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The creek, the hill, and the camp were all named for the same man,
Sgt. James H. Carson, a member of Colonel Stevenson’s Regiment of First
New York Volunteers. Organized to fight in the Mexican War, the
regiment arrived in California in 1847, but saw little action and were
mustered out of service at the end of the war. As no provisions had
been made for their return to the States, the soldiers found themselves
stranded in California. Carson happened to be in Monterey when news of
Marshall’s discovery reached that town in the spring of 1848. After
packing his belongings and buying a few supplies, he set out for the
gold fields.Carson first made his way to Weber Creek near Placerville, where he
mined quite successfully for a time. But as miners were always looking
for better prospects, he joined a party of men which included the Angel
and Murphy brothers, and headed south. Prospecting along all the
streams they crossed, the party broke up at what is now known as Angels
Creek. The Murphys headed east, the Angels decided to stay put, and
Carson and a few others continued south. They stopped a few miles
farther and panned at a small tributary of the Stanislaus, which they
found incredibly rich in gold. They called it Carson Creek.Even with these fantastic diggings—in one ten-day period each
member of the party took out an average of 180 ounces of gold—Carson
became restless, and left the area to explore and mine other regions in
the Southern Mines. After several unsuccessful years of prospecting, he
decided to return to Carson Creek and his claims. Nominated and elected
to the State Assembly in 1852, Carson was later stricken with a severe
case of rheumatism, an illness which had plagued him for several years.
As he lay in bed, fortunes in gold were being taken from the hill, but
he was not to share in any of them. He died in Stockton in near poverty
in 1853.Carson Hill’s great fame did not come from the placers of its
creeks, but from the rich quartz lodes in the hill. In 1850, John
William Hance discovered a fourteen pound lump of gold atop Carson Hill
while supposedly chasing a runaway mule. The lump had broken away from
a quartz vein, along which Hance immediately staked his claim. He later
took on a group of six partners who then called themselves the Carson
Creek Consolidated Mining Company. The claim was generally known as the
Morgan Mine, after the most prominent of the partners, Colonel A.
Morgan.he claim was so rich that a unique method of mining was employed
here with great success. Borthwick describes the method during the old
days: "When the quartz vein was first worked, the method adopted was to
put in a blast, and after the explosion, to go round with handbaskets
and pick up the pieces." Using this method, $110,000 in gold was
collected from a single blast. At another time, a lump of ore was found
weighing 112 pounds. And on November 22 of 1854, one of the largest
gold nuggets ever found in California was uncovered in the Morgan Mine,
very near the surface. Technically not a nugget, but rather a mass of
gold and quartz, the thing was huge; fifteen inches long, six inches
wide, and four inches thick. It was valued at $43,000—a mere fraction
of Carson Hill’s total production of $26 million.One of the Gold Country’s more colorful stories is reported to have
occurred here (although several other camps lay claim to a similar
tale) during the early days of the rush. The tale goes that a man who
had lost his life in a mining accident was being buried in the local
cemetery. As the services were being held, one of the mourners noticed
something glittering in the newly turned earth of the open grave. Time
stood still for an instant, but then the ceremony was forgotten as
everyone, the minister included, quickly located a claim.
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