Tag: Yreka
Yreka ( /waɪˈriːkə/ wy-REE-kə) is the county seat of Siskiyou County, California, United States. The population was 7,765 at the 2010 census, up from 7,290 at the 2000 census.
In March 1851 Abraham Thompson, a mule train packer, discovered gold near Rocky Gulch while traveling along the Siskiyou Trail from southern Oregon. This discovery sparked the California Gold Rush from California’s Sierra Nevada into Northern California. By April 1851, 2,000 miners had arrived in “Thompson’s Dry Diggings” to test their luck, and by June 1851, a gold rush “boomtown” of tents, shanties, and a few rough cabins had sprung up. Several name changes occurred until the little city was called Yreka. The name comes from the Shasta /wáik’a/, for which Mount Shasta is named. The word means “north mountain” or “white mountain”. Mark Twain, in his Autobiography (p. 162, Harper/Perennial Literary, 1990), tells a different story:
Well-known poet Joaquin Miller described Yreka during 1853–1854 as a bustling…
