Yesterday we drove up to a small town called Yreka - near the Oregon border - (not to be confused with Eureka which is on the coast) about 100 miles from us. I had heard of the Gold Rush Days and wanted to see what that was all about. In March of 1851, gold was discovered there and by April 1851 it was a gold rush boomtown, of tents, shanties, and wood cabins.
"Oh Mark Twain, you're such a jokester"
Several name changes occurred until the city was called Yreka. The name comes from wáik'a, a word meaning "north mountain" or "white mountain", the name of nearby Mount Shasta in the Shasta language.
But Mark Twain tells a different story:
Well-known poet Joaquin Miller described Yreka from 1853 to 1854 as a bustling place with ...a tide of people up and down and across other streets, as strong as a city on the East Coast.
For as long as I can remember we always passed Yreka on the interstate going up to Oregon and Washington. I believe one time, we stopped just to get gas and that was it. So we were looking forward to the adventure of discovering more about Northern California's history.
We started off at the Siskiyou County Museum. Small but gives you access to Native American artifacts, as well as their history surrounding gold mining.
An old gold miners cabin
I could live there. Just saying...
They painstakingly took apart this church and put it back together on the Museum grounds.
Aren't these pretty? I get easily distracted by nature's beauty...
As for the God Rush Days - I wish I could say it was what I had expected - it was not. Just a crowded, and sometimes rowdy street fair with the same vendor booths I can find at any other fair; Scentsy, Tupperware, etc. So yeah, we were disappointed. Thankfully the live music was really good and so the husband went back to the car to get our chairs while I waited outside the
Ice Cream parlor; I people-watched and then when he came back and we just sat and listened for about an hour or so. They had a corny "old western" play - but hey, at least they tried to keep it to the theme of the event.
They have a nice-looking historic downtown with some old buildings but there were so many vendor tents and food trucks it was hard to get photos of the historic architecture. We plan to go back, during the week sometime later this summer so we can view the old buildings.
Plus the surrounding geography is beautiful. It reminded me of a high desert but according to the Köppen climate classification, it is still within a Mediterranean climate zone. The rolling hills nestled within the mountains are cinder cones volcanoes; part of the Cascade Volcanic Arc which includes Mt Shasta, Mt Lassen, Mt Hood, and Mt Rainer, and others.
All in all, we did have fun;
it just wasn't what we expected. While eating ice cream outside the parlor a bunch of "Bikers" came in from Oregon - strutting their testosterone - then several other bikers from different groups came in from other areas from Northern California as well. (This was when the husband was getting the chairs) One biker dude even talked to me while he was eating his ice cream cone; soft-spoken and respectful - come on, he couldn't be THAT dangerous. He treated me like his mother!
Of course, anywhere you go in California these days, you will run into clusters of drug-addicted criminals who are stoned out of their minds - and acting inappropriately if not downright vulgar. I never saw any police or law enforcement anywhere in town which in a way, does follow the theme of an old-west lawless boomtown in northern California. Everyone has to be diligent and never let their guard down.
