This story is part of our June 2026 issue. To read the print version, click here.



The sun was bright on the water as my grandson and I launched our
kayaks from the shore of Lake Natoma that afternoon. We were soon
paddling across to the cove area, joining dozens of other
colorful kayakers and paddle boarders, some with their dogs or
children aboard for the ride. As we glided through the winding
cove, we stopped at a sandy spot, looked down into the clear
water and saw flecks of gold sparkling in the sand.

I knew I had to write about this historic spot.

Through my research, I met many vibrant characters, including
William Alexander Leidesdorff, who was born on the Caribbean
island St. Croix in 1810, the illegitimate son of white Danish
sugar merchant Wilhelm Alexander Leidesdorff and Anna Marie
Sparks, a mixed-race woman described as free in a St. Croix
census from the later years of her life. The younger Leidesdorff
immigrated to the U.S., became a citizen in 1834 and made a
fortune in the maritime industry.

He traveled West to Yerba Buena, later San Francisco, when
California was still Mexico. He became a Mexican citizen with
dual citizenship in 1844 and was granted 35,000 acres of land to
develop along the American River from Folsom to Bradshaw Road,
known as Rancho Rio de los Americanos.

William Alexander Leidesdorff, who was of Black descent, was
granted 35,000 acres along the American River by the Mexican
government which included the Negro Bar site where Black miners
panned for gold. (Courtesy of the California History Room,
California State Library, Sacramento, California)

Considered one of the founders of San
Francisco, Leidesdorff became America’s first Black millionaire,
although most people then and even today didn’t know the
mixed-race, light-skinned man was Black. He died suddenly of what
was called “brain fever” in 1848 at age 38 just as the Gold Rush
began, never knowing there was gold on his land. He didn’t live
to see the mass migration of people who came in search of
treasure on his property, to reap its riches, or to see
California join the United States.

So begins the history of the Gold Rush in the Sacramento region.
While most history books focus on the discovery of gold at John
Sutter’s mill in Coloma on Jan. 24, 1848, local historians want
people to know about the rich Gold Rush history in Sacramento
County.

Historians estimate 300,000 people traveled west in what was
considered one of the largest human migrations in history. 
“And we’re basically Ground Zero for it,” says Sacramento
historian Eric Webb, author of the book “Lost Gold Rush Towns of
Sacramento.”

They came by land (in wagons and on foot) and on ships in search
of fortune, crossing arid deserts and the grueling rocky Sierra
Nevada mountain range. The territory of California had no formal
land rights or mining laws at the time and did not acknowledge
the claims of Native peoples such as the Nisenan Maidu, Miwok and
Washoe, so miners could stake claims on property on a first-come,
first-serve-himself basis.

During the Gold Rush, Black miners worked side-by-side with
Chinese, Portuguese and Mormon miners in small mining communities
around our region. (Courtesy of the California History Room,
California State Library, Sacramento, California)

Ethnic groups, such as Black and Chinese miners, tended to stick
together, as did Mormon miners. Historians write that Black
miners chose to set up a community along the American River on
Leidersdorff’s land on what is now alongside Lake Natoma. It was
named Negro Bar in 1854 by engineer Theodore Judah when he
created a map for the Sacramento Valley Railroad. At its peak,
Black Miners Bar had 700 residents, a hotel, store and blacksmith
shop.

“It was a settlement that folks moved into. They set up tents, a
few permanent structures, but it was supplied by gold, so the
town site was a pop-up,” says Zakary Adams, a California State
Parks interpreter.

The miners were panning on pristine land, first settled by the
Nisenan with the nearby resources of fresh water, fish from the
river and animals to hunt. The foothills brimmed with
wildflowers, acorns and wild oats. Blackberry brambles lined the
trails, while deer, wolves, foxes, rabbits, raccoons and the
occasional grizzly bear roamed nearby.

“This was a resource-rich area, and people came here because
there was gold to get,” Adams says.

Black miners made the area their home for more than a year. Using
pans, pick axes and shovels, they would mine the gravel in the
cool water, finding various sized pieces of gold. There is no
clear record of how much gold was found at Black Miners Bar
between 1848-1850 nor how many Black people were there, although
the 1850 Census estimated 500.

The late San Mateo College professor Rudolph M. Lapp, who wrote
the Pulitzer Prize-nominated “Blacks in Gold Rush California” in
1977, estimates there were 1,000 Black miners altogether in
California. That number would swell to 5,000 by 1860. Most of the
Black miners were free people, while about 10 percent were
enslaved in other states.

A Black gold miner during the California Gold Rush. (Courtesy of
the California History Room, California State Library,
Sacramento, California.)

For Michael Harris, a local Black
historian, it was an extraordinary time to be a Black person in
American history. While slavery persisted in much of the U.S.,
California banned the institution in its 1849 constitution and
reiterated its stance when it entered the union as a free state
in 1850.

“Most of them wanted to be here because they were the freest
Black folk on the planet at the time here in California. You’re
mining gold, you pick up money,” Harris says.

Historical records estimate that between 1848 and 1855, $2
billion worth of gold was extracted during the California Gold
Rush. Adjusted for inflation, that comes to $20-$25 billion in
today’s terms, according to Britannica. While some got wealthy,
most didn’t. Money was quickly spent on gambling and liquor at
the various Gold Rush saloons scattered around early Sacramento.

“Most went home broke or broke even. Those who got rich spent it
on oysters and champagne,” Webb says.

The Black miners at Negro Bar could keep the gold they found. A
cook named Hector made $4,000, while a man known only as Dick
mined $100,000 in Tuolumne County, according to Lapp’s research.
There were some slaves brought to California by their owners to
mine for them. While most couldn’t keep the gold they found, some
owners allowed their slaves to keep some and buy their freedom
for themselves and their families.

The Gold Rush hits its peak

As fast as it started, the Gold Rush was over in just a few
years. By 1851, Negro Bar and other mining spots along the
American River were cleared of gold through placer mining —
extracting gold from sand or gravel in the bed of a river or
lake. Hydraulic mining was invented in 1853, which used water
pressure to blast out hidden gold upstream, sending sediment
carried by the river down to the Negro Bar area. Dredging
companies like the Natomas Company came in later with huge
machinery and further stripped the river from Folsom to Fair
Oaks.

“Is there still gold in these hills? Yes,” says Webb. “Storms,
development like the Folsom Dam and Sierra snowmelt are still
unearthing it and pushing it downstream through the rivers and
lakes.”

Times were changing for the Black miners as well. While most had
their freedom, they didn’t have the right to vote or defend
themselves in court. The federal Fugitive Slave Act of 1850
demanded that all escaped slaves be returned to their owners, and
pro-slavery California state legislators passed another law in
1852 that stated that Black people who had entered California
before it became a state were still the legal property of their
former owners.

Some of the free Black people who came West returned to their
homes in free states in the east. Some made the migration up
river to Mormon Island and Negro Hill, two other historic
communities that sprung up at the south fork of the American
River in Sacramento County during the Gold Rush. The remnants of
those towns were later buried underwater when the Folsom Dam was
built in 1955. (Before it was flooded, the Army Corps of
Engineers relocated graves from the towns to the Mormon Island
Cemetery in El Dorado County.)

The City of Folsom’s corporation yard houses its trucks and
equipment. The yard sits atop the site of the original Black
Miners Bar encampment beside Lake Natoma. (Photo by Kial James)

The area that was the actual townsite of Negro Bar is now buried
under the City of Folsom’s corporation yard, which houses the
city’s equipment. It sits alongside Lake Natoma and the
recreation area named after the Black miners.

A controversial name change

Negro Bar retained its historic name, with a big granite plaque
proclaiming it outside the entrance to the park, for nearly 175
years. But one day in 2018, Phaedra Jones, a Black woman from
Stockton, was doing a food delivery to a nearby restaurant when
she saw the park’s name and was outraged, calling it racist and
offensive. She started an online petition that got 60,000
signatures.

Larishia Johnson is a Ph.D. student in the African American and
African Studies department at UC Davis who lived in Folsom and
was involved in the movement to change the name to Black Miners
Bar. She says the sensitivity around the old name, which had
bothered some Black residents long before the official name
change, became particularly relevant after George Floyd, a Black
man, was murdered by a white police officer in Minneapolis in
2020.

“Maybe we’re in a place in our country where we could start to
have some real change, like culturally, a racial awakening,”
Johnson says.

Black Miners Bar is an outdoor recreation spot at Lake Natoma in
Folsom. It was named to honor the Black miners who settled there
during the Gold Rush to pan for gold. (Photo by Kial James)

The California State Parks and Recreation Commission held
contentious hearings on the name change. “The historical use of
the name appears in reference to Black miners during the Gold
Rush including from an 1850 newspaper article noting Black miners
finding gold at this location in 1848,” the parks’ website
states.

Many locals wanted to keep the name of Negro Bar, citing its
historic value. Harris, the local Black historian, agreed, but he
knew it would be an uphill battle. The state parks department has
been undergoing a review of historic names and changing some of
their racist history.

“Let me get my slingshot, because this is gonna be a David and
Goliath story,” Harris says,  recalling the fight. “I can
count the votes. You’re gonna change the name, but this is
ridiculous. You’re not going to erase history.”

The state parks commission voted unanimously to change the name
to Black Miners Bar in 2022. All signage for the park has since
been changed. “The name Black Miners Bar, the renaming that
happened here, is part of the reexamining of our past,” says
Adams, the state park ranger.

Other local historians admit, however, that some visitors are
confused by the new name, believing that it might refer to a mine
extracting black rock (there is a nearby quarry owned by
Teichert), not that Black miners panned for gold there during a
historic time in our state’s history.

A new era for Black Miners Bar

On an April morning, a Black man dressed in an 1850s period
costume stands in Leidesdorff Plaza in Folsom. “I was not born
here, like some of you. I was born in St. Croix in the Caribbean,
and I became a sailor and a business trader in New Orleans,
navigation and maritime law,” says local historian, actor and
international law expert James Armstead, who plays Leidesdorff
for Chautauqua Playhouse, a living history theater. He believes
it’s important to keep Leidesdorff’s history alive.

Armstead says Leidesdorff’s father acknowledged him as his
legitimate son in 1837 before he died, allowing him to inherit
his father’s estate. Leidesdorff is buried at Mission Delores,
one of the oldest missions in California, in San Francisco.

As for Leidesdorff’s estate, it was estimated at $1.4 million
after he died. U.S. Army Capt. Joseph Folsom, a West Point grad
from the East Coast, traveled to St. Croix and purchased the land
for $75,000 from Leidesdorff ’s mother, Anna Marie Sparks. Far
under market value, the land purchase was held up in court for
many years. In the meantime, Capt. Folsom named the land Granite
City, but like Leidesdorff, Folsom died suddenly at age 38 of
renal failure. The executors of his estate changed the name of
the town to Folsom in 1856.

“I think the big thing is that what we try to talk about and
share is that there were black settlers during the Gold Rush.
They made a difference. They existed.”

— Zakary Adams, California State Parks
interpreter

“It’s my belief that he had very light skin,” Gary Palgon, author
of the biography “William Leidesdorff: First Black Millionaire,
American Consul and California Pioneer” told Comstock’s in an
email. He adds that Leidesdorff had a fiancée in New Orleans who
called off the wedding when she learned that he was mixed race.
“He would have struggled to achieve such success during his short
life had people recognized him as Black, as that was not the norm
during this period of slavery in the United States (and Mexico).”

In 2020, state parks began a multi-year, multi-million dollar
renovation of Black Miners Bar. At times in its recent history,
it fell into disrepair and abuse, sometimes attracting drug
dealers and vagrants. The restoration cleaned it up and
modernized it, adding benches, barbecue grills, picnic and shaded
areas plus kayak and paddle board rentals. Now during the summer,
Lake Natoma is a kaleidoscope of color from the bright
watercraft. It’s also become one of the most popular spots in
Sacramento County for outdoor recreation, attracting more than
250,000 visitors a year.

Historians, and locals with deep connections to the area, want to
keep the miners’ history and story alive.

“People have been coming here for the water for as long as people
have been here; the Indigenous cultures, the food, the growth,
the resources based on the water — Gold Rush-based. On the water
now, kayakers, paddle boarders, fishers,” Adams says one peaceful
morning at Black Miners Bar.

“I think the big thing is that what we try to talk about and
share is that there were Black settlers during the Gold Rush,” he
says. “They made a difference. They existed.”

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