TWHP


Weaverville, Brick Buildings   

The seat of Trinity County, Weaverville received its name in 1850 from John Weaver, who won the honor in a game of chance. The legendary mountain man Jedediah Smith traversed the area in 1823, becoming the first white to enter the region; he would remember it as one of the most difficult expeditions of his career. Stuck on the wrong side of a canyon with a crew of trappers and 300 pack horses, it took Smith and company weeks to extricate themselves from the dead-end.

Major Pearson Reading discovered the Trinity River in 1845, and mistakenly believing it emptied into Trinidad Bay to the west christened it with the Anglicized version of the name. Following the gold finds in the Sierra foothills in 1848, would-be miners scoured California looking for likely diggings, and the Trinity River fulfilled their expectations as the only other region to play a significant part in the Gold Rush.

Situated in the far north of California east of the timber rich Humboldt County coast, Weaverville attracted the commerce associated with mining the surrounding area of precipitous peaks, ubiquitous rivers and deep gorges; it was one of California's biggest population centers for a brief period. Thousands of miners flocked to the area, including 2,000 Chinese, who constituted the largest Asian community in the state for some time; in 1854, most of them participated in a one-day tong war between various factions. After a devastating fire the same year, the town rebuilt in solid brick, the edifices virtual fortresses, heavy iron shutters covering every opening; they would be a distinguishing feature of the town. The gold played out by 1860, however, and most residents departed, many to the new silver strikes in Nevada. A large portion of the Chinese eventually went to work on the Transcontinental Railroad, commencing construction in 1863.

Weaverville and Trinity County would never again see the numbers of people they had in the mining days, and the economy shifted to agriculture and timber, providing a slow-paced rural life that maintained for years.


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