The Utica Gold Mining Company of Angels Camp was formed in the 1850s, and by the early 1880s it had consolidated the Madison Gold Cliff stickles and other Angels Camp mines. Combined with its purchase of the Union Water Company and its ore reserves, this made the company the most powerful entity in Calaveras County. By 1895 the company sought greater productivity and chose hydroelectricity to operate its mines. In 1899 it built the old Utica Powerhouse on Angels Creek to provide electricity to the Utica and other mines in Angels Camp and Murphys. The three-story powerhouse was constructed of rhyolite tuff blocks, 50 feet long and 39 feet wide, with walls three feet thick, and stood on the original Ebbetts Pass Highway, now known as Utica Powerhouse Road. Water reached it through ditches and flumes from as far away as Lake Alpine at the top of Ebbetts Pass to a forebay reservoir above the powerhouse, then ran downhill through a penstock into the building. Power was generated by a huge Pelton wheel and Westinghouse generator, and a second generator was added in 1902. The powerhouse served not only the mines but also local businesses and residences until it was decommissioned in 1952 and replaced by a new electrical plant downstream. After standing abandoned for fifty years, the building was vandalized in 2003, then purchased and transformed into a home by Grant Armstrong and Martin Huberty.