CHEROKEE, CALIFORNIA

'Cherokee' is an unincorporated community in Butte County, California that was founded by Maidu Indians. It is now ranked as a ghost town, though it does have a population of somewhere between 10 and 15 people.
Possibly the site of the historic gold mine, on the 1994 Cherokee, California 7.5-minute quadrangle, a feature named "Cherokee Placer Mine" exists about .65 miles southwest of the above coordinates. USGS identifies 'Cherokee Flat' and 'Drytown' as historic variant names for the community. The town is located on Cherokee Road off California State Route 70.
Today, Cherokee now consists of a museum and a Cherokee cemetery, as well as a few houses. The Cherokee Heritage and Museum Association maintains both.

Contents

History

Cherokee as a tourist attraction

References

External links

History

The area that is now Cherokee was once populated by the Maidu. Around 1818 Spanish explorers found gold on Cherokee's south side near Table Mountain. In 1849 Cherokee Indians came from Oklahoma to start the Gold Rush. Welsh miners came in the 1850s, naming the town after the Cherokee and constructing many buildings in town.
Thomas Edison owned one of the mines which sprung up in the area, and he saw to it that the mines were electrified to ease the work. The town prospered during the mining period, and Butte County's first homes with running water were built in Cherokee.
In 1880 President Rutherford B. Hayes, his wife Lucy, Civil War General William T. Sherman and General John Bidwell came to visit Cherokee's famous hydraulic gold mine. In the 1890s, the gold mines were sold off because of operational costs. At its boomtime, the town had a population in the thousands.

Cherokee as a tourist attraction

Visitors come to Cherokee to see the museum and the cemetery, and for its two annual festivals, on July 4 and on a weekend near September 24, which is called President Hayes Day .
In the vicinity are Sugarloaf, a nearby promontory which is home to deer, foxes, doves, peacocks and hiking trails. Table Mountain is famous for its springtime wildflowers.

References

★ Kay Grant, The Remains Of Cherokee: A California Gold Rush Town, offbeattravel.com

External links

★ A page of images from Cherokee