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Williams Creek

Williams Creek

Williams Creek was originally discovered in 1861 by a party of miners headed by William "Dutch Bill" Dietz who named the creek after their leader. They set to work mining the shallow ground above a narrow canyon, and with that the community of Richfield would quickly form. The following year, William "Billy" Barker and his band of seven englishmen would set to work on the ground below the canyon, finally striking gold at 52 feet. Soon hundreds of men left Richfield and the towns of Barkerville and Camerontown would spring up next to the Barker discovery. Mining would wane at the end of the 1860s but Williams Creek would continue to see stages of mining all the way into the 1960s, with the last placer operation closing on Walker gulch in 2007.