Christian Valley subdivision has hidden history

It may not be a city or even a community, but the area known as Christian Valley has hidden links to local history.Naturally, Native Americans were the first to settle in this broad basin of land a few miles northeast of Auburn, making seasonal camps to gather acorns, berries and seeds. The indigenous people also collected Miner's Lettuce, which they ate as greens, and scouted Fireweed for its fibrous stems that were twisted into twine and rope.They used natural depressions in the rock outcrops as mortars and long, club-like rocks for pestles, grinding acorns into meal that was leached of its bitterness, then dried to last through the winter season. The grass, weed and flower seeds they collected were winnowed from basket to basket to remove the chaff. Then they were dropped into a tightly woven basket and gently tossed with hot coals, roasting the seeds while freeing them from their husks.In the late 1840s, trappers and traders began guiding European adventurers into the foothills. When gold fever infected the world in the middle of the 19th century, the indigenous people were nudged from their traditional hunting and food-gathering habitats in the valley. They eventually were marshalled to an informal reservation in south Auburn where disease and cultural oppression devastated their population.Although Dry Creek and Orr Creek course through the territory, the Christian Valley locale was more valuable for ranching and farming than for prospecting, and a small agricultural village developed in the vales. The area remained rural until 1880, when a lode of high-grade red hematite was discovered near the base of Sugar Pine Mountain.A group of four investors purchased 7,620 acres at the northeast end of the valley floor and established the California Iron Company. Their operation mined the raw ore, then heated it into molten metal that was poured into molds to form crude bars called pig iron. Workers were hired to build the smelting furnaces, kilns and foundries, mine the ore, cut firewood to fuel the kilns, tend the charcoal and feed the fires. Teamsters - drivers of buckboards and wagons pulled by oxen, mules or horses - hauled the rough bars to the neighboring Clipper Gap railroad station.The shipments were made to customers - mainly the Southern Pacific Railroad - that further refined the pig iron into ornamental grillwork or into lengths of steel.With the supervisor and about 170 employees building homes in the area, a company town grew up around the mine. It was named in honor of Anson Hotaling, one of the mine's founders.The community grew along with the company's successes, but began to fade as fires, repeated cave-ins and increasing labor and shipping costs choked the profits. When the mine closed temporarily for repairs and upgrades toward the end of the 19th century, it never re-opened.The unemployed workers turned to farming or moved on, and the industrial community reverted back to a pastoral precinct. The next sign of progress didn't arrive until 1913 when Pacific Gas and Electric expanded its Drum Powerhouse Hydroelectric network of power houses and reservoirs.A natural basin was dammed to create the Halsey Forebay at the south end of the valley. Today, it is home to a gaggle of geese, a stopover for migrating waterfowl, and a popular spot for humans to fish and picnic.The next big change in the area came in 1951 when the California Division of Forestry erected a conservation camp near the grounds of the old iron mine. Originally used to house minimum-security prisoners, the facility later became the area headquarters for the California Conservation Corps.The biggest alteration to the landscape came in 1962, when a developer bought several large ranches totaling about 1,500 acres and subdivided them into approximately 600 bucolic building sites called Christian Valley Park. Each a minimum of one acre in size, the parcels spread from the horse-friendly oak woodlands at its lowest elevations to view properties in steep pine forests at its highest points.In 1991, the Placer Nature Center opened on the grounds of the CCC, offering field trips, day camps and specialty courses relating to the flora and fauna of the region. Wedged between Interstate 80 and Highway 49, Christian Valley began as a farming district that was transformed into a company town, then subdivided into a rambling residential tract. There are no streetlights, sidewalks, curbs or gutters; just trees, streams, wildlife and one-of-a-kind country homes.It may not be one of Placer County's official communities, but Christian Valley holds its share of foothills history.