Columbia started life in 1850 when Dr. Thaddeus Hildreth and his brother set up the camp known as Hildreth's Diggins in the lovely Sierra foothills. More than 150 tumultuous years later, Columbia is an amazing example of a true gold rush community frozen in time. But this is no ghost town either—the downtown area, with its plank sidewalks, ornate hotels, and saloons, is preserved as a California State Historic Park. The town today is a living, breathing, modern community at peace with both its past and its present. It's easy to imagine characters from the Old West swaggering through these streets, which served as the backdrop to Gary Cooper's Marshall Will Kane in High Noon. Of course, given Columbia's frequent historical reenactments, one doesn't have to think too hard to conjure such imagery.
In this engaging retrospective, the Friends of Columbia State Historic Park presents a collection of vintage images that illustrate Columbia's days as a roughshod mining town, the boom times when some 6,000 hopeful people crowded the saloons and hotels, the bust when only a few hundred remained, and the reservation efforts that began in the 1920s and continue today, keeping the community's unique identity intact for future generations.