In the 1800s and early 1900s, Southern California was home to many booming mining towns that brought people here from all over the country who were on a quest to strike it rich or just searching for a job with a mining company that could help pay the bills. Here’s a rare look at SoCal during that time — it’s incredible to see how much has changed.
- If you tour some of SoCal’s former mining towns today, you’ll find a series of ghost towns that capture a slice of life from the past. But there was a time when these SoCal locations were a prime destination for miners looking for the next big win.
wikimedia commons
- Long before Calico was a present-day ghost town, it was once a thriving mining town in the 1880s.
flickr/orange county archives
- A photo of Calico’s Main Street before the fire of 1883 shows a new town just getting started.
flickr/orange county archives
- Calico wasn’t the only destination captured on film during this period of SoCal history. This rare photograph captured in 1931 shows a man standing on the exact spot in Placerita, CA where gold was first discovered in California in 1842.
USC Libraries and CA Historical Society/public domain
- Here’s a group of men gathered in Silverado Canyon in the Santa Ana Mountains in the mining days of Orange County.
flickr/orange county archives
- These miners in Imperial County in 1905 show them with the mules they used to pull the rail cars up to the mines.
USC Libraries and CA Historical Society/public domain
- And here they are in the hot SoCal sun shoveling ore into rail cars in the 1900s. Such hard physical labor.
USC Libraries and CA Historical Society/public domain
- A close-up shot of one of the rail cars used in Hedges, CA by the Free Gold Mining Company.
USC Libraries and CA Historical Society/public domain
- A miner hard at work Hedges, CA as he operates a hoist mine on behalf of the Free Gold Mining Company.
USC Libraries and CA Historical Society/public domain
- A man and his mules head out to the desert in search of gold – a common scene captured in Southern California during the gold mining days of the 1800s.
USC Libraries and CA Historical Society/public domain
- The men weren’t the only ones working hard during the mining days. Just look at that mule weighted down with equipment.
USC Libraries and CA Historical Society/public domain
What unique images that capture part of Southern California’s history. If you love vintage photos of SoCal, then take a look at these images from SoCal during World War II or these photos of SoCal during the Great Depression. It’s quite a step back in time.
wikimedia commons
flickr/orange county archives
USC Libraries and CA Historical Society/public domain
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