Dog Town was the site of the first major gold rush to California’s eastern slope of the Sierra Nevada and took its name from a miners’ term for camps of huts or hovels. Gold discovered in the waters of Dog Creek in the 1850s drew miners to the eastern Sierra, and the largest nugget ever found on the eastern slope was said to have come from here. Ruins near the cliff along Dog Town Creek are all that remain of the makeshift dwellings that formed part of the diggings. The deposits proved limited, and within a couple of years placer excitement shifted to Monoville after a new strike a few miles to the south. In the late 1860’s and early 1870’s, Chinese families lived in stone huts, planted gardens, and worked the remaining placer deposits, and as late as the early 1900’s an unproductive dredging operation was still in place. Though never very profitable, Dog Town was significant as the first placer settlement on the eastern slope of the Sierra, drawing attention to more profitable mining areas such as Bodie, Aurora, Masonic, and Virginia City. In this harsh country, where thousands of fortune seekers faced deep snows, bitter winter winds, shortages, difficult travel, illness, and isolation, only a few realized the dreams that had drawn them to the Sierra Nevada.