Penryn goes from quarry town to quaint residential hub

In Placer County, towns grew up around gold mining claims, newfangled trains or agricultural plains. In Penryn, it was all of the above.The waters of Antelope Creek and Secret Ravine attracted prospectors to the territory in the 1850s. But the real wealth arrived with the Central Pacific Railroad in the 1860s. In 1864, Welsh immigrant Griffith Griffith founded a granite mining company on land leased from the railroad. The proximity of the rail line to the quarry allowed Griffith to ship his granite slabs to markets all over California.The railroad designated the railroad depot Griffith's Granite Station, but Griffith preferred the name of a seaport in his homeland: Penrhyn. He dropped the "h" to make pronunciation easier, and the entire district eventually took on that moniker.Sitting between Newcastle and what would become Loomis, the quarry and its village of workers eventually attracted merchants to the area. In 1871, Penryn became an official voting precinct in Placer County and two years later was deemed worthy of its own postal station. By the middle of the decade, Penryn had a schoolhouse, blacksmith shop, hotel and a few stores and saloons.After Griffith's death in 1889, his nephew, David Griffith, purchased the quarry company. Mining operations slowed as new lighter, less-expensive building materials became available and the demand for granite crumbled.By the time David Griffith died in 1918, Penryn's economic focus has faded from stone mining to fruit growing. The land once had been considered too scrubby to support agriculture. But the rolling hills surrounding the quarry blossomed with oranges, thanks to the Citrus Colony project.English immigrant Joel Parker Whitney owned thousands of acres of land in the Penryn area in the late 1800s. He and other local land owners experimented with growing citrus crops in the area.Eventually, about 30 English resident owners were living in Penryn on 2,000 acres of producing orchards and undeveloped land. Approximately 1,000 palm trees were planted to mark the property lines of The Citrus Colony.The venture was a success, even spawning an agricultural college for a while. But the settlement died out as a national economic downturn affected crop prices. Most of the English landholders moved on to other enterprises or returned to their native land.But Penryn regained its hold as a major player in Placer's fruit production arena in the 20th century. Today, its dominant crop is mandarins.Although it developed a core area of shops, stores and service businesses, Penryn's character still has a picturesque, pastoral quality. When the oldest of its commercial structures were razed in the late 1980s, new homes replaced the elderly buildings.The historic Penryn Gold Hill Masonic Lodge now houses Penryn's post office and branch library. There is an elementary school, boat shop and home-based businesses laced into the old downtown sector.Now, there are two main hubs of commercial strips in Penryn: one at the intersection of Taylor Road and English Colony Way; the other near Interstate 80 and Penryn Road. In addition to the new Penryn Outlets hub, there is more office and retail space under construction across the street. More new home sites are coming there, too.The site of the Penryn Granite Works is now the 23-acre Griffith Quarry Park and Museum. Penryn has no harvest-season agricultural festivals, but many mandarin growers participate in the Placer Farm and Barn Tour. Gold, granite and fruit growing brought people and commerce to Penryn more than a century ago. Its natural beauty and central locale still keeps them coming.