Grass Valley

Sister cities

• Limana
• Bodmin

History

Grass Valley, which was originally known as Boston Ravine and later named Centerville, dates from the California Gold Rush, as does nearby Nevada City. Gold was discovered at Gold Hill in October 1850 and population grew around the mine. When a post office was established in 1851, it was renamed Grass Valley the next year for unknown reasons. The town was incorporated in 1860. The essential history of Grass Valley mining belongs to the Grass Valley Mining District's main mines—the North Star, Empire, and Idaho-Maryland—for continuous production over a span of years. From 1868 until 1900, the Idaho-Maryland mine was the most productive in the district. From 1900 until 1925, the North Star and the Empire produced the most gold in the county. In 1932, the Empire and North Star were physically connected at the 4600-foot level and 5300-foot level. Grass Valley has the Empire Mine and North Star Mine, two of California's richest mines. George Starr, manager of the Empire Mine, and William Bowers Bourn II, the owner, donated mine property which became Memorial Park. Wiliam Bourn Jr. had taken over management of the Empire Mine in 1878 after his father's death, replacing water power with steam. In 1884, Bourn purchased and rejuvenated the North Star mine. The Idaho and Maryland mines were consolidated by Samuel P. Dorsey in 1893. In 1925, Errol MacBoyle acquired the Idaho-Maryland. By 1938, the Idaho-Maryland was the second largest gold producer in the country. However, gold mining operations in the area ended during WWII, due to War Production Board Limitation Order 208. After the war, renewed operations were attempted, but according to Gage McKinney, "by the mid-1950s mining was no longer profitable in what had been the richest gold mining district in California." Many…

Geography

According to the United States Census Bureau, the city has an area of , all of it land. A variety of igneous and metamorphic rock supports Grass Valley. Granitic rock such as quartz diorite underlies the downtown core and extends south along Highway 49. Metavolcanic rock and diabase underlie areas around the granitic zone. Neighborhoods around Nevada County Golf Course and Sierra Nevada Memorial Hospital are underlain by ultramafic rock which supports infertile soils of the Dubakella series. Here the vegetation is sparse considering the high average annual precipitation, with much grassland, and forested areas are often dominated by several species of oaks and the crooked, thin-crowned gray pine. Luxuriant forest dominated by straight, dense ponderosa pine inhabits the more fertile soils, which include Musick series on granitic rock and Sites series on mafic or metamorphic rock. Grass Valley has a hot-summer Mediterranean climate (Köppen Csa) with warm to hot, dry summers and wet, cool, rainy winters. Summer is very dry, but thunderstorms may occur. Rainfall averages over per year, in extreme contrast with the semi-arid valley below, which average as low as in some parts. The high rainfall also gives the area green vegetation typical of an oceanic climate. This contributes to a heavy fuel-loading of brush and grass, which dry out during the near-rainless summer, posing a wildfire hazard. Winters are cool but rarely cold. There are at least one or more snow events per year, often in the late winter. Frequent and large disruptive winter storms occur some years, while other years may have little to no snow. Less marine influence means that snow tends to occur more irregularly than some communities at similar elevation nearby to the south, such as Pollock Pines. Over…

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