Although it was once a thriving mining community southeast of Placerville, time has reduced Newtown to just a few buildings and a host of memories.

Even so, in the area of Newtown and Fort Jim Roads, one can still find the many piles of rocks that the miners laboriously moved by hand in their search for gold, some scars from hydraulic mining and even remnants of the long wooden pipeline that once brought water to this thriving community's brewery.

The history of Newtown goes back to the early days of the gold rush when a party of Mormons, many of whom had been mining at Mormon Island on the South Fork of the American River, started for Salt Lake. Bringing along a large number of horses and cattle, they left Old Dry Diggings (Placerville) and followed a trail along the ridge between Weber Creek and the Cosumnes River until they came to a valley about 2 miles in length and 1 mile wide. They called the place Pleasant Valley, a name that remains to this day.

At the north end of the valley, part of the group built a corral for their stock, while several others went even further north, over a low ridge to the South Fork of Weber Creek. There they built a second corral.

The grass was good in the valley. They decided to allow the animals to fatten up for the long trip to Salt Lake. Besides, they had found some gold in a ravine near the creek and, although they did not have the proper equipment to efficiently mine, they did find enough to make the stop worthwhile.

After about three weeks, they gathered the animals and continued their trip over the mountains, through the Carson Valley and on to Salt Lake.

In early 1849, five of these men returned to Old Dry Diggings, where one of them happened to mention their find to a friend named O. Russell. Provided with landmarks from which he could find the new diggings, Russell, along with six others and supplies for four of five days, secretly left town in the middle of night. They easily found the location O the Mormons had left a ditch some 300 feet in length, four feet wide and about two feet deep. They soon determined that a man, using a pan, could probably recover about $8 a day in gold from the ground. Scouting around in the area they found several other ravines that also contained gold, all in more or less the same concentration.

On the third day they discovered that their "secret" was out. A party of 30 more miners arrived by following their trail. After a day or more of prospecting, both groups came to the conclusion that they had left better diggings than this and headed back to town, abandoning the site.

Around May of the same year, some of the party procured some pack animals and, this time with more equipment and supplies, headed back to try again. Mining proceeded quietly until July of 1849, when the miners were surprised by the first of the groups of fortune seekers, arriving in California by following the Mormon Trail over the mountains.

In a short time, hundreds of gold seekers arrived, many stopping to prospect. Some just dug around for a while, but others built log cabins and even headed into what was now Hangtown, and even as far as Sacramento, to get supplies.

Soon there was a group of cabins between the forks of Weber Creek. They named it Iowaville. Around the Mormon corral another town grew, this one called Dog Town. There a man named Smith opened a store. This business was later owned by Samuel Snow, after whom Snow's Road was later named.

With more and more miners arriving, by 1852 it became apparent that the gold would be easier to separate from the surrounding soil if water was brought into the area by ditch. Soon three ditches had been constructed by the "Eureka Company." Two of them were four miles long, leading from both the north and south forks of Weber Creek. One was 10 miles long, coming all the way from the North Fork of the Cosumnes River. The water was sold to the miners for half the cost of water in Placerville and the population of miners increased rapidly.

Soon, a sawmill was built in Pleasant valley and construction on a new town began a half mile to the southwest of Dog Town, on a beach about a 100 feet above the creek.

Newtown, as it came to be known, started with a store built by Israel Clapp. This was soon followed by another store erected by Lewis Foster and W.F. Leon's hotel. Then came a butcher shop, blacksmith shops, a post office (1852), a ten-pin alley and a brewery, which got its water through a wooden pipeline from a spring high on a hill to the south. Along with these, of course, were built the requisite number of billiard saloons and drinking establishments. Soon, miners' cabins thickly dotted the landscape.

By 1854 the road leading directly from Newtown to what was by this time Placerville was completed and Newtown had become, as Paolo Sioli so aptly put it in his History of El Dorado County (1883) " ... a full-fledged California mining town, with all its appliances, even to a dance house in the suburbs."

Local historian George W. Peabody, in an article called "How About That! #30," relates that among the residents of Newtown, who were mainly Italian immigrants, was one pioneer affectionately named John "Black Jack" Perkins, a black slave who had arrived in Mud Springs (El Dorado) with his master in 1849. Through his hard work he was able to find enough gold to buy his freedom and move to the meadow between Newtown and Pleasant Valley, where he raised pigs.

A friendly and peaceable citizen, he entertained his neighbors and their children with his many songs, accompanying himself on "dry bones" (two polished pieces of wood that he held between his fingers and tapped together with a flick of his wrist). The small hill along Newtown Road, between Starks Grade Road and Snow's Road, is still known as Perkin's Rise in his honor.

With 1872 came the year of decision for Newtown. January brought the worst storm on record, which was followed by a severe earthquake. In May the village of Hanks Exchange, just a few miles to the west, burned and then, a few months later, Newtown was struck.

On Oct. 12, 1872 a fire started in the brewery and rapidly spread to the remainder of the town. The inhabitants bravely fought the fire that would leave many of them penniless, but were unable to stop its spread. Soon nearly every building in this prosperous town became nothing but a pile of ashes.

Only a week later, the schoolhouse burned down. No lives were lost and small portions of the town were rebuilt, but many of the residents moved elsewhere.

After only 20 years, Newtown, a town that once had more citizens than Placerville, became only a shadow of its once prosperous youth.

A speceal Thank You to.:

Historian George W. Peabody
Correspondent Doug Noble, and
The Mountain Democrat News Paper.