24/7 Trauma and Biohazard Cleanup in Volcano, CA

Volcano is a census-designated place in Amador County, California, a preserved Gold Rush town at 2,070 feet whose entire community is registered as California Historical Landmark No. 29.

Volcano got its name from its bowl-shaped valley, which early gold miners mistakenly believed was the crater of a volcano - an illusion reinforced by early-morning fog rising from the valley floor.

Soldiers from Colonel Stevenson's regiment mined Soldiers Gulch here in 1849, a post office opened in 1851, and by April 1852 the camp already had 300 houses.

Hydraulic mining beginning in 1855 turned Volcano into a boomtown of roughly 5,000 people with 17 hotels, a library, a theater and courts of quick justice - and it twice nearly became the Amador County seat, in 1854 and 1857.

Volcano is famous for its string of California 'firsts': the state's first theater group (1854), first debating society (1854), first circulating library (1854), first private schools (1855) and first private law school (1855).

George Madeira established California's first recorded astronomical observatory in Volcano in 1860, the site from which the Great Comet of 1861 was discovered in the United States.

During the Civil War, Union supporters called the Volcano Blues smuggled an 800-pound cannon nicknamed 'Old Abe' into town hidden in a hearse, and fired it once down Main Street - shattering the windows of shops owned by Confederate sympathizers; it remains the only cannon of its age in the U.S. still mounted on a 19th-century wooden carriage.

Volcano's St. George Hotel, built in 1862 on the footprint of two earlier hotels that burned down, is listed on the National Register of Historic Places.

Volcano's general store has been in continuous use since 1852, making it one of the longest-running general stores in California.

Volcano is home to Black Chasm Cavern, a cave designated a National Natural Landmark, known for its rare helictite crystals.