page_title: Tuolumne River
section_title: Early history
hierarchical_section_title: Tuolumne River / Early history
caption_attribution_description: English: Tuolumne Meadows---Tuolumne River in West meadow, looking East This is an image of a place or building that is listed on the National Register of Historic Places in the United States of America. Its reference number is 78000371
context_page_description: The Tuolumne River flows for 149 miles through Central California, from the high Sierra Nevada to join the San Joaquin River in the Central Valley. Originating at over 8,000 feet above sea level in Yosemite National Park, the Tuolumne drains a rugged watershed of 1,958 square miles, carving a series of canyons through the western slope of the Sierra. While the upper Tuolumne is a fast-flowing mountain stream, the lower river crosses a broad, fertile and extensively cultivated alluvial plain. Like most other central California rivers, the Tuolumne is dammed multiple times for irrigation and the generation of hydroelectricity.
  Humans have inhabited the Tuolumne River area for up to 10,000 years. Prior to the arrival of Europeans, the river canyon provided an important summer hunting ground and a trade route between Native Americans in the Central Valley to the west and the Great Basin to the east. First named in 1806 by a Spanish explorer after a nearby indigenous village, the Tuolumne was heavily prospected during the California Gold Rush in the 1850s, and the lower valley was cultivated by American settlers over the next few decades.
context_section_description: Estimates of the first human habitation along the Tuolumne River range from 3000–7000 BC. The Plains and Sierra Miwok, who were the largest regional Native American group immediately prior to European contact, first established themselves in the area around 1200 CE. The Miwok lived in the Sierra foothills and Central Valley lowlands during winter and traveled into the upper Tuolumne River in summer to hunt, as well as seek refuge from the summer heat. The Paiute, who inhabited the Great Basin on the east side of the Sierra, also ventured into the Tuolumne River basin during the summer. The Yokuts lived along the lower Tuolumne River and were not known to venture up into the Sierra during summer.
  The chief meeting point of the Paiute and Miwok was the Hetch Hetchy Valley, rich in edible plants and game. The origin of the name "Hetch Hetchy" may have been a type of edible grass that grew in the valley, which native peoples made into grain and ground in stone mortars for meal.
  They set controlled fires to clear out old vegetation in their gathering areas, allowing for more efficient harvesting of new growth. This would also increase the prevalence of grasses and ferns, attracting game animals such as deer, and made the landscape more easily navigable. Many of the landscapes in the Tuolumne River area encountered by the first European explorers were thus not pristine but the result of hundreds of years of management; indeed, the famous meadows of Hetch Hetchy Valley prior to its damming only existed because of the annual burn.
  The origin of the Tuolumne River's name is unclear. The first recorded use of the name "Tuolumne" was by the Spanish explorer Gabriel Moraga in 1806, who may have named the river for the nearby Native American village of Tualamne or Tautamne. This may in turn refer to the native word talmalamne, or "a group of stone huts or caves". Father Pedro Muñoz, a member of the 1806 expedition, noted in his diary that "we came upon a village called Tautamne. This village is situated on some steep precipices, inaccessible on account of their rough rocks. The Indians live in their sótanos [cellars or caves]". At this time, the Native American population along the lower Tuolumne and Stanislaus Rivers is believed to have been approximately two thousand.
  Another possible origin of the name Tuolumne is the Central Sierra Miwok word taawalïmi, meaning "squirrel place", referring to a Native American village on the nearby Stanislaus River. The suffix -umne, which appears in the names of two other California rivers, the Mokelumne and Cosumnes, is thought to have meant "place of" or "people of" in the native language.
  The Tuolumne River was the scene of significant gold mining activity during the California Gold Rush. The first known discovery of gold in the area was made by Benjamin Wood, a prospector from Oregon, in the summer of 1848. During the latter part of that year and early 1849, mining camps were established along the Tuolumne, including Jamestown, Tuttletown, Melones, Don Pedros Bar, and Shaws Flat. The following spring a party of Mexican miners from Sonora discovered an even richer deposit farther upstream, establishing Sonoranian Camp, predecessor of the present-day town of Sonora, California. By the end of 1849, there were over 10,000 miners in the Tuolumne River area, half of them in Sonora, which became the Tuolumne County seat in 1850.
  Mining activity increased dramatically in the early 1850s, with prospectors pushing up into the foothills beyond Soulsbyville. In March 1850, an "enormously rich" deposit was discovered at Columbia. The same year, the Bonanza Mine near Sonora yielded a 1500-ounce nugget, the fourth largest ever discovered in California. (The largest was found in Carson Hill in Calaveras County, just north of the Tuolumne River watershed along the Stanislaus River, in 1854.) The prosperity in the region prompted a search for a new crossing of the Sierra Nevada that would provide more direct access to the camps from the east. The Clark-Skidmore Party made this crossing in 1852 via the upper St
caption: Tuolumne River in West Meadow, Tuolumne Meadows
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