PBA Galleries

Rare early gold rush era manuscript map of the Feather River from Yuba City and Marysville north to the town of Featherton and Hancut Creek. In addition, there are the towns of Oakland and Columbiana. Featherton and Oakland are listed in Gudde's California Gold Camps, Hoover's Historic Spots in California, and Durham's California Geographical Names as being founded in 1850 as "speculative cities," but having "no practical existence" (Gudde describing Featherton in particular), so their existence on any map is rare. But the town of Columbiana, just south of Oakland, does not appear in any of those three tomes. Other features of the maps include the division of land along the western back of the river (Sutter's Hok Farm) into large plots of 700 or so acres each; a place called Murray's where there is a ferry; Mouet's Ranch (actually the ranch of John Monet, who founded the short-lived Oakland), and in the west, the "East end or peak of the Buttes." There is a later pencil notation nest to this latter feature, ""Land under search" with an arrow.