Columbia, California

Hildreth’s Diggings was a tent and shanty town housing the thousands of miners attracted to today’s Columbia after Dr. Thaddeus Hildreth, his brother George and some other prospectors discovered gold there on March 27, 1850. By 1860, much of the placer gold had been mined. The town’s population soon dipped to 500, but it continued to survive and was finally preserved as a California state park in 1945. In the Sierra Foothills (three miles north of Sonora), Columbia is a well-kept secret an