Dutch Flat Historic District

Dutch Flat, in Placer County, California, is preserved as a historic district of about 48 acres around Main and Stockton Streets. Founded in 1851, the town became a center of hydraulic mining between 1854 and 1882. Its surviving buildings include the 1852 hotel, an 1854 general store built of locally quarried tufa, the 1856 Masonic hall, the 1858 Odd Fellows lodge, a Methodist-Episcopal church finished in 1861, and an 1898 schoolhouse that replaced an earlier one and now serves as a community center. A single adobe building is the last remnant of the original Chinatown, once home to about 2,000 residents. Forty-five private homes built before 1900 remain on their original sites, nearly unaltered. The district was recognized for its largely unspoiled Gold Rush architecture and for its role in transportation history: the Dutch Flat-Donner Lake freight route, the Pony Express route, and Theodore Judah's work on the Central Pacific Railroad.