1962 Map of Copperopolis

About this map

Copper mining legacies define the landscape around Copperopolis, where the Empire Mine, South Shaft, and the Keystone Mine sit clustered near the Copperopolis Reservoir. This 1962 survey, updated with 1980s photographic revisions, documents a terrain of intense extraction along the Gopher Ridge Mountain corridor. To the west, the map records older settlement sites like Telegraph City and Buckham, alongside family-named landmarks such as McCarty Creek and Churchs Spring. The southern portion of the quadrangle is dominated by the sprawling boundary of Rancho Del Rio Estanislao, showing the transition from the concentrated mining district in the north to the large land grants and ranching flats near Smith Flat. Smaller, scattered operations like the Skyrocket Mine and Napoleon Mine illustrate the reach of the prospecting era across these foothills.