French Camp

Hudson's Bay Company brigades came south to camp here each year from about 1832, French-Canadian trappers traveling with their wives and children, and the bronze calls the spot the end of the Oregon-California Trail. They carried more than traps. The brigades of John Work and Michel La Framboise brought an intermittent fever, apparently malaria, into the Central Valley in 1832 and 1833, and it killed more than twenty thousand Native people in California, by S. F. Cook's count. Weber's 1844 rancho kept the trappers' name: the Camp of the Frenchmen.

What the plaque says

French Camp Here was the terminus of the Oregon-California Trail used by the French-Canadian trappers employed by the Hudson's Bay Company from about 1832 to 1845. Michel La Framboise, among others, met fur hunters here annually, where they camped with their families. In 1844 Charles M. Weber and William Gulnac promoted the first white settlers' colony on Rancho del Campo de los Franceses, which included French Camp and the site of Stockton. California Registered Historical Landmark No. 668 Plaque placed by the California State Park Commission in cooperation with the Reynolds family, Native Daughters of the Golden West, Ladies Auxiliary to California Pioneers, and French Camp District Chamber of Commerce, June 6, 1959.

Where it stands

More markers nearby

• California Chicory Works — 3.1 mi
• Sikh Temple Site — 3.3 mi
• Stockton Assembly Center — 3.6 mi
• John Brown (California's Paul Revere) — 4.8 mi