Milton

The town is named for a man the state's own text demotes. Milton Latham had been California's sixth governor and a United States senator before he financed the Stockton and Copperopolis Railroad, and the register calls him one of the construction engineers. The line reached here on the Fourth of July 1871 and stopped, because the copper it was built to carry had already collapsed. Milton became the terminus by default. No plaque marks the town; the only bronze here is the Masonic lodge's.

What the plaque says

KEYSTONE LODGE NO. 161, F. & A. M., INSTITUTED IN COPPEROPOLIS, DEC. 19, 1862, AT THE HEIGHT OF THE COPPER MINING BOOM, MOVED, 1881, TO MILTON, THE TERMINAL OF THE STOCKTON & COPPEROPOLIS RAILROAD, WHICH, BECAUSE OF THE COLLAPSE OF COPPER MINING, NEVER REACHED ITS INTENDED GOAL. DEDICATED TO THE MEMORY OF THOSE WHO SOUGHT TO PERPETUATE THE MORAL TEACHINGS OF FREEMASONRY. TO THEM WE GRATEFULLY ACKNOWLEDGE OUR DEBT. GRAND LODGE F. & A. M. OF CALIFORNIA DEC. 19, 1962

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Columbia State Historic Park — 25 mi
  The Gem of the Southern Mines, still open for business on a car-free Gold Rush main street.

More markers nearby

• Jenny Lind — 4.4 mi
• Stone Corral — 6.6 mi
• Valley Springs — 11 mi
• Copperopolis — 12 mi