• From a short story "The Indian Well" by Walter Van Tilburg Clark (inscribed at the Indian Well) My brother came out in ‘49 I came in ‘51 At first we thought we liked it fine But now, by God, we're done
• FULDA - a railroad siding and staff office, three miles east of Blue Canyon from 1905 through the summer of 1923, according to railroad historian, Ken Yeo. Following the horrible blizzard of 1952, when it was found to be difficult to turn around the snow plows on the Emigrant Gap turn table, work was begun on a balloon track two miles to the west, near the old Fulda Station location. With the construction of the balloon track and the advent of diesel power, the Emigrant Gap turn table was dismantled in 1955 according to the book, Donner Pass, Southern Pacific's Sierra Crossing, by John R. Signor. There is also a photo of Fulda Station and the balloon track.
• PLACER UNION HIGH SCHOOL located in Auburn, has a Hall of Fame, where former graduates who have made significant contributions to their communities are honored with a plaque, designating their accomplishments. These plaques are on display in the auditorium lobby on the Placer High School campus. The recipients are also honored at a dinner and beginning in 2001, the first football game of the season will be called "The Hall of Fame Game", with their names and accomplishments listed in the program.
• In 1852 there was no pipe in California and it had to be transported around Cape Horn from New York. The Bear River Ditch to Auburn was completed in 1852. In 1853 hydraulic mining was started in California using canvas hose and rawhide to the monitors. The first large hydraulic mine was started in 1856 at Sucker Flat near Smartsville. At one time, 425 monitors were operating. In 1860 they started to abandon hydraulic mining because it was filling the Sacramento River near Sacramento with mud causing flooding and silting. In 1881, Gold Run had 45 monitors working in a 1 ½ mile area. In 1884 all hydraulic mining was stopped except where there was a debris dam to catch the tailings. Narrows, Bullard Bar and Lake Clementine dams were built to catch the debris.
• Pelton Wheel Inventor Pelton came from Ohio to California in 1850. Fished the Sacramento River a few years and became a millwright in 1864. In 1877, he started working on a new type water wheel after seeing the inefficient type being in use where water kept flying off in all directions, being inefficient, thus slowing down the wheel. An old story says, that after seeing his landlady hosing a cow out of her garden, he saw that when the jet of water hit the cow on the nose, the water flew off on both sides. He then made a small wheel with ½" tin buckets and a piece of metal in the center. He attached this to a wooden shaft and pulley and connected it to a sewing machine with a 1/4" nozzle. He patented the wheel at the Nevada City Foundry in 1880 (Allen's Foundry). In 1888, he left the foundry and moved the operation to San Francisco. By 1895, 850 companies were using the wheel, from 4" smallest diameter to 30 feet, the largest. In 1929, a plaque in his honor was installed by the Masons at Camptonville, where it was asserted the Pelton Wheel was invented. Lester Pelton died on March 15, 1908. The Pelton Wheel is still considered an extremely efficient way to use water to produce power.
• According to Mark Collins, who began working for PG&E in 1930, there was a Power House on the Auburn Ravine, near where Ashford Park is now. The 60 KV line went down Electric Street, and down into Auburn, hence "Electric Street". The Power House was shut down in the early 1930's.
• There were a series of small "Nuggets" in the Placer Gold, a paper that was published in Placer County for several years. The following is from a May 30, 1973 article. We have no way of establishing the complete authenticity of these "tidbits", but thought they were interesting.
  
  . . .The ledge beside the freeway in Gold Run may conceal the richest gold deposit in these parts or so we are told. Southern Pacific Railroad, whose tracks are all that occupy that land, was offered one million dollars for their right-of-way there–and they turned it down.
  
  . . .Slot machines were illegal in Placer County long before the 1950's–nonetheless the one-armed bandits were still very much in common use up until the early Fifties, when the law, imposing a $1,000 fine for possession of slot machines, was rigorously enforced. All the two-armed bandits took to the hills, unloading vast quantities of these hot items wherever they could. We are told that one zealous gambler alone dumped 200 slot machines into the Sacramento River.
  
  . . .When Upper and Lower Auburn consolidated in 1919, Uppertown got the Main Branch of the Post Office. Citizens were assigned to one or the other depending upon their place of residence. It is said that one old-timer was so angry about having his postal service switched to the larger Main Branch, that he changed his address to a P. O. Box in Newcastle and drove the four miles every day to the next town to get his mail.
  

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