Bridgeport Covered Bridge

The Bridgeport Covered Bridge on the South fork of the Yuba River is one of the longest single-span wooden bridges in America measuring in at over 230 feet. The bridge here was originally constructed in 1862 and was part of the Virginia Turnpike Company Toll Road that served the northern mines and traffic to and from Virginia City and the Comstock Lode in Nevada.

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The Kneebone Family which figures so prominently in the history of Bridgeport, had its beginning in two widely separated events the first was the birth of Andrew Reed Kneebone to Joseph and Mary Kneebone in Cornwall, England in 1860; the second event was the birth of a baby daughter, Victoria Marie to early settlers, Mary and Charles Cole, in 1862 at Bridgeport.

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The Kneebone Family Portrait

Rough and Ready School

The Rough and Ready school was established in March of 1868 and served five generations of Rough and Ready children. The school was closed in 1953, after being consolidated with another one room school. The new school, Ready Springs Elementary, located in nearby Penn Valley, serves approximately 350 children.

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In the summer of 1848 Jonas Spect went prospecting up Deer Creek from his diggings at Timbuctoo, where on June 1 he had discovered gold. He later wrote, “I came to the finest kind of valley, which I think they afterwards called Pen Valley, but nothing occurred which would be of interest”.

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Penn Valley Community Hall

Old Rough and Ready Hotel

The old gold town of Rough and Ready, between Grass Valley and Penn Valley, Calif., has two reasons for its fabulous fame.
For the first reason you have to go back in time to April 1850. This feisty little town of 3,000 gold miners, honky-tonk women, and gunslingers decided to secede from the United States of America.

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In addition to being known for its rich gold mines, French Corral is famous for being the terminus of the world’s first long-distance telephone line. The sixty-mile long line was built by the Edison Company in 1878 at a cost of $6,000. It stretched up the Ridge from French Corral through Birchville, Sweetland, North San Juan, Cherokee, North Columbia, Lake City, North Bloomfield, Moore’s Flat, Graniteville, Milton, and Bowman Lake.

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