Shasta grew after Pierson B. Reading found gold in nearby Clear Creek in July 1848, drawing miners to Readings Springs by the summer of 1849 and leading to the town’s official naming in 1850. When nearby stream gold ran out, Shasta prospered as the main supply center for the northern mines, with stagecoaches and freight wagons reaching it before pack trains carried goods onward through rugged country. Many early residents found greater success supplying miners than mining themselves, and businesses such as wholesale houses, drugstores, banks, saloons, hotels, bakeries, bookstores, and Wells Fargo offices flourished along Main Street. After devastating fires, Shasta rebuilt its commercial district in brick, and although much of the town burned in 1878, the brick buildings on Main Street survived. The town later declined as mines played out and transportation changed after the railroad arrived in Redding in 1872, making Redding the new commercial center of Northern California; by the 1930s Shasta’s once prominent brick buildings had become ruins through neglect, vandalism, snowstorms, and the removal of materials. Shasta was also home to a diverse but segregated community in which some Jewish, African American, and European immigrant residents prospered, while Chinese residents faced discrimination and lived mainly in an area called Hong Kong rather than on Main Street. California Indians, including the Wintu, had lived in the area for thousands of years, but their lives were drastically disrupted after gold was discovered as miners and settlers occupied their lands, mining damaged food sources, and an 1851 treaty for a reservation was never ratified, though many Wintu continue to live in their traditional homeland. In 1930, Mae Helene Boggs returned to Shasta, found it in ruins, and began a preservation campaign, and California State Parks later carried out preservation projects in the 1940s, 1970s, and 2008.