Yreka, located in Northern California, is best known for being a boomtown gold rush city that survived. It has a colorful past with colorful characters and some very interesting facts.

Fact 1: Yreka is an Indian word meaning ‘œMount Shasta’.

Fact 2: It sprang up in 1851, when Abraham Thompson discovered gold near Black Gulch.

Fact 3: Within six weeks of gold being discovered there, the population swelled to 2,000.

Fact 4: During the gold rush era, before it was called Yreka, it went by the name of ‘œThompson’s Dry Diggings’.

Fact 5: Today, the population of Yreka is just over 7,000 inhabitants.

Fact 6: After the gold ran out, farming, ranching and timber made this boomtown permanent.

Fact 7: In 1871, a fire burned down most of the town but it was rebuilt.

Fact 8: The temperature usually doesn’t get higher than the 70’s.

Fact 9: Yreka is the hometown of Jodi Arias, whose high-profile trial ended in a conviction of the murder of her boyfriend.

Fact 10: The legendary Lotta Crabtree began her career in Yreka performing at saloons.

Fact 11: In 1895, a mob, referred to as the Necktie Paty, broke into the local jail and lynched four men accused of murder. After that it was decades before another murder took place in Yreka.

Fact 12: The first hospital in Yreka was built in 1852 by Dr. J. Lytle Cummins. Although a respected and active citizen of the town, he left his family and ran away with his neice, only to be found in San Francisco destitute and ruined.

Fact 13: In 1880, President Rutherford B. Hayes, who was the last President to take a long-distance stage coach trip, stayed in Yreka, along with his wife and General William T. Sherman, at the Franco-American hotel.