Ophir: The Town Fire Took Twice

Ophir started as Spanish Corral in eighteen forty-nine, a placer mining camp in the Sierra Nevada foothills. It took its biblical name in eighteen fifty, from Ophir, the legendary land of gold in the Old Testament. By eighteen fifty-two it was the largest and richest town in Placer County, home to more than five hundred families.

Then, on July twelfth, eighteen fifty-three, fire swept through and destroyed the whole settlement in a single afternoon. The town was not rebuilt at the time. Later, quartz mining brought people back, and today Ophir is a quiet community of orchards and, increasingly, vineyards, its gold-rush bones long since returned to the ground.