Dutch Flat

History

Dutch Flat was founded by two German brothers, Joseph and Charles Dornbach, who settled there in 1851 during the California Gold Rush. To the south of their settlement was the busy mining camp of Green Valley, where 2,000 men were at work when the Dornbachs arrived. Across the Bear River in Nevada County was another camp, Little York, and just west, a trading post at Cold Springs (later known as Gold Run). All these camps were supplied by mule train from Illinoistown, near today's Colfax. Mule drivers referred to the Dornbachs' camp as 'Dutch Charlie's Flat,' and thus the town was named. During this period many Germans were referred as 'Dutch' as a shorthand for Deutschland. In the 1870s an attempt was made to change the name to 'German Level'. The Dutch Flat post office opened in 1856. While Dutch Flat was originally settled by miners, it first gained prominence as an important stagecoach stop, making it one of the largest and most important towns in Placer County from about 1864 to 1866. In the fall of 1866, however, the railroad had reached Cisco, further up the ridge, and Dutch Flat lost most of its importance as a stage stop. In 1859 Dr. Daniel Strong of Dutch Flat invited railroad surveyor (later, chief engineer of the Central Pacific Railroad) Theodore Judah to come and evaluate a possible route across the Sierra Nevada mountains. One of the first large mining ditches to reach Dutch Flat had, in effect, demonstrated the existence of easy grades up to Emigrant Gap; from there, the line of the old Donner Trail across the Sierra Nevada was also such that a railroad could be built. Judah argued vociferously for the Central Pacific's financial backers—including California's "Big Four": Leland Stanford, Collis P. Huntington, Mark Hopkins, and Charles Crocker—to…

Geography

According to the United States Census Bureau, the CDP covers an area of 0.6 square miles (1.5 km2), all of it land.

Race & ethnicity

Most-observed species

• Spotted Towhee

  Pipilo maculatus Swainson, 1827 · Aves
  6,568
• Common Raven

  Corvus corax Linnaeus, 1758 · Aves
  6,477
• Anna's Hummingbird

  Calypte anna (R.Lesson, 1829) · Aves
  5,941
• Steller's Jay

  Cyanocitta stelleri (Gmelin, 1788) · Aves
  5,658
• Lesser Goldfinch

  Spinus psaltria (Say, 1822) · Aves
  5,570
• American Robin

  Turdus migratorius Linnaeus, 1766 · Aves
  5,434
• Oak Titmouse

  Baeolophus inornatus (Gambel, 1845) · Aves
  5,400
• White-breasted Nuthatch

  Sitta carolinensis Latham, 1790 · Aves
  5,224