Cherokee

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The area that is now Cherokee was once populated by the Maidu. Around 1818 Spanish explorers found gold on Cherokee's south side near Table Mountain. In 1849 Cherokee Indians came from Oklahoma to start the Gold Rush. Welsh miners came in the 1850s, naming the town after the Cherokee and constructing many buildings in town.

Thomas Edison owned one of the mines which sprung up in the area, and he saw to it that the mines were electrified to ease the work. The town prospered during the mining period, and Butte County's first homes with running water were built in Cherokee.

In 1880 President Rutherford B. Hayes, his wife Lucy, Civil War General William T. Sherman and General John Bidwell came to visit Cherokee's famous hydraulic gold mine. In the 1890s, the gold mines were sold off because of operational costs. At its boomtime, the town had a population in the thousands. Today, Cherokee now consists of a museum and a Cherokee cemetery, as well as a few houses. The Cherokee Heritage and Museum Association maintains both.