The Mineral King Valley holds a rare cultural experience. For within it lies one of the west's few truly historic alpine settlements that is still alive today. For over 130 years, the Mineral King Valley's evolving community has grown, flourished and succeeded in a constant struggle for survival. It has become a distinct cultural identity celebrating the tenacity of our western heritage. The Mineral King area contains more facets of man's history in our western mountains than any other one place in the Sierra Nevada.
Community is the tying thread of that history.
It all began several thousand years ago when a group of immigrants, probably originally from Siberia, began to settle in the Tulare Lake region of the San Joaquin Valley. This was an area that had long been the home of what have been named the ancient Hokan people. One band of these Penutian immigrants, the ancestors of what became the Yokoch, or Yokuts people, settled in the foothills of the Kaweah River. By at least 3,000 years ago, a Yokuts subgroup named the Wukchumni had permanent villages in the Terminus Dam area below Three Rivers and had claimed all the waters of the Kaweah's East Fork as their territory. They created a summer settlement in the Atwell Mill-Silver City area with several camp sites on Mineral King's valley floor.