#Tuolumne County

[caffeinated-chaos-bean]

Behold, you are on vacation from your hometown and are attempting to see the sights of Yosemite Nation Park, only to find yourself in the rustic, small town of Tuolumne City.

While wandering the parks and seeing just how small this town really is, you bump into Hatsune Miku!! She just moved here after buying a vacation home, far from her homeland, in stay when she wants to get away from the idol life.

Art (c) Myselg

Image (c) Tuolumne County, Ca - my home town.

[eopederson]

Columbia Historic State Park, California, 1970.

[officialnortherncalifornia]

The New Melones Dam on the border of Calaveras County and Tuolumne County. Photo from the Bureau of Reclamation, public domain.

[rabbitcruiser]

Don Pedro Reservoir, CA

Don Pedro Reservoir, also known as Lake Don Pedro, is a reservoir formed by the construction of the New Don Pedro Dam across the Tuolumne River in Tuolumne County, California, United States.

The California Office of Environmental Health Hazard Assessment has issued a safety advisory for any fish caught in Don Pedro Reservoir due to elevated levels of mercury and PCBs

The reservoir is located in the foothills of the Sierra Nevada. Communities located nearby are Moccasin and La Grange. It is the sixth-largest reservoir in California.

Also referenced as Don Pedro Lake when the name is qualified, the first projects in 1923 are generally referred to as the Old Don Pedro Dam and reservoir, and the 1971 upgrades are the New Don Pedro Dam and reservoir. Don Pedro Reservoir takes its name from Don Pedros Bar. Pierre ("Don Pedro") Sainsevain was one of the first prospectors after the discovery of gold in 1848 that began the California Gold Rush.

When full, the reservoir's shoreline is approximately 160 mi (260 km). The reservoir submerges some 26 mi (42 km) of Tuolumne River bed, and has a surface area of about 13,000 acres (5,300 ha). The 2,030,000 acre⋅ft (2.50 km3) stored here comes from a watershed of over 1,500 sq mi (3,900 km2), and is used by the Modesto Irrigation District (MID) and the Turlock Irrigation District (TID) for the irrigation of several hundred square miles of San Joaquin Valley farm land.

Some of the water is treated by the MID and used as drinking water in Modesto. The two irrigation districts and the BLM control the land 15 feet (4.6 m) above the high lake level.

Source: Wikipedia

[xtruss]

The people of California’s gold rush towns have brought new life to the area, inspite of wildfires and the pandemic. Photograph By Tanveer Badal

How California Dreaming Is Bringing New Life To Gold Rush Towns In The Sierra Nevada

In the foothills of the Sierra Nevada Mountains, Tuolumne County offers an introduction to the natural wonders of California, alongside a wealth of quirky Gold Rush towns and Hollywood film sets primed for a comeback.

— By Zoey Goto | Photographs By Tanveer Badal | August 31, 2023

At an age when most schoolkids are still learning to tie their shoelaces, Nathaniel Prebalick — AKA Gold Plate Nate — was teaching budding treasure hunters how to pan for gold. As a third-generation prospector, he was raised amid the sparkling streams of California’s Gold Country, in the foothills of the Sierra Nevada, getting to know its watery veins as well as the life lines of his own hands.

While this may sound like a sepia-tinged snapshot from another century, it’s anything but — as I discover when I meet Nate on a grassy riverbank one spring morning. He’s a thoroughly modern gold digger — a smiling twentysomething who uploads his gilded finds to Instagram — and he has a ready explanation for why Tuolumne County in eastern California is, once again, in the grip of a gold rush.

“We’ve had historic rains recently and all the gushing water has brought gold down from the hillside,” Nate says in a honeyed, Californian drawl, zipping his wetsuit up to his neck and wading into the cascading stream with a miner’s shovel in his hand. Nearby, his ponytailed father, who goes by the name of Nugget Nick, swirls a murky pan of sediment, locked into the eternal quest for a eureka moment.

Scenes like this were first witnessed in California 175 years ago, after the heady discovery of shimmering flakes attracted a stampede of 300,000 fortune-seekers who ended up reshaping the landscape of the American West. Fast forward to the present day and, once again, it seems there’s gold in them there hills. The focus for today’s prospectors are the foothills of the Sierra Nevada mountains, around two-and-a-half hours east of San Francisco. A combination of recent environmental factors, including Californian wildfires loosening the soil, coupled with pounding rains, has stirred up a bounty of precious metal in Tuolumne.

The locals are at the heart of bringing a new lease of life to these gold rush towns. Photograph By Tanveer Badal

Nate can be found most days sieving the brooks around the town of Jamestown, guiding groups of hobbyists and curious tourists as part of his family’s California Gold Panning business. In a state that’s long dangled the tantalising carrot of easy wealth — as dirt-poor miners who have struck it rich and the overnight tech billionaires of Silicon Valley will attest — Nate still holds onto a glimmer of hope each time he lays his shiny silver sluice box on the pebbled riverbed.

“I once found a nugget the size of my palm,” he enthuses, pushing ringlets of hair back from his damp forehead. He explains that only a fraction of the region’s gold was unearthed during the California Gold Rush of the mid-19th century, so there’s plenty of treasure still to be found — if you don’t mind a bit of hard physical graft. “Sure, most people aren’t getting rich doing this kind of work. But out here in nature, I’m guaranteed a lifetime of fun and a million dollars’ worth of experiences,” he says with an easy laugh and a gold-tinted glint in his eye.

Bidding Nate and his family farewell, I move on to Chinese Camp, a once-thriving stagecoach stop that was home to 5,000 Chinese miners during the Gold Rush and became a key hub for early Asian settlers in the US. Today, a handful of resilient residents remain, alongside a surreal ostentation of squawking peacocks, which parade like royalty through the near-deserted streets.

The tinkling bell above the door having announced my entry into the dinky Chinese Camp Store and Tavern, I browse shelves crammed with fizzy pop, noodles and gemstones. It’s a rare relic of a time when incense burnt outside Buddhist temples and children filed into the pagoda-roofed schoolhouse. Once the Gold Rush ended, China Camp emptied out, its buildings slowly surrendering to the creeping vines, leaving the town looking like the set of a Tim Burton gothic masterpiece.

Moving with the times: St Charles Saloon in Columbia State Historic Park was originally a provisions store. Photograph By Tanveer Badal

It’s a very different vibe at my next stop, further down the snaking Route 49 highway: Columbia State Historic Park, a quirky town founded in 1850. This perfectly preserved slice of Western whimsy is home to the largest collection of Gold Rush-era brick buildings in the state. Lining the main drag are higgledy-piggledy wooden boardwalks, vintage saloon bars with swinging doors that creak in the breeze, and old-timey store fronts, the workers inside dressed in period costume like a posse of extras from a John Wayne flick.

Tuolumne is a region that’s had more scene changes than the Wild West films that were once shot here, including mid-century cult classics such as The Legend of the Lone Ranger and High Noon. Originally, this rugged scenery was home to the Me-Wuk Indians, who were pushed off their land when the gold frenzy hit. After the rush had subsided, many once-prosperous towns dwindled into rickety old ghost towns, only to be given a second act when Hollywood came calling, transforming them into sets for rootin’, tootin’ cowboy films. It’s still up for debate what the grand finale for the frontier towns that stud California’s landscape will be, but in Columbia, at least, the answer seems to swing towards a fabulously kitschy re-enactment village.

Not all traces of California’s past have been forgotten. The Yosemite Pines RV resort has nods to history everywhere, such as these Conestoga wagons. Photograph By Tanveer Badal

Following intoxicating wafts of melting caramel, I arrive at the door of Nelson’s Columbia Candy Kitchen. There to greet me is fourth-generation owner Janice Nelson, dressed in a floor-skimming floral prairie dress and standing behind glass cases stacked high with a wobble of fruit jellies, like a maternal Willy Wonka. She tells me her 100-year-old family business provides something that resonates on a far deeper level with her customers than the colourful gobstoppers and aromatic clove drops being carefully weighed out on ornate scales. “This shop is our little gold mine. But what we’re really selling is a nostalgia for the Old West,” she says, leading me past a table where women with tattooed arms are delicately hand-dipping chocolates, through to a kitchen where the walls are lined with antique copper pans. “It’s the romantic sense of freedom, discovery and adventure that attracts people to this area,” she says, as a group of children stand on tiptoes outside, eyes wide and noses pressed up against the shop window as they watch a display of hot peanut butter brittle being slathered onto a marble slab to cool.

That evening, I drive 30 miles south east to Yosemite Pines RV Resort, in the midst of the type of wilderness that’s best described as ‘wide screen’. Under an inky sky, I bed down for the night in a covered Conestoga wagon, the kind that once brought trails of hopefuls to the mother lode, so the legend goes. But appearances can be deceptive, I discover, as I ease open the door of my canvas-covered glamping wagon to find all the mod cons of a smart hotel, from a double bed and air conditioning to a coffee machine. Drifting off to sleep, I realise that Tuolumne is the kind of place where the past and present constantly overlap, creating an endlessly entertaining guessing game of ‘spot the Wild West fake’.

Getting Wild Out West

Not all windfalls in Tuolumne involve precious metal, I find out the next morning when I meet adventure guide Bryant Burnette at the entrance of Hetch Hetchy Valley, tucked into the northwest corner of Yosemite National Park. When Yosemite became a national park in 1890, Bryant tells me, it kick-started a tourism boom and luxury cabin resorts such as nearby Evergreen Lodge sprang up around the fringes of the park to accommodate holidaymakers. Nowadays, compared with other Yosemite entry points, Hetch Hetchy offers a lesser-trodden route into the fifth-most-visited national park in the country.

We head on into Yosemite, hiking through shape-shifting scenery — fields of alpine wildflowers one moment, the next, granite mountains so high I try not to fall over as I crane my neck to take them in.

Like all epic landscapes, Yosemite holds multiple meanings, which are often at odds with each other, Bryant says as we skirt our way around the edges of Hetch Hetchy Reservoir, a sheet of ruler-flat water framed by soaring peaks. America’s third national park, Yosemite helped create a blueprint for the conservation and preservation of the natural world, but it was also at the centre of a fierce environmental battle. In the 1920s, a controversial dam was built at Hetch Hetchy to provide drinking water for the residents of San Francisco, flooding the valley floor. There’s talk of draining the reservoir and reclaiming the original landscape, but, Bryant explains, the mass of water does at least mean there’s a greater diversity in the flora and fauna here than elsewhere in Yosemite.

As we pick our way along rugged boulder trails, Bryant tells me that he first came to this neck of the woods with a backpack and 100 bucks in his pocket, determined to conquer the 2,308 hair-raising metres of sheer rock face that make El Capitan Yosemite’s superstar mountain. Having reached its summit, Bryant found something about this mythical landscape that he just couldn’t shake off, so he stayed on and set up Echo Adventures Cooperative with his wife, leading outdoorsy expeditions that include rafting, snowshoeing and campouts.

The reservoir at Yosemite was created in 1923. Photograph By Tanveer Badal

“I didn’t want to spend my life dragging my knuckles into an office. I wanted to wake up each morning and feel excited about going to work,” he reflects. We turn a corner and, like the outrageous flirt that it is, Yosemite wows us with the sight of a rainbow trapped inside a spectacular, sky-high, misty waterfall. It’s a view that makes it easy to understand why Bryant chose waterfalls in the park over watercooler moments in the office.

Determined to see for myself why Yosemite’s rocks had cast their lifelong spell on Bryant, the following morning it’s a bleary-eyed start as I buckle up for a sunrise trip with Yosemite Flights. My guide for the morning is Jason Johanson, a friendly commercial pilot who recently co-founded his own outfit offering aerial tours to visitors wanting a bird’s eye view of this climber’s playground. Such is his love for aviation, Jason lives with his young family in a converted hanger at the side of the airstrip, he tells me over a crackling microphone as we whizz along the runway in his light aircraft. “There’s my home. It makes for an easy walk to work,” he says, laughing, tapping a finger against the side window as we launch into the air.

Minutes later, we’re rising above smudgy clouds to look down upon a chequered patchwork of backcountry. From this giddy vantage point, it’s easier to make sense of the ripple effect that the Gold Rush had on Tuolumne’s landscape. There are the timber mills, frontier towns and railway tracks that once serviced the mining industry, and, in contrast, Yosemite National Park, designated a protected wilderness to halt the damage being inflicted on the valley’s ecosystem by the new settlers.

We glide on over the park, circling majestic El Capitan and neighbouring Half Dome like a hawk. Gazing down at the climbers currently hiking along the valley floor, looking like a trail of ants from above, it’s hard to believe that in a couple of hours they’ll be scrambling up these snow-capped cathedrals of stone. We complete a final glory lap before heading back to Pine Mountain Lake Airport, where, still bathed in the orange glow of sunrise, Jason contentedly makes the 20-step commute back to his home.

Boom to Bust and Back Again

As I arrive in the quaint cowboy town of Sonora, west of the park, the copper gleam of an urban brewery offers up the first clue of a renaissance. But it’s the beatnik coffeehouses filled with artfully exposed brick walls and freelancers tapping away on laptops that seal the deal. As I stroll the main street of the 150-year-old settlement, originally founded by Mexican miners and overlooked by a redwood church, I’m finally getting a glimpse into the future of Tuolumne’s Gold Rush towns — and it’s looking decidedly hipster.

The latest chapter in Sonora’s bust-to-boom script occurred during the pandemic, when many of the decades-old businesses that had occupied its retro buildings folded overnight. In their place, a fresh crop of indie boutiques, florists, juice bars and poke-bowl joints set up shop, as a new generation of Tuolumne residents took a punt on their start-up dreams.

In the heart of downtown Sonora, I make a pit stop at The Armory, a courtyard bar and restaurant festooned with strings of lights. Locals mill around the recycled-barrel tables waiting for the weekly country line dancing class to kick off. Dashing past on her way to do the school run, co-owner Rebecca Barrows stops at my table for a chat. She opened the place with her husband in 2022. To cater for the younger demographic of the area, there’s a cocktail bar hidden within a bourbon-barrel doorframe, and salsa and DJ nights.

The views on a scenic light aircraft ride with Yosemite Flights include Yosemite’s Half Dome. Photograph By Tanveer Badal

“Post-Covid, there’s been a real turnover of businesses around here,” Rebecca says. “It’s the green shoots of a new scene.” Running out, she calls over her shoulder, “Be sure to try the rodeo smash burger before you leave town.” I take her advice, tucking into a hot mess of beef patties, jalapeños and pepper jack cheese — a dish that’s earned The Armory a place on the Tuolumne County Craft Burger Trail, a network of 10 eateries that take the humble burger to new heights.

Thoroughly satisfied, I leave Sonora and head back to San Francisco through the swaggering scenery of Tuolumne, a landscape that I’d seen a thousand times before on lazy Sunday afternoons spent watching Westerns on the small screen at home. I take a peek inside the shadowy doorway of California’s oldest saloon bar, the Iron Door Saloon in Groveland, where cowboys in Stetsons are propping up the bar, looking like they haven’t budged an inch since the glory days. It suddenly all feels strangely familiar — the trail of riders on horseback, the cinematic frontiers, the flutter of star-spangled banners outside honky-tonks. Long before I arrived on Californian soil, pop culture had already graciously made the intros.

A couple of hours later, I’m back in the urban swell of San Francisco and Tuolumne’s Gold Rush towns are but a dusty memory. But I know where to find them for next time — out there where the highway ends, in a place where young gold diggers still splash in rivers and tourists drift off to sleep in reimagined cowboy wagons, that’s where you’ll find the new Old West.

[famousinuniverse]

Yosemite National Park, California, United States: Yosemite National Park is a national park in California. It is bordered on the southeast by Sierra National Forest and on the northwest by Stanislaus National Forest. The park is managed by the National Park Service and covers 759,620 acres in four counties – centered in Tuolumne and Mariposa, extending north and east to Mono and south to Madera. Designated a World Heritage Site in 1984, Yosemite is internationally recognized for its granite cliffs, waterfalls, clear streams, giant sequoia groves, lakes, mountains, meadows, glaciers, and biological diversity. Wikipedia

[catsofcalifornia]

Austin from Humane Society of Tuolumne County in Jamestown, California

Click here for more information about adoption and other ways to help!

Click here for a link to Humane Society of Tuolumne County's main website.

Meet Austin! He and his siblings were found as strays and brought to our local animal control, but they were never claimed. These cuties are now with us and ready for new homes! Although shy at first, it doesn't take long for them to start purring and leaning into pets, so don't let them fool you! They are often found sleeping together and would likely enjoy living with other cats in their new homes. Come by and meet them!

[hopefulkidshark]

Yosemite National Park, California, United States: Yosemite National Park is a national park in California. It is bordered on the southeast by Sierra National Forest and on the northwest by Stanislaus National Forest. The park is managed by the National Park Service and covers 759,620 acres in four counties – centered in Tuolumne and Mariposa, extending north and east to Mono and south to Madera. Wikipedia

[cool-plants-daily]

Cool Plant: Monardella venosa

Windowpane Monardella

This plant is only found in Tuolumne and Butte counties of California, making it incredibly rare.

[countyflagchampionship]

full US map below

[mutant-distraction]

➤ Yosemite National Park (/joʊˈsɛmɪti/ yoh-SEM-ih-tee) is an American national park in California, surrounded on the southeast by Sierra National Forest and on the northwest by Stanislaus National Forest. The park is managed by the National Park Service and covers an area of 759,620 acres (1,187 sq mi; 3,074 km2) in four counties – centered in Tuolumne and Mariposa, extending north and east to Mono and south to Madera County. Designated a World Heritage Site in 1984, Yosemite is internationally recognized for its cliffs, waterfalls, clear streams, giant sequoia groves, lakes, mountains, meadows, glaciers, and biological diversity. Almost 95 percent of the park is designated wilderness. Yosemite is one of the largest and least fragmented habitat blocks in the Sierra Nevada, and the park supports a diversity of plants and animals.

📷@v_outdoors

[rabbitcruiser]

Yosemite National Park, CA (No. 3)

European American settlers first entered the valley in 1851. Other travelers entered earlier, but James D. Savage is credited with discovering the area that became Yosemite National Park. Native Americans had inhabited the region for nearly 4,000 years, although humans may have first visited as long as 8,000 to 10,000 years ago.

Yosemite was critical to the development of the concept of national parks. Galen Clark and others lobbied to protect Yosemite Valley from development, ultimately leading to President Abraham Lincoln's signing of the Yosemite Grant of 1864 that declared Yosemite as federally preserved land. In 1890, John Muir led a successful movement to motivate Congress to establish Yosemite Valley and its surrounding areas as a National Park. This helped pave the way for the National Park System. Yosemite draws about four million visitors annually. Most visitors spend the majority of their time in the valley's seven square miles (18 km2). The park set a visitation record in 2016, surpassing five million visitors for the first time.

Source: Wikipedia

[pixiesnakes]

Three of my photographs from my Wilderness Domestics series are in WAY OUT WEST,  celebrating the legacy of LGBTQAI2S+ history throughout the western frontiers. This art show is a part of the Safe Space annual art exhibit by Amador Arts.

Reception on May 26, 5 to 7 PM

Location: Sierra Wind Wellness and Recovery Center, 10354 Argonaut Ln, Jackson, CA 95642 (yes, there’s food!)

 

Calaveras and Tuolumne County timelines are to be released in the spring.

https://www.amadorarts.org/safe-space/

[wordsmatter09]

The Bennett Juniper, is the largest known juniper tree in the United States. Its height is 78 feet (24 m) feet with an average crown spread of 56 feet (17 m). The diameter at breast height (4.5 feet (1.4 m) above ground) is 12.7 feet (3.9 m). Its estimated age is over 2000 years old. Tuolumne County, California, USA.

[beardedmrbean]

At a Wednesday meeting in Sacramento, public safety officials serving on the State 911 Advisory Board questioned why they were kept in the dark about safety issues impacting California’s massive Next Generation 911 project.

The agency responsible for the project, the California Office of Emergency Services (Cal OES) also announced it has stopped all deployment of the new network until it figures out the scope of the problems uncovered by NBC Bay Area’s Investigative Unit.

The advisory board said it has scheduled a special meeting to get to the bottom of their concerns. 

“If this board was misled in any way, whether intentionally or by negligence or by poor communication, that needs to come to light,” said Martinez Police Chief Andrew White, who took over as the advisory board’s chair at the meeting. 

As NBC Bay Area reported last week, the state’s half-billion-dollar project to bring its landline-based emergency 911 network into the internet age has been plagued by years of delays, along with complaints from dispatchers that lost calls, outages and other failures are jeopardizing public safety. 

The California Governor’s Office of Emergency Services recently cut ties with Budge Currier, the man in charge of implementing the state’s NG911 vision. Currier, until his departure, had also chaired the 911 advisory board. 

Board members, however, say they were never told Currier was no longer with Cal OES, nor were they informed of troubling issues encountered by some of the first dispatchers in the state to use the NG911 network, in places such as Tuolumne County and Desert Hot Springs. 

“There was information that came out that certainly, as an advisory board member, that I hadn’t been aware of,” White said.

Other board members echoed White’s concerns.

“Speaking for myself, it caused me to go back and communicate with some of our dispatch centers,” Rodeo-Hercules Fire Protection Bureau Chief Rebecca Ramirez said. “I feel like there hasn’t been enough information on the totality of the system and how it’s working.”

Cal OES officials said they hoped to have answers for the board members at the special meeting scheduled for February, although they had no estimate on when the long-overdue project might be completed.

Cal OES originally estimated the network would be live across the entire state by 2021. Three years later, however, only 22 of California’s 438 emergency dispatch centers are currently taking calls on the NG911 system.

Board members questioned how the state was holding the contractors in charge of building the NG911 accountable for their performance. 

An attorney for Cal OES said the agency can draft a letter to the appropriate vendor if it’s deemed there was a violation in their contract or agreement but did not elaborate further. He said the state is also working on a new audit process for vendors.

NGA, one of the four contractors working on the network, had a representative at the meeting who said the company was actively working with Cal OES to resolve any issues. NBC Bay Area reached out to the other three companies, but they haven’t yet responded.

At the meeting, Cal OES officials also conceded that not every failure with the NG911 system gets publicly reported. 

When asked by NBC Bay Area why an outage in Tuolumne in Tuolumne County that lasted 12 hours in 2022 was never brought up at subsequent advisory board meetings, Cal OES’ attorney said they hope to address such concerns at the next meeting.

NGA is building the network in Tuolumne and said it couldn’t comment on specific outages. But in an email, the company said, “many of these challenges are tied to the legacy infrastructure being phased out as part of the NG-9-1-1 migration."

While board members demanded more transparency and had tough questions for Cal OES officials, they continue to express unwavering support for modernizing California’s aging 911 system.

“California needs NG 911,” said board member Mark Chase on behalf of the California Chapter of the National Emergency Number Association (CALNENA). “CALNENA encourages the Cal OES 9-1-1 branch to reset realistic expectations and timelines, commit to transparency, and engage us as willing partners. We stand ready to help.”

[usaccidents]

TUOLUMNE COUNTY, CA (September 16, 2024) — Donald Baker died after his car crashed into Lake Don Pedro near Fleming Meadows Boat Ramp Wednesday morning.