Prospectors in 1849 traveled from the Mokelumne River through Clinton on the way to the diggings in Volcano. In the early 1850’s, Clinton became a market town supplying placer miners on the middle and southern forks of Jackson Creek and later the shallow quartz mines around Irishtown and Clinton. As a stop on the stage road between Jackson, Aqueduct City, and Volcano, it grew, and by 1852 had 100 clapboard and canvas houses and the area’s only hotel. The camp was predominantly occupied by Mexican, Chilean, and French miners. The Spagnoli family, proprietors of the main mercantile store and ranch, helped secure Clinton’s future by developing ditches that supplied water to placer claims around the area. After Amador County was formed in 1854, Clinton entrepreneur Thomas Loehr petitioned the county to declare the road from Jackson to Clinton a public road. In 1877, Clinton was still active enough for the Garbarini brothers to build St. Peter and Paul’s Catholic Church, which remained when the town disappeared. In 2003, descendants of the Garbarinis returned to restore the small church, and it was moved to the Kennedy Mine Foundation’s grounds in the Jackson Gate area.