Columbia1970

Columbia1970
Columbia in 1970

The Anecdotal History of Columbia

The Anecdotal History of Columbia

As a class project, the students of Mrs. Øydegaard's Hands-on History elective at a local elementary school, gathered a plethora of tales representing each decade of 20th century Columbia State Historic Park history. Columbia, known since the early gold rush years, as the "Gem of the Southern Mines," has been a town since 1850 and a state historic park since 1945. Thousands of school children and other visitors come each year to experience a real gold rush town and, as you can learn from the Columbia Memories recorded here, they keep coming back for a myriad of good reasons.


A memory might not make it into the history book, lacking factual backing, but even so, it ought to have a place to be recorded and shared. Many a memory that seemed too fanciful to be true has been validated by some late-coming evidence. On the other hand, and probably more often, stories are related as fact, when they ought to be retold as “just stories,” lacking significant reality and truth (an “art form” the movie-making industry has perfected).


Here we share our Columbia memories, whether laden with fact or fiction, as well as give readers a chance to compare, validate, or provide the missing factual information making this blog an educational exchange as well as a place to tell our cherished tales of Columbia.


Wednesday, March 16, 2011

Date: ca. 1988 to present (2011)


From Barbara Bowin
For Sabrina

Living in the foothills for 23 years I have had a church home in Columbia, California at the Forty-Niner Presbyterian Church.  I have been active there and enjoyed the friends that live there and the State Park.

It is interesting to see the home where one of my friends lived close to the church.  Wildlife abounds there and the pines grow abundantly.

The Columbia setting is such a unique place with its large white rocks that are formed in the area.  They were pushed up because of the active search for gold in the mining years.
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1 comment:

  1. Floyd D.P. ØydegaardMarch 18, 2011 at 12:55 PM

    From the Roadside Geology of Northern and Central California it reads:
    "Board expanses og gray and white limestone, now fairly well recrystallized into marble, exist in Calaveras complex around Sonora and Columbia. The rock outcrops in a sea of vertical tusks....Rainwater invariably becomes slightly acidic as it absorbs carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, and that makes it capable of dissolving limestone and marble. The rock probably weathered beneath a cover of soil. Then erosion stripped off the soil, exposing the weird natural sculptures.......they are rare in California."

    We do know that the soil was still covering these formations before 1860's when miner's removed the soil and discovered gold laying in these cavities of Limestone. The Limestone structures are attached to a bed rock of granite.

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