This location is in what at one time was a thriving town with stores, restaurants, hotels and bars. The old building across from where you are standing was the office of the Westside Lumber Company. Built around 1899, it suffered a devastating fire only three years later that destroyed the top floor which housed a large ballroom. "Over the years it also housed Whittaker's grocery, a meat market,Max Raff's clothing store,Bigelow's Drug Store and the Tuolumne Post Office. With the gradual die-off of the timber trade in Tuolumne the town's fortunes dimmed; the demise reflected in the building's decades long decline into a decrepit state." (mymotherlode.com).
The block building where a green logging truck is parked was a movie theater. The public swimming pool sits roughly where the train depot was located and the park and Veteran's Memorial Hall have taken the place of the magnificent Turnback Inn, built around 1900 and destroyed by fire in 1923.
As with many old towns, Tuolumne's homes and business buildings were constructed mainly of wood. And wood burns. Aside from the Westside office and the old public high school most any buildings you see down town date back only to 1918 at the earliest.
On June 17, 1918 a fire started around 3:30 in the afternoon and raged for about three hours before finally being brought under control. In less than three hours fire destroyed nearly the entire business district of this booming lumber town less than 20 years into its existence. In an 8-9 block area 106 buildings were destroyed leaving dozens of families homeless and many businesses demolished. Businesses destroyed included restaurants, the telephone office, justice court and jail, drugstore, livery stable, butcher shop and cold storage facility, barber shop and undertaker,jewelry, furniture, clothing and shoe stores, a pool hall and saloons.
The township's small lots (25' x 50') were full of two-story wooden buildings, all connected by wooden sidewalks covered by the buildings' overhangs.
The township's business district never regained its robust size.
The Cache is a small container about the size of a 35mm film canister. Please be gentle when returning it to the hiding place so it does not become stuck