The town is named for its setting in a bowl-shaped valley which early miners thought was caused by a volcano. The early morning fog rising from the valley floor only reinforced that belief. The area was first known designated by Colonel Stevenson's men, who mined Soldiers Gulch in 1849. Much of the mining was in Soldiers' gulch, the dirt being carried to the creek for washing. A number of men made hand-barrows, on which they carried the dirt. Finally a cart was rigged up, and, with a yoke of cattle to draw it, readily rented for eight dollars per day.

The Indians worked for gold in Indian gulch, hence its name. During the first winter, portions of the Volcano graveyard were found to be rich in gold, and the gulches were worked much deeper. It now began to be suspected, or rather learned, that the deposits of gold around Volcano were enormously large, and that they extended to great depths.

The Illinois party, Green & Co., went to work on the ground staked off. The surface was a reddish clay, evidently a wash from the hill to the west. About eight feet from the surface they came to the gravel, which was so rich that they could pick out gold with the fingers. They carried the dirt to the creek, some two hundred yards away, in buckets, and washed it in a rocker. They made about a hundred dollars a day to the man, some of which was coarse gold, one piece being worth over nine hundred dollars (over 45 ounces). A cart load of dirt would have two hundred and fifty dollars of gold in it and a pan of dirt might contain five hundred dollars. Men who never in their lives had a hundred dollars, would make a thousand dollars a day. A company of Texans would make a hundred dollars each in a day, and gamble it away every night, and come to their claim in the morning broke. This was their way of having a good time, and gambling saloons came in for a large share of the profits.

Clapboard gulch also paid good wages to the gold miners; though not so rich as Soldiers' gulch, the pay-dirt was easier washed and near the surface. Indian gulch was also found to be rich, especially at the head. The Welch claim had a mound of dirt a few feet across that had more than a hundred thousand dollars in it. Some of the gold was found in a tough clay that defied washing by any ordinary method. Boiling was found to disintegrate the clay, and boilers were erected in many places to steam it so that it would come to pieces. It was observed that when left in the sun to dry hard, the clay would fall to pieces, and drying yards were established where the rich gold bearing dirt was dried and pounded.

In 1851 a post office was established and April 1852 saw 300 houses.

By 1853 the flats and gulches swarmed with men, there were 11 stores, 6 hotels, 3 bakeries, and 3 saloons.

Two years later thousands of fortune seekers came to form a town of 17 hotels, a library, a theater, and courts of quick justice.

Town Of Many Firsts

After the Rush And Damage Done

Undeterred by law or conscience, the 19th-century Argonauts simply helped themselves to billions of dollars' worth of Sierra gold. Californians and their environment have been paying for it ever since.

American Indians who had lived in the Sierra for perhaps 10,000 years paid the first big installment with their lives and way of life. The miners enlisted some natives as laborers, but most were ousted from their villages and hunting grounds. An estimated 100,000 Indians in California died between 1848 and 1885 as a result of starvation, violence and diseases introduced by Europeans, historians say.

Sacramento Valley farmers paid the next big bill for the environmental destruction, beginning with torrential rains in 1862, then again in 1875. The cost is borne out every year in dike repairs to protect hundreds of thousands of Valley residents. The glacier of debris unleashed by Gold Rush miners deprived levee builders of nature's compact, leak-resistant foundation, formed over the eons.

The Civil War

Today and Beyond

The VTC got its' start in 1974 with its' debut of 'Prisoner of Second Avenue' by Neil Simon. Since that time the company has put on 140 performances as we celebrate our 37th season.