Destination Nevada County

The first prospectors to reach what today are Grass Valley
and Nevada City began arriving in the summer of 1848.
A few hundred at first, then tens of thousands. Others
settled in Rough & Ready, which is why Grass Valley
began as Centerville—a small mining camp at the crest
of
cover
West Main Street, halfway between Nevada City and
Rough & Ready.
Most of the original mining camps of canvas tents and
cabins were ravaged by major fires in the 1850s, but Grass
Valley and Nevada City rose like the proverbial phoenix
with solid brick buildings and stately homes that still
stand.
One look around and you will see that this area was built
for the future—not just for the Gold Rush—and that
future remains limitless. The same can be said of Truckee,
where a 21st-century community renaissance has created
a municipal master plan for other towns to follow.
Beginning in the 1970s, high-tech companies in the Bay
Area began to relocate to Grass Valley and Nevada City.
As they grew, new technology companies emerged—
first as incubator endeavors and later as world leaders
in medical and television technology. Today, more than
two-dozen Nevada County companies can be found at
national electronic and technology shows, including the
annual National Association of Broadcasters show in Las
Vegas.
But that shouldn’t be a surprise because we have always
been the home of leaders and commercial creativity.
The men and women who first arrived here to mine
included eight future United States senators, a half-dozen
future justices of the California State Supreme Court,
several future governors, nationally known novelists and
poets, entertainers, and a visionary woman entrepreneur
—30-year-old Luzena Wilson, from Missouri—who, in
1850, assembled a small table out of a slab of wood using
tree branches as legs, fired up a small stove she and her
husband had brought west in their covered wagon, and
began serving hot meals to miners. Soon, she had enough
money to build her own boarding house.
In October of 1850, shortly before California’s first
election as a state, Stephen Field from Marysville came to
Grass Valley and Nevada City (we were then part of Yuba
County) campaigning to be our first state assemblyman.
He promised voters that if elected he would create a new
county, called Nevada County because traveling 35 miles
on horseback from here to the Yuba County courthouse
in Marysville required a seven-day roundtrip: a three-day
ride, one day to take care of legal business, and three days
to return here.
Field was elected, and in early 1851 the new county of
Nevada was carved out of a portion of Yuba County.
Once Nevada County was established, Grass Valley and
Nevada City grew into two of the most stable, prosperous
towns in the state. And what made local growth possible
(other than plentiful gold, of course), was an emphasis
on making the trip here from any direction as pleasant
as possible.
The roads from Marysville and Auburn were improved
to meet the demand for stagecoach routes, as was the
road from Reno to Truckee. Then, in 1869, when the
transcontinental railroad was completed, the Grass
Valley/Nevada City area was a short buggy ride to the
Central Pacific depot in Colfax, and Truckee became an
important rail town.
NEVADA CITY
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Photo credit: Native American Photographer, Dugan Aguilar
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DESTINATION Nevada County 5