24/7 Trauma and Biohazard Cleanup in Columbia, CA

Columbia is an unincorporated census-designated place in Tuolumne County that began as a Gold Rush boomtown — gold was discovered nearby in March 1850 by Dr. Thaddeus Hildreth's party, and the camp was first called Hildreths Diggings before being renamed Columbia.

Columbia was known as the 'Gem of the Southern Mines' — within weeks of the gold discovery its population climbed to about 5,000, and at its peak some 25,000 to 30,000 people made it one of the largest cities in California, briefly considered for the state capitol.

Between 1850 and the early 1900s, an estimated $87 million to $150 million in gold was taken from the hills around Columbia — miners eventually dug beneath the town itself to reach the gold under its buildings.

Columbia never became a ghost town — in 1945 Governor Earl Warren signed the creation of Columbia State Historic Park, and its preserved Gold Rush-era downtown is both a National Historic Landmark District and California Historical Landmark No. 123.

Main Street in Columbia's historic district is closed to automobiles, and costumed interpreters, a horse-drawn stagecoach, gold panning and the still-operating Douglass Saloon keep the town looking much as it did in the 1850s.

Columbia hosted what UCLA researchers identify as the first Cinco de Mayo celebrations in the United States — in May 1862, Mexican miners in the town celebrated the Mexican victory at the Battle of Puebla with rifle shots, fireworks and patriotic songs.

Columbia had a population of just 2,577 at the 2020 census, living in 1,150 households — a fraction of its Gold Rush size.

Columbia's one-room brick schoolhouse, built in 1860 and closed in 1937, still stands in the state park, and the town sits on State Route 49 at about 2,139 feet in the Sierra Nevada foothills, near Columbia Community College and a small airport heavily used by firefighting aircraft in summer.

Fire shaped Columbia's look — a major fire destroyed most of the town in 1854, after which wealthier merchants rebuilt in brick with iron doors and shutters, and another fire in 1857 burned nearly everything that remained; the town once had five cemeteries, including a Boot Hill.

Columbia still celebrates its firefighting heritage with the annual Columbia Fire Muster in May, often the earliest of California's summer fire musters.