Historical Marker · No. 569
Mormon Island, Negro Hill, Salmon Falls, and Condemned Bar
Folsom, El Dorado County · California
Erected by California State Park Commission in cooperation with Marguerite Parlor No. 12, Native Daughters of the Golden West, June 9, 1957, 1957
The plaque is gone. It stood at Green Valley Road and commemorated four gold rush towns at once, Mormon Island, Negro Hill, Salmon Falls and Condemned Bar, all of them now under Folsom Lake. The state's own 1996 landmark book already recorded it as missing. Negro Hill was among the most diverse camps in the diggings, worked from 1849 by African American miners, and the Army Corps moved its graves to the Mormon Island Relocation Cemetery in 1954 before the water came up.
What the plaque says
Mormon Island, Negro Hill, Salmon Falls and Condemned Bar These historic mining towns, and other mining camps of the Gold Rush Era, now inundated by Folsom Lake, are commemorated by the Mormon Island Memorial Cemetery, nearby. Here were reburied the pioneers whose graves were flooded, when the lake was formed by the Folsom Dam. Their memory is a reminder that what we are today we owe to those who came before us. Registered Historical Landmarks No. 569, 570, 571, and 572 Plaque placed by California State Park Commission in cooperation with Marguerite Parlor No. 12, Native Daughters of the Golden West, June 9, 1957.
Where it stands
38.70091, -121.10948 · Directions
Worth the stop nearby
- Marshall Gold Discovery State Historic Park — 14 miThe tailrace at Coloma where a carpenter found gold in January 1848 and the world came running.
- Sacramento — 23 miThe Gold Rush river port that became the state capital, and jacked itself ten feet into the air to stop drowning.