The people and economy

The American Indian inhabitants of the Sierra Nevada were divided into five main groups: the Yokut, Sierra Miwok, and Maidu on the western slopes and the Owens Valley Paiute (previously called the Eastern Mono) and the Washoe on the eastern. The hunting-and-gathering economy of these peoples had little permanent effect on the landscape other than locally through fires set to catch game. The first Europeans in the region were Spanish explorers and missionaries, who visited Alta (Upper) California beginning in the 1700s; their impact on the Sierra Nevada also was negligible. In the early 1800s Jedediah Smith, Joseph Walker, and other, less-celebrated American hunters and fur trappers passed through the region. In the mid-19th century the pristine serenity of the Sierra Nevada was ended as prospectors came, stayed, and stamped their mark on the region.

The gold nuggets found in January 1848 on the American River (near present-day Placerville, Calif.) ushered in an international gold rush that was to have tremendous significance in the historical evolution not only of California but of the entire United States as well. Within two years of the initial discovery there were perhaps 50,000 working miners in the range. Banks, retail businesses, transportation facilities, timber operations, agriculture, and industry all arose and prospered in response to the needs of a burgeoning population. This economic boom hastened California’s admission to the Union and fostered the region’s first urban centres, notably San Francisco and Sacramento. By 1880 the gold era had peaked, though some mining activity has continued there since that time.

The first crude mine roads were followed by the regional and transcontinental railroads built in the 1860s and ’70s. The first paved highways crossed the Sierra Nevada in the 1920s. The central portion of the range, however, still lacks a year-round road or rail crossing. Rapid economic development has brought environmental compromise. The Lake Tahoe basin, for example, one of the most beautiful settings in any mountain region and thus a tourist magnet, now incurs periodic air and water pollution, traffic congestion, and sewage-disposal problems, as well as aesthetic degradation.

The need for water and power (and, since World War II, recreation) also has changed the face of the Sierra Nevada. Three-fourths of the streams that drain the long western slopes are controlled. The first large water project in the early 1900s impounded the Hetch Hetchy Reservoir in Yosemite National Park for water use in San Francisco, inundating natural features that rivaled those of nearby Yosemite Valley. A more recent and extensive scheme is the California State Water Project, which was begun in the 1960s with the construction of the Oroville Dam on the Feather River in the northern Sierra Nevada.

Study and exploration

For many readers, the naturalist John Muir’s My First Summer in the Sierra, a diary of camping and exploration in 1869, is one of the classics of American geographic writing. Muir, the founder of the Sierra Club (1892), a conservationist group concerned with the preservation of the scenic resources of the Sierra Nevada and like areas of the United States, dedicated his book to members of the club in 1911.

Geologists have studied the Sierra Nevada systematically since the late 19th century. Especially significant studies concern the Mother Lode system, Jurassic stratigraphy and its relation to intrusive granites, glacial erosion, placer gold, multiple intrusions, isotope ages, and chronology and nature of emplacement.