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Paperback: 128 pages
Publisher: Arcadia Publishing (2008)
ISBN-10: 0738556068
ISBN-13: 978-0738556062
 Smartsville and Timbuctoo (California State Landmarks Nos. 321 and 320)
are essentially one place with two names. As worked-out claims and
floods forced placer forty-niners up from the sandbars into the hills
above the Yuba River, and as word spread around the world about gold in
the California hills, towns and communities formed.
The Smartsville and
Timbuctoo area was once the most populated place in eastern Yuba
County. Black Bart, Jim “the Timbuctoo Terror” Webster, and other
desperadoes haunted the local roads. Eventually fires, worked-out
diggings, and the Sawyer Decision succeeded in driving out all but the
most dedicated (and in some cases eccentric) residents. Neither town,
though, is ready yet for the dustbin of history: the population might
once again explode—this time not with gold seekers but with
long-distance commuters, turning the former boomtowns into future
bedroom communities.
A Historical Snapshot...
TIMBUCTOO
The first mining was done in the ravines about Timbuctoo in
1850; William Monigan, who had a store at Rose Bar in 1850, was one of the first
to work here. Timbuctoo was the largest and most thriving
locality in the township in 1859. At that time there were two hotels, six
boarding houses, eight saloons in addition to the bars in the hotels and
boarding houses, one bank, one drug store, two general stores, three clothing
and dry good stores, three shoe shops, one blacksmith shop, two carpenter shops,
one lumber yard, one livery stable, one barber shop, three bakeries, two tobacco
and cigar stores, one church, and one theater.
SMARTSVILLE
James Smart built a hotel at this place in the spring of 1856.
This was the first building except a few cabins, here and there, occupied by the
miners. The only large settlements at that time were Timbuctoo and Sucker
Flat. L.B. Clark bought the place in 1857, and kept a store. The
hotel is now owned by B. Smith. A saloon was started in 1856, also a small
store was kept by a Mr. Shearer. As the mines began to develop the place
gradually to settle up, until at present, it is a thriving mining town.
The old cemetery on the hill, near the Empire Ranch, was first used in 1852, for
the burial of a man from Oregon. This was followed by the entombing of
several men who died with cholera. About three years ago a mine caved in
at Sucker Flat, killing seven men, who were all buried in one day. A
little further up the road is the Fraternal Cemetery, laid out by the Masons,
Odd Fellows, and Good Templars, in 1875. Until a few years ago the remains
of Catholics were taken to Marysville to be interred in the Catholic cemetery
there; but a fine burial ground has since been laid out, just across the ravine
and south of the town.
From
The History of Yuba County California by Thompson & West, 1879
About the Authors
Authors Kathleen Smith and Lane Parker have
collected images and stories from numerous Northern California
libraries, museums, archives, and from local residents and historians
to reconstruct the past of this unique place. Smith has genealogical
ties to Smartsville and Timbuctoo. Parker has been researching
Timbuctoo since 2005.
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three-dimensional. The fourth dimension is not a trick. In the same way
that we don’t notice the air we are breathing, we do not notice a lot
of things that are around us. One of them is time. We do live in four-
(or even more) dimensional reality. Usually we just don’t pay attention
to this. The first step to broadening our vision is to learn and to
develop features that allow us to experience the world as
four-dimensional."
