By 1956, the Gold Rush was only an echo along the river later covered by Trinity and Lewiston Lakes, where abandoned remnants of mining activity lay broken and rusting as reminders of the days when men and women sought their fortunes in Trinity gold. Wintu culture was all but destroyed, and after the miners moved on, ranchers, farmers, loggers, owners of fledgling resorts, and merchants remained, each group fiercely dependent on the abundant water of the Trinity River and its tributaries, with Indian, white, and Chinese communities and their work never far from it. With the completion of the dam in 1961, the face of the country changed forever as generations of human effort were lost beneath water hundreds of feet deep, the way of life in Trinity Valley died, and a new one was born. The waters now used for water skiing, houseboating, fishing, and swimming cover a rich past in which a stagecoach once brought the first teacher to the school in Minersville, cattle grazed on the Scott Ranch, a Wintu Indian woman gathered acorns beneath the blue oaks of Hays Gulch, miners worked rich diggings, and San Francisco tourists fished for salmon at Cedar Stock Resort on Stuart’s Fork of the Trinity River. Congress established this National Recreation Area in 1965 to meet the growing national need for expanded outdoor recreation facilities, and water impounded by Trinity and Lewiston Dams became the gold of the 21st century in a way the early settlers never would have imagined.