
Rotate Left
Rotate Right
Toggle Full Page View
Flip Image Horizontally
More Information About this Image
Get a Citation for Page or Image - Copy to the Clipboard
Go to the Previous Page (or Left Arrow key)
Go to the Next Page (or Right Arrow key)
Page: of 8
NCHS Bulletin April 2006
worst of all winters, 1849-1850. Madam Penn took her turn
with her husband carrying dirt to be washed and rocking
out the gold. In the Spring of 1850 she built a boarding
house on lower Main Street.
Quite a number of buildings were erected in the spring of
1850. Truex and Blackman put up one about where the
Chamber of Commerce is today. Womack & Kenzie built a
hotel of cloth the first hotel ever opened in the place. J. N.
Turner established the Nevada Hotel on Main Street just
below the building now referred to as Ott’s Assay Office.
By March 1850, the townspeople recognized the need for
some sort of government. A public meeting was held, and
Mr. Stamps was elected alcalde, since California was still
under Mexican law. At the same time the wish for a better
name for the town was expressed which led to a meeting of
the leading citizens at the store of Truex and Blackman. All
participants at the meeting were invited to submit their suggestions for a suitable name. O. P. Blackman’s suggested
name Nevada was unanimously adopted. (In 1878, after
both men had left California, Truex wrote to the Nevada
Transcript and claimed personal credit for the name!)
The population of Nevada continued to increase steadily
during the year 1850, and several hundred stores, dwellings, saloons, hotels, etc. were erected, besides a great number of cabins put up by miners in the miners in the vicinity.
A vast impetus was given to the place in May by the discovery of the Coyote Lead to the northeast of town. It happened when miners working in a ravine named Old Coyote
Ravine found that the lead did not give out as usual but
grew richer as they burrowed under the hill. The discovery
caused great excitement and brought an influx of miners
who staked claims on the whole range of hills and sank
shafts in an effort to trace the lead. The yield was immense.
A new camp sprang up and was named Coyoteville, after the
method of mining likened to the burrowing of the coyote.
The population of Nevada City as given in the U.S. Federal Population Census of 1850 was 1,067. By the fall and
winter of 1850 the population of the city and outlying areas
has been estimated at 10,000 to 12,000. California was admitted as a state on September 9, 1850, and in December of
that year the U.S. Post Office was established under the
name Nevada City. When the county was formed from
Yuba County in 1851 it was called Nevada County, and
Nevada City became the county seat. The name Nevada
City appears prominently on the 1851 maps of Butler and
Milleson and Adams. However, there are some other maps
of the 1850s that show the name Nevada without the appellation “City.” Gradually, the name Nevada City prevailed to
avoid confusion with the name of the county.
Anyone interested in the myth so successfully originated
by the local chapter of E. Clampus Vitus that “city” was
added after the state of Nevada was admitted to the union
can read the whole widely entertaining story in the local
Grass Valley Union beginning on January 4, 1964.
Stephen Johnson Field Oo
The Man Who Created Nevada County
By Steve Cottrell
Part One
SMALL NEWS ARTICLE IN THE NEW YORK EVENING
Post of November 13, 1849, announced that local attorney Stephen Johnson Field had departed that city earlier
in the day on the Crescent City—bound for the Isthmus of
Panama and, eventually, the Republic of California.
Mr. Field is on his way to San Francisco, where he
proposes to practice his profession and take up his future residence. If he should realize either the hopes or
expectations of the numerous friends he leaves behind,
he will achieve an early and desirable distinction in the
promising land of his adoption.
The reporter’s words would prove prophetic. Stephen
Field sailed from the East nine days after his 33rd birthday,
landed at Chagres, crossed the Isthmus, booked passage on
the California and then endured a 22-day trip from Panama
to San Francisco, landing at Yerba Buena Cove on the evening of December 28.
Although the voyage from New York to Chagres was un.
eventful, the final leg was marred by a deadly fever compounded by overcrowding that exacerbated the shipboard