Transcript

The mining camps emerged as settlements, little accumulations of tents, dirty tents along dirty paths where miners would get together and share their claims, perhaps share supplies, congregate during blizzards, and they emerged as small towns, unruly, unregulated, messy small towns and they gradually emerged as bona fide communities. Coloma had existed before the gold find, but so many of these new camps, from Volcano to Gold Mountain to Sutter's Creek, little towns that hardly existed before but gradually became centers of service for miners, perhaps a sawmill, a bakery, a church, sheriff's office, the makings of civilization.