1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Nevada City

NEVADA CITY, a township and the county-seat of Nevada county, California, U.S.A., about 130 m. N.E. of San Francisco. Pop. (1890) 2524; (1900) 3250 (764 foreign-born); (1910) 2689. It is the terminus of the Nevada County Narrow Gauge railway, which connects with the Southern Pacific railway at Colfax, 23 m. S. An electric line extends to Grass Valley (pop. in 1900, 4719), 4 m. S.W. Situated in a hilly and picturesque region, 2580 ft. above the sea, Nevada City is frequented as a health and summer resort (annual mean temperature, about 53·5° F.; mean summer temperature, about 66°). Gold-mining and quartz-mining are its principal industries, and in 1907 Nevada County’s output of gold (104,590·76 oz., worth $2,162,083) was second only to that of Butte county (134,813·39 oz., worth $2,786,840) in California; the county is the leading producer from quartz mines. Among the manufactures of the township are carriages and products of planing mills, foundries and machine shops; and grapes and fruits are raised in the surrounding country. Gold was first discovered within what is now Nevada City, on Deer Creek, in the summer of 1848, by James W. Marshall, who, in January of the same year, had found the metal near what is now Coloma, Eldorado county. The first settlement was made here in 1849; rich deposits of gold were soon afterwards found on or near the surface, and the settlement had the characteristic growth of a western mining town; its output of gold reached its maximum in 1850–1851. Nevada City was first incorporated in 1851 under a special act of the legislature (repealed in 1852); it was reincorporated in 1856 and again in 1878.