Enterprise, Amador County Ghost Town

Enterprise had its beginnings at approximately the same time as Plymouth and Pokerville. Big Indian Creek held placer gold in amounts that drew the miners from the neighboring diggings by the hundreds. Outcroppings of seams from the Mother Lode, which this creek very closely parallels in its final northerly course to the Cosumnes, caused an early shift from placer to hard rock explorations. The results obtained varied from quite good to indifferent. Here we draw upon tradition and scanty and incomplete records.

This we do know. From these operations there developed three mines in the lode quartz of considerable size: the Enterprise, the Bay State, and the Ballard. There does not seem to be any source where one might get any information upon their total production. They appear to have expanded to their maximum output some­time in the 189os. The Bay State was active until well past the turn of the zoth Century. Taking the evidence of their surface activities and what physically remains of these, one would place them in the order of their importance thus: the Bay State, the Enterprise, and the Ballard.

Drawing now upon Mother Lode lore: The reason for the abandonment of the operations was that water in overwhelming quantity was encountered beyond the capacity of any pumps then existent to clear, and in a maddening pattern that fate so often forms, this happened at precisely the point where rich ore was discovered in abundance.

The Chinese, in the standard way of the placers, worked out that which had been missed by the earlier waves of miners. Their cabins lined both sides of the creek for several miles. A few resisted the assault of time and the elements until 40 years ago. As mentioned in the bit on Lancha Plana, there is not a more tricky subject than an estimate of the number of Chinese in a given locality in the olden time: 200 perhaps, 500 possibly.

In the late 1920S and early 30S small gold dredges called doodlebugs scraped out the bottom of Big Indian Creek and reaped a handsome return. In the returning forest along the creek, pleasant summer homes have been established by persons seeking a vacation and weekend respite from the perils and tension of the asphalt jungle. Along the watercourse itself, the beaver, no longer subject to the merciless pressure of the trappers, fell the ash, beech, and birch trees and construct beautiful dams.

Information, photographs courtesy of the Amador County Archives, The Historical Marker Database, The Chronicling America Database, and Larry Cenotto, Amador County's Historian