In 1848, Mexican settlers from Sonora, Mexico, established a camp on the north bank of the Mokelumne River and called it Sonora Bar. At the start of the California Gold Rush, miners flocked to the Mokelumne River and set up camps and towns along its mineral-rich banks. Just across the river from Sonora Bar lay the exceedingly rich gravel deposits of Poverty Bar. A ferry carried miners across the river to Poverty Bar and the hard-rock mines of Calaveras County, and the camp's name was eventually changed from Sonora Bar to Lancha Plana, Spanish for "flat boat," in reference to the ferry. Lancha Plana reached the height of its prosperity after 1856, when hill and bluff mining largely replaced river mining. In 1858, the town had a population of over 1,000 people, enough to support its own newspaper. The Lancha Plana Dispatch began circulation on March 3, 1860, but by November of that year it had been relocated to Jackson, the Amador County seat, and became the Amador County Dispatch. Today, what is left of Lancha Plana lies beneath the waters of the East Bay Municipal Utility District's Camanche Reservoir, and the modern Lancha Plana Bridge stands near the inundated town for which it is named.