Tuolumne was the geographical center of the East Belt Placer Gold Rush in 1856-57. The first white settlers, the Franklin Summers family, arrived in 1854 and built a log cabin half mile west. In 1858 James Blakely discovered the first quartz lode, half mile east, naming it Eureka, and that mine became the nucleus of the town of Summersville, later called Carters' and finally Tuolumne. Other mining towns lively in the gold rush days were Long Gulch, two miles south, and Cherokee, two miles north.