Chinese Camp was once a bustling mining outpost for thousands of immigrants who worked the gold fields of the Southern Sierra. Then it was a historic landmark where tourists could revisit an often-forgotten chapter in California history.
On Tuesday, a wildfire raced through the remnants of the Tuolumne County town, raising worries about what has been lost.
The destruction came as 22 wildfires erupted Tuesday in multiple locations in Calaveras, Stanislaus and Tuolumne counties during a burst of dry thunderstorms that produced more than 5,000 lightning strikes. The fires, which ranged from a few acres to several thousand acres, together had burned 12,473 acres as of Wednesday morning, according to the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection.
The largest of the fires — the 6-5 fire — forced the evacuation of Chinese Camp, a California Gold Rush mining town where thousands of Chinese immigrants settled in the late 1800s. The fire was still uncontained as of Wednesday morning.
The extent of the damage in Chinese Camp wasn’t immediately clear pending an official review, said Emily Kilgore, public information officer with the Cal Fire Tuolumne Calaveras Unit. About 61 people still live there.
Videos shared by local media outlets showed widespread devastation. Smoke billowed up from blackened pavement as flames licked at piles of rubble, power lines snaked across the street.
Chinese Camp began as a distribution center to move supplies out of nearby mining camps, namely from San Francisco to Stockton and then to the camp, according to the Tuolumne Historical Society. By 1856, nearly 600 Chinese people lived in the town, and its population eventually grew to 5,000. By the 1920s, Chinese Camp became a ranching community.
The Chinese Camp Store and Tavern, a beloved gathering spot for locals since 1934, appeared to have survived, said Add Beale, who has owned the store with her husband for the past nine years. But she hadn’t yet been to the property to assess the damage.
Beale spoke from a hotel room after she was forced to evacuate from fast-moving flames that destroyed the homes of several friends, she said. She was hoping to soon return to her store to cook for firefighters and displaced residents and is in touch with others who also want to donate their time, she said.
“Everyone in the town is like family,” she said. “We know everyone by name.”
Another fire — the 2-7 fire — destroyed structures in Vallecito, a historic mining town in Calaveras County that’s home to one of the state’s largest caves, Kilgore said.
There were no reported injuries or deaths.
Evacuation orders were also issued for Six Bit Ranch Road, Six Bit Gulch Road, Red Hill Road, Don Pedro Dam Road, Old Don Pedro Dam Road, Menkee Hess Road, all roads east of Highway 108 from Junction 59 to Highway 49, both sides of Highway 120 from Chinese Camp to Highway 120 Bridge, and Rojo Shawmut Road.
The fires were each denoted by two numbers — the first indicating the battalion number associated with the area where it started, and the second the fire’s numerical order, Kilgore said. For instance, the 6-5 fire was the fifth fire to be reported in the sixth battalion, she said.
The fires were burning in remote, rugged areas that were difficult for crews to access, Kilgore said. Flames chewed swiftly through parched grass and brush oak woodlands that had received no significant precipitation in months, she said.
While the exact cause of the fires was still being investigated, they ignited during a spate of dry lightning, as afternoon thunderstorms rolled through the area, according to National Weather Service meteorologist Jeffery Wood. The weather service recorded 5,282 lightning strikes between Modesto and Shasta County from Tuesday morning to Wednesday, he said.
Dry lightning events are common in the Western United States, said Craig Clements, professor at San José State University and director of the Wildfire Interdisciplinary Research Center. They take place when a cloud forms high in the atmosphere and drops rain into very dry air, which causes it to evaporate before hitting the ground, he said.
These types of storms have driven some of the state’s most destructive fire years like 2020, when lightning-sparked blazes following a severe heat wave scorched more than a million acres of land and killed at least 22 people.
Predictions heading into this fire season were similarly dire, with experts cautioning that warm and dry conditions could stoke large fires.
But those forecasts have yet to materialize. Fires have so far this year burned 425,680 acres in California, compared with a five-year average of 772,489 to date, according to Cal Fire. That’s in part thanks to a July in which temperatures were below normal across much of the state, Clements said. In fact, Northern California saw the coolest July in 30 years, he said. “It’s day-to-day weather that drives fire behavior,” he said.
Still, the temperate stretch was followed by a Labor Day heat wave that helped to dry out plants, priming them to burn. And conditions could continue to shift quickly — a single intense heat wave or a strong offshore wind season may change everything, Clements noted. “We still don’t know what October is going to bring.”
Tuesday’s thunderstorms also resulted in flooding and damage elsewhere in the state. Two people were displaced in Riverside when high winds uprooted a large tree that fell onto a home. Winds damaged a mobile home park in Oxnard.
More thunderstorms were expected to develop Wednesday along the higher elevations of the Sierra and Southern Cascade, bringing gusty winds that could hamper firefighting efforts, Wood said.