The California State Mining and Mineral Museum is a museum in the state park system of California, USA, interpreting the state's mineral resources and mining heritage. It is located in Mariposa on the Mariposa County fairgrounds.
The big news of 1848 was the discovery of gold in California. This event created international interest and soon a mass immigration of fortune seekers and pioneers trekked their way to pan the streams for gold in the Sierra Nevada foothills. More than a century later, gold and legends of Old West mining continue to fascinate historians.
Although this is one of California's newest state parks, the museum houses a collection that was started in 1865 in San Francisco — the official California State Mineral Collection, with over 13,000 minerals, rocks, gems, fossils, and historic artifacts. Recently returned (in 2000) is the popular crystalline gold "Fricot Nugget", weighing 201 troy ounces (6.25 kg) — the largest one found during the Gold Rush.
Illustrative of days long-gone is a working scale model of a stamp mill, demonstrating the process of extracting gold from quartz rock. In spring of 2001, the mining tunnel connected to the museum was reopened. The tunnel is a trip back through time, focusing on the lives of miners working in California's hard rock mines during the later part of the Gold Rush. It allows visitors to experience first-hand what it felt like to spend the day working inside a dark, cool and damp underground chamber, excavated from solid rock and shored up with timbers.
A visit to the California State Mining and Mineral Museum offers the visitor the chance to explore the wealth of the Mother Lode, view minerals and gems from around the world, and to experience a little bit of California's mining history adventures. Throughout the year special rotating displays from private collections and other institutions will be exhibited, making return trips to this museum well worth your time.
Educators can call the museum for information on curriculum based educational programs for Grades 1 to 12 and college level.
Read more about California State Mining And Mineral Museum: Closure Proposal, Theft
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“This land is your land, this land is my land, From California to the New York Island. From the redwood forest to the Gulf Stream waters This land was made for you and me.”
—Woody Guthrie (1912–1967)
“[17th-century] Puritans were the first modern parents. Like many of us, they looked on their treatment of children as a test of their own self-control. Their goal was not to simply to ensure the child’s duty to the family, but to help him or her make personal, individual commitments. They were the first authors to state that children must obey God rather than parents, in case of a clear conflict.”
—C. John Sommerville (20th century)
“For every nineteenth-century middle-class family that protected its wife and child within the family circle, there was an Irish or a German girl scrubbing floors in that home, a Welsh boy mining coal to keep the home-baked goodies warm, a black girl doing the family laundry, a black mother and child picking cotton to be made into clothes for the family, and a Jewish or an Italian daughter in a sweatshop making “ladies” dresses or artificial flowers for the family to purchase.”
—Stephanie Coontz (20th century)
“A fine-looking mill, but no machinery inside.”
—Hawaiian saying no. 1702, ‘lelo No’Eau, collected, translated, and annotated by Mary Kawena Pukui, Bishop Museum Press, Hawaii (1983)