Directly across the river was once part of William Alexander Leidesdorff's Rio de los Americanos land grant. Born in 1810 on the island of Saint Croix to a mother of African descent and a Danish father, Leidesdorff arrived in Alta California in the early 1840s. The Mexican government granted him the approximately 36,000-acre Rio de los Americanos land grant in 1844. In 1850, a local newspaper reported the recent discovery of gold by black miners in a gravel bar on the south side of the American River on Leidesdorff's land. The town that sprang up became known as Negro Bar, a bustling mining town with a population of as many as 700 residents, boasting a hotel, store and a blacksmith. Captain Joseph Folsom hired Theodor Judah in 1855 to lay out a townsite adjacent to Negro Bar to be serviced by the Sacramento Valley Railroad. Miners from Negro Bar soon began to settle above the floodplains on the unclaimed town lots in Folsom, and the once booming mining town of Negro Bar faded away.