Place:Plumas, California, United States

source: Getty Thesaurus of Geographic Names

source: Family History Library Catalog

the text in this section is copied from an article in Wikipedia

Plumas County is a county located in the Sierra Nevada of the U.S. state of California. The county gets its name from the Spanish words for the Feather River (Río de las Plumas), which flows through the county. As of the 2010 census, the population 20,007, down from 20,824 at the 2000 census. The county seat is Quincy.

The only incorporated city in the county is Portola, several other populated places are CDPs.

History

the text in this section is copied from an article in Wikipedia

The Spanish originally called one of the tributaries of the Sacramento River El Rio de las Plumas or the "River of Feathers." The Legislature, in creating this county, gave it the name "Plumas" because all of the numerous branches of the Feather River have their origins in its mountains. This area is famous for the vast quantity of gold mined primarily in the 1870s to 1880s, a second California gold rush. Other Counties, such as Trinity and Sierra Counties also experienced a late gold rush around the same time. Plumas County is known to have extracted (in the year 1900 dollars) over $60,000,000 in gold. At one time a town called La Porte had a population of 10,000 people during its heyday as a gold mining center. Another item of interest is the fact that the poet bandit (Po8) stagecoach robber known as Black Bart never successfully robbed the line between LaPorte and Marysville. James Jones of LaPorte, a Wells Fargo assay agent and general store owner has been credited with instructing that Stage Line operators to bolt the gold box onto the stage coach, and gave them the nuts and bolts to do it, specifically to avoid robbery by Black Bart. The plan worked, and the failed attempt to rob the stage gold box left Black Bart in a frazzle that led to his arrest after he left behind certain items of clothing while trying to pry out the gold box. Laundry marks on the clothing he left behind on his failed attempt to rob the LaPorte to Marysville stage eventually led to his arrest.

Timeline

Population History

source: Source:Population of States and Counties of the United States: 1790-1990

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