Arts Class Visits Site

Students at the Summer Arts Program visit the site to learn about the town history. The story of the lot and its foundations begins during the Gold Rush era when Mokelumne Hill was a boom town. This Main-Street location was in the heart of the community’s commercial center and during the 1850s a stone (rhyolite) building was constructed on the site. Remains of this early building include wall ruins paralleling the south wall of the library/archives and by a retaining-wall foundation fronting Main Street – the latter now mostly buried under an earthen slope. By 1890 this lot was vacant, as were many other former business locations in the now much smaller and quieter Mokelumne Hill.