360° panorama by
William l.
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Along Low Divide Road at Low Divide east of Smith River, California. This former wagon road location between Crescent City & Jacksonville, Oregon also housed the mining town of Altaville, of which little remnants of it remain on the surface. More info below: “A filthier, dirtier, nastier, noisier place I have not struck in the state.” —Wm. Brewer, 1863 When land surveyor William Brewer wrote those words in December of 1863, he was sitting outside Altaville, a “little town on a sharp ridge” situated a few miles south of the Oregon-California border in the northwest corner of the state. In Brewer’s day, Altaville was the center of a copper-mining district that boomed in interior Del Norte County in the early 1860s. The little town, located at Low Divide on the Pioneer Road (a major route into the mines), was laid out in 1862 in a rather arid ecotone about 11 miles southeast of Brookings, Oregon, and 20 miles northeast of Crescent City, California. Altaville not only was the center of a Civil War–era copper-mining district, it was the major town on the road between the harbor at Crescent City and the gold-mining community at Jacksonville, Oregon. As such, it served as a stage stop and rest station for the teamsters, freight wagons, and stagecoaches that traveled over the route. At its peak between 1863 and 1865, the town prospered, with several saloons, hotels, a butcher shop, a blacksmith shop, general stores, and mining offices and housing. Altaville dwindled quickly after 1865, as the cycle of boom and bust played out its course. Its demise was aided by the end of the Civil War (which reduced the need for copper) and the migration of the Jacksonville miners to new gold fields. By the turn of the 20th century, the site was a ramshackle collection of stone foundations, fallen houses, dust, and one cabin, occupied by Frank Zaar, the self-appointed “caretaker.” Several attempts were made to open the copper and chromite mines in the 20th century, using Altaville as a base, but these ventures were short-lived, and the town site remained abandoned and isolated, but never forgotten. Source: www.passportintime.com/altaville.html
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