1902 Map of Colfax

About this map

The Middle Fork Yuba River and the North Fork American River carve through this landscape of high ridges and gold-bearing gravels, surveyed in the late 1880s. The map illustrates the intensive mining activity that defined the region, including the massive Malakoff Mine near North Bloomfield and the Derbec Mine at North Columbia. Small hydraulic mining settlements like You Bet and Red Dog appear alongside mountain towns such as Alleghany and Washington. Transport networks are transitioning as the Southern Pacific RR winds through the canyons, while the Nevada County Narrow Gauge RR serves the western foothills near the County Hospital. From the high peaks of the Black Mountains to the hydraulic pits of the Chalk Bluffs Ridge, the sheet captures the infrastructure of California’s hydraulic mining era and its subsequent evolution into a timber and rail corridor.