Main Street Technologies is located in the historic gold-mining town of Angels
Camp, in the Sierra Nevada foothills of California, where Highways 49 and 4
intersect east of Stockton. The elevation of about 1400 feet usually puts us
below the snow and above the Central Valley fog.
Angels Camp was established in 1848 when Henry and George Angel, Rhode Island
natives soldiering with John C. Frémont, decided that panning gold was
too hard and opened a trading post that became the seed for the town that bears
their name. During the brief time that surface gold was easily found,
as many as 4000 miners worked in and around Angels Camp.
Miners eventually discovered that the richest sources of gold were to be
found not on the surface, but as veins in the quartz bedrock. Until the early
1900s, hard-rock mining kept the stamp mills running and the gold industry
a part of the Angels Camp economy, producing more than $20 million worth of gold.
The town now sits above a honeycomb of mine tunnels.
Compared to surface mining, hard-rock mining was a more complex technology.
It required drills, tracks, ore carts, pulleys and stamp mills, all with iron
parts. The first iron foundry in California was founded in Altaville, just north
of Angels Camp, by D.D. Demarest in 1854. The Altaville Foundry provided nearly
all of the iron products used in the mines and stamp mills of both Calaveras
and Tuolumne Counties. The foundry is still a going concern in the present-day
City of Angels Camp, which includes the Altaville settlement.
Angels Camp was still a thriving hard-rock mining area when young Mark Twain
visited in 1865. It was in the bar at the Angels Hotel that he overheard the
story that he later published as "The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras
County." In 1928 the Angels Camp Boosters Club celebrated the paving of
Main Street with the first frog-jumping contest. The annual “Frog Jumping
Jubilee” occurs every year in May at the County Fair Grounds on the south
edge of the city.
Angels Camp's population today is more than 3,000. Its popular attractions include
nearby limestone caves, Moaning Caverns, Mercer Caverns and California Caverns,
all open to the public. The New Melones Reservoir offers fishing and all types of
water sports in addition to storing Sierra Nevada snowmelt to support the agriculture
of the Central Valley. World-class golfing is available at Greenhorn Creek as
well as wine tasting in nearby Murphys. You will find more information about
our area and many other enjoyable attractions at http://www.visitcalaveras.org.
If you are ever in the area, please visit us at our office on the corner
of Main Street and Bret Harte Drive.