Townerville, Amador County Ghost Town

The beginning of Townerville appears later than most of its neighboring communities. With the outbreak of the Civil War, copper became a resource that was possibly more precious than gold.

Mason relates of Townerville and Copper Center that they were ephemeral in character, a free translation of which would seem to be that they sprang into existence with the outbreak of the conflict. At the war's close the price of copper declined. The towns died.

Their sites are beneath the waters of the north arm of Lake Pardee. When the lake is below normal levels, there is exposed the fallen walls of a building that was once part of the ranch house of the Horton holdings. The walls were overthrown by demolition crews in the course of the cleanup of the basin to prevent them from being a menace to navigation. They were of serpentine, coursed in lime mortar. When standing, they would appear to have formed a combination of store and bodega or wine cellar.

In the long, chemise-covered hog-back of Bull Run Hill back of the town were a number of kidneys of copper ore, extremely rich. By this is meant that the ore assayed sixty or seventy percent in metallic content.

Such scant information as is available seems to indicate that the ore was hauled by freight wagons over to the smelter of the Newton Copper Mine at Ranlett. In the First World War several remaining kidneys were exploited and the known deposits of the ridge pretty well exhausted. There are persons surviving who mined the area, and they remarked on the richness of the ore and on the rather unusual geologic formation the ore bodies are isolated and completely unconnected by any copper bearing lode. The strikes were made at depths of from 150 to 300 feet.

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