Yreka, California Totally Explained

Everything about Yreka California totally explained

Yreka ("wye-REE-ka") is the county seat of Siskiyou County, California, United States. The population was 7,290 at the 2000 census.

History

In March 1851 Abraham Thompson, a mule train packer, discovered gold near Black Gulch while traveling along the Siskiyou Trail from southern Oregon. This discovery sparked an extension of the California Gold Rush from California's Sierra Nevada into Northern California. By April 1851, 2,000 miners had arrived in "Thompson's Dry Diggings" to test their luck, and by June 1851, a gold rush "boomtown" of tents, shanties, and a few rough cabins had sprung up. Several name changes occurred until the little city was called Yreka, apparently taken from a Shasta Indian word meaning "north mountain" or "white mountain," a reference to nearby Mt. Shasta. Mark Twain, in his Autobiography (p. 162, Harper/Perennial Literary, 1990), tells a different story: ť Harte had arrived in California in the fifties, twenty-three or twenty-four years old, and had wandered up into the surface diggings of the camp at Yreka, a place which had acquired its mysterious name--when in its first days it much needed a name--through an accident. There was a bakeshop with a canvas sign which hadn't yet been put up but had been painted and stretched to dry in such a way that the word BAKERY, all but the B, showed through and was reversed. A stranger read it wrong end first, YREKA, and supposed that that was the name of the camp. The campers were satisfied with it and adopted it.

Well-known poet Joaquin Miller described Yreka during 1853-54 as a bustling place with ". . . a tide of people up and down and across other streets, as strong as if a city on the East Coast." Incorporation proceedings were completed on April 21, 1857.
In November 1941, Yreka was designated as the capital of the proposed State of Jefferson, a secession movement along the Oregon and California border that has gained cultural traction in the following decades.

Commerce and tourism

Located at the northern edge of the Shasta Cascade area of Northern California, Yreka sees many tourists. Yreka is home to the Siskiyou County Museum, and to a number of Gold Rush-era monuments and parks. Visitors also come to enjoy trout fishing in the nearby Klamath, Sacramento and McCloud Visitors also engage in nearby skiing (both alpine and cross-country), or bike or hike to the waterfalls, streams and lakes in the area, including nearby Falls of the McCloud River, Burney Falls, Mossbrae Falls, Lake Siskiyou, Castle Lake and Shasta Lake. and is represented by Republican Wally Herger.

General information

The city is the seat of Siskiyou County and has many services that support the many small communities in the area. The high school buses carry students from towns that wouldn't otherwise be able to fund a secondary education.
In Yreka, the gold-mining era is commemorated with a gold museum, as well as with a remnant of a silver mining operation in Greenhorn Park. The high school sports mascot is a gold miner. School colors are red and gold.

Trivia

"Yreka Bakery" is a popular palindrome, but no such business currently exists, although sources indicate that there was one as early as 1886 which may have been the foundation of Mark Twain's story; it's possible that the business existed until 1960.
Yreka is mentioned in Ann Rule's true crime novel, "The I-5 Killer".

Further Information

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