Photograph as originally submitted to this page in the Historical Marker Database www.HMdb.org. Click on photo to resize in browser. Scroll down to see metadata.

Photographer: James King
Taken: January 25, 2014
Caption: Kiosk - The (Jackson) Gate
Additional Description: The Gate it was. A camp amid placer and tunnel claims and as yet undiscovered deep quartz veins, on the left bank of a minor creek fork in the foothills of the Sierra. Miners bestowed the name on the narrow cleft - wider now - in a rock ledge which once thwarted the fork. Many miners stayed at The Gate to make surface, tunnel and quartz claims and created the Jackson Gate Mining District in 1854. That basic document contains names of claimants like Gibbons, Andrew Kennedy, Agostino Chichizola, Antonio Massa, Marie Suize Pantalons and others who would stay to create more history. Besides a "gate" for a creek, the camp was a transportation "gate," also. Stage traffic in the early 1850s from the west mainly took the Gate route past the Oneida Mine, down Oneida valley into Jackson, when it was the seat of Calaveras County. Perhaps the real heyday of Jackson Gate occurred from c1890 to 1942 when both the Argonaut and Kennedy Mines finally hit paying ore, and mining boarding houses sprouted on mine property and also adjacently in Jackson Gate and Kennedy Flat. Most were operated by Italian proprietors like Casazza, Giurlani and Buscaglia. When the mines closed during World War II, the Giurlanis and the Buscaglias converted their miners' boarding houses into family-style restaurants. The Giurlanis unto the fifth generation still operate the popular Teresa's Restaurant. Today, Jackson Gate residents see their former village as a "gate" to some of the county's most historic spots, including Chichizola store, Teresa's (part of which dates from the 1860s), the Kennedy Mine and grounds, the St. Sava Serbian Orthodox Church, Jackson's historic cemeteries, and, of course, this Kennedy Tailing Wheels Park.
Submitted: February 2, 2014, by James King of San Miguel, California.
Database Locator Identification Number: p265705
File Size: 4.460 Megabytes

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