Meadow Lake

Henry Hartley first settled at Meadow Lake as a solitary trapper, but after he found flakes of gold, news spread and prospectors rushed in. By 1865, a 160-acre town site had been laid out with an 80-foot-wide street and a central plaza, and land prices had risen sharply. By 1866, the boomtown held 4,000 people, with hotels, saloons, restaurants, lumber yards, a newspaper, 11,000 mining claims, lots worth as much as $3,000, and 600 buildings, and Summit City was incorporated as Meadow Lake. Optimism collapsed when the gold could not be separated from the rock and winter buried the town under 30-foot snow drifts, leaving it reachable only by tunnels down to buildings. By 1869 only a few families remained, and by 1872 only Henry Hartley was left. Mark Twain later wrote of Meadow Lake as a handsome but deserted town built in a frenzy of speculation. Today, the gold remains in the ground, and only a cemetery and a mine tunnel survive from the vanished settlement.

California · United States