There is a lot of history to celebrate this year, locally and nationally. July 4, 2026 is the 250th anniversary of the founding of our country, formally known as its Semiquincentennial. The Declaration of Independence was proclaimed on July 4, 1776, so that date is observed as the nation’s birthdate. While there will be nationally organized celebrations, locally, a coalition of groups dedicated to local history, led by Chuck Scimeca of the Nevada County Historical Landmarks Commission, is organizing “Nevada County History On Parade.” It will be part of the annual Fourth of July parade, which will be held in Nevada City this year. Other participants include the Nevada County Historical Society and the Empire Mine State Historic Park.
Before that celebration, Nevada County will commemorate its 175th anniversary. Formally, it is the County’s Dodransbicentennial – a Latin term roughly meaning a quarter before two centuries.
While the County was officially created by the legislature in 1851, let’s go back to 1848. At that time, the area included in Nevada County and much of the surrounding region was inhabited by the Nisenan people. After word spread about Marshall’s discovery of gold at Coloma in January 1848, prospectors started entering Nevada County from the west. The first recorded local discovery of gold by a prospector was by Jonas Spect on June 2, 1848 on the Yuba River in the Timbuctoo-Smartsville area. The first recorded white settlement in what is now Nevada County was in the summer of 1848 at Rose’s Corral located off Pleasant Valley Road near the intersection with Bitney Springs Road. The site is now a historic landmark.
In 1850, California was admitted to the Union as the 31st state. At admission, the state was divided into a number of large counties. One was Yuba County, which then included much of Nevada County and parts of Placer and Sierra Counties. By then, thousands of people had moved into the area that became Nevada County, which was believed by many to be the most populous county in California. Dissatisfied with having to travel to Marysville on government or court business, citizens petitioned for their own county.
On April 25, 1851 the legislature enacted a law which redivided the state into smaller counties and described the boundaries of Nevada County, carving it out of Yuba County and extending it eastward to the state line with the then territory of Utah. But the legislature did not create a governing structure for the County on that date. So if you had to conduct county business on May 1, you still had to travel to Marysville. A few weeks later, by a bill which is dated May 28 but which was probably passed on May 18, 1851, the legislature created the administrative structure for the county of Nevada. Aaron Sargent, then the District Attorney, in his history of Nevada County which appears in Brown and Dallison’s 1856 Directory, credits May 18, 1851 as the date the County was formed.
1851 is also Nevada City’s Dodransbicentennial. In 1849, a settlement was established at Doc Caldwell’s Upper Store, also called Deer Creek Dry Diggins, about where the Trinity Church now is on Nevada Street. In March 1850, in conjunction with a local election, the name Nevada was given to the settlement. Nevada is Spanish for snow-covered. One year later, on March 13, 1851, the City of Nevada was incorporated by the legislature at the request of local citizens. If there was a celebration around March 13 of this year, I missed it. But perhaps the City of Nevada is waiting for another year. For reasons that would take a long time to explain, the City was unincorporated and re-incorporated in 1854, 1856 and 1878. The City of Nevada is still its legal name, the name under which it was repeatedly incorporated. However, the legislature, in naming county seats in the April 25 legislation, called ours Nevada City presumably to distinguish the City from the County. I believe that’s the earliest reference to the name Nevada City that I’ve seen. Still, most references to the City in the 1850s call in Nevada. It is not till the later 1850s that the term Nevada City came into common use and definitely so by the time Nevada was admitted as a state in 1864.
As for Grass Valley, in 1849 a settlement was established at Boston Ravine, which became Centerville and soon Grass Valley, probably before the Post Office arrived in 1852. However, the City was not incorporated until 1893. For either date, no celebration this year.
Finally, the Nevada County Narrow Gauge Railroad began service in 1876. The Nevada County Narrow Gauge Railroad Museum will observe that 150th anniversary, the Sesquicentennial, on May 10, 2026 at the museum. At that ceremony, it will christen a restored coach with a new name, “Nevada City.”
Hope you enjoy celebrating our history this year!