For some inexcusable reason I had never visited Sonora in Tuolumne County until a couple of years ago. We live north of Sonora, so trips to the Gold Country usually involved going to Jackson, Placerville, Auburn or even Grass Valley/Nevada City. Sonora was just a little too far away when we could more easily make it to these other towns. AND the highway to Yosemite turns just a little too soon for us to make a stop in Sonora. What a bummer that turned out to be, Sonora is a really fun town with some great buildings, including some found in the Division of Mine's Bulletin 141 building survey. This included a house found just off of the main drag at what was listed as 905 Shepard Street in the publication, but today is 45 South Shephard45 S Shepherd St Doing a little research on this building has lead me to some confusion. The bulletin is supposed to include buildings and structures constructed in the Gold Country between 1850 and 1870, buildings erected during the Gold Rush but still standing nearly 100 years later. This house though may not have qualified by those criteria. Fortunately Sonora was a large enough town for the Sanborn fire insurance people to complete a map showing detail about properties in the town. From what I can tell the house doesn't appear on the 1908 map. It should be at the end of the Bradford Street where it runs into Shephard, but the buildings at that spot are not made of brick, nor do they sit at the correct location. The authors of the survey don't give many clues in figuring this out. They merely say that it is "a two story brick building resting on a foundation of schist slabs". I guess that explains why they included it (brick and stone in one building!) but it doesn't clear up the age. And I'll have to take their word on the schist slab because (1) I didn't check out the foundation, and (2) I don't know what schist looks like. I guess it looks like another trip to Sonora is in store.
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AuthorMy name is Jeff and I am on a hunt to find historic brick and stone structures along Highway 49. Archives
January 2022
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