Empire Mine State Historic Park
10791 E Empire St
Grass Valley, CA
The mouth of a gold mine that ran for more than a century and a hundred miles down and out under the hills, next to the elegant stone cottage the wealth built.
Empire Mine was one of the oldest, deepest, and richest hard-rock gold mines in California, and it ran, in one form or another, from the Gold Rush until the middle of the twentieth century. At its heart is the mouth of the main shaft, a timbered incline that drops steeply into darkness, the top of a vast network of tunnels that reached more than a mile deep and honeycombed hundreds of miles of rock beneath these quiet foothills.
The other half of the story stands a short walk away: the Bourn Cottage, a graceful stone house with formal gardens, built from the gold the mine gave up. Together the grimy headframe and the elegant cottage tell the whole arc of California mining, the immense wealth pulled from the ground and the world that wealth built above it.
What Guests Love
- Peering down the timbered main shaft into the black where miners once rode a mile underground
- The elegant Bourn Cottage and its formal gardens, built from the mine's fortune
- The clanking headframe, hoist works, and stamp-mill machinery of a real industrial mine
- Miles of walking and biking trails over the honeycombed hills
Worth Knowing
- The underground workings are flooded and sealed, so you tour the surface buildings and shaft mouth, not the tunnels
- The cottage is seen by tour or open on a schedule, so check current hours before you go
- Foothill summers get hot, so the shaded grounds and morning visits are more comfortable
- It is a large site of buildings, machinery, and trails, so allow a couple of hours
Details
Grass Valley, CA
Learn about Empire Mine State Historic Park
A century of gold
This foothill country is the homeland of the Nisenan, a Southern Maidu people who lived along these rivers and ridges for countless generations before the Gold Rush overran their world in a single violent decade.
Gold was found in the Grass Valley quartz in 1850, and unlike the placer gold panned from streams, this was hard-rock gold locked in veins that had to be blasted, hauled up, and crushed. The Empire grew over the following century into one of the greatest gold mines in California history, eventually producing millions of ounces before it closed in 1956, when the fixed price of gold and the cost of ever-deeper mining finally made it unprofitable.
The workings that remain sealed and flooded below the park are staggering in scale: a maze of tunnels totaling hundreds of miles, descending more than eleven thousand feet along the incline. A famous scale model inside the park lets you grasp the three-dimensional labyrinth that once hummed with men and machinery under your feet.
The Cornish miners
The Empire and its neighbors ran on the skill of Cornish hard-rock miners, who came from the tin and copper mines of Cornwall in England as those failed, bringing generations of underground know-how. They were so numerous in Grass Valley that they were nicknamed Cousin Jacks, and their culture reshaped the town.
The Cornish brought their powerful pumps to keep the deep shafts from flooding, their methods of timbering and blasting, and their food. The Cornish pasty, a hearty hand-held meat-and-vegetable pie a miner could carry underground and eat without washing his hands, became and remains a Grass Valley institution. The town's Cornish carol-singing tradition still echoes their homeland at Christmas.
The cottage the gold built
For decades the mine was owned by the Bourn family, and William Bowers Bourn II built a country home at its edge that could not be more different from the shaft down the path. The Bourn Cottage, designed by the noted San Francisco architect Willis Polk, is a warm, English-style manor of local stone with leaded windows, rich woodwork, and formal gardens, reflecting pool, and fountains.
Walking from the sooty headframe to the cottage in a few minutes is the point of the park. It lays the two sides of a mining fortune right next to each other, the dangerous labor a mile underground and the graciousness it paid for at the surface.
The grounds and trails
Above ground, the park preserves the industrial heart of the operation: the headframe over the shaft, the hoist house that lowered men and ore, the machine shops, and the yard of heavy equipment, all set among the pines. Interpretive tours and volunteers in period dress help bring the working mine to life.
Beyond the buildings, the wooded hills are laced with many miles of trails for walking, running, and mountain biking, following old mine roads through second-growth forest that has reclaimed the once-industrial landscape. It makes an easy add-on to a day exploring the historic towns of Grass Valley and Nevada City.
Closest Boutels
The closest Boutel™ stays, so you can turn this stop into an overnight. Each is an independently owned, editorially selected place to stay.
Things to Do Near Grass Valley
Nevada City
About 4 miles north
A beautifully preserved Gold Rush town of Victorian storefronts, galleries, and theaters in the Sierra foothills.
Downtown Grass Valley
About 2 miles west
A historic mining town with a walkable main street, the Holbrooke Hotel, and a strong Cornish heritage.
South Yuba River State Park
About 12 miles north
Emerald swimming holes, a canyon trail, and one of the longest single-span wooden covered bridges in the world.
Malakoff Diggins State Historic Park
About 25 miles north
The eerie, cliff-carved scar of the largest hydraulic gold mine in the world, and a preserved ghost town.