placer County, CA

Census-Designated Places (CDP) are unincorporated cities, towns, and villages with a concentrated population defined by US Census Bureau for statistical purposes only.

Unincorporated communities are areas that are not governed by its own local municipal corporation, but rather administered as part of larger administrative divisions, such as a township, parish, borough, county, city, canton, state, province or country.

AIAN:

AIAN (American Indian or Alaska Native Resources) is an abbreviation used by the US census bureau to track the population in Native American/Alaska Native areas.

Ghost Town:

A Ghost Town ares abandoned villages, towns that contain substantial remains, usually period specific. According to Wikipedia, there are 3 ghost towns in Placer.

In May of 1848, a man named Claude Chana found gold in the Auburn Ravine, and the fate of the region was shaped, forever. The area of the Sierra foothills boomed with the Gold Rush in the mid 19th century, bringing tens of thousands of new residents who hoped to make riches mining and panning. Gold mining was the major industry well into the 1880s, but little by little as the mines dried up, people settled in and became ranchers and farmers, or working for the newly christened Southern Pacific Railroad that connected Sacramento and California to the rest of the country. After the railroad moved its main switching yard to Roseville in 1908, that town blossomed, becoming the most populous city in Placer County today. Other towns, like Loomis and Newcastle, started as mining towns but became major packing centers for the fruit growing industry. Rocklin and Penryn took advantage of the granite found in their mines, supplying many of the materials that were used to build the state capital and new buildings in San Francisco. The 1950s and 60s were pivotal for towns in Placer County, as ranches and farms were subdivided so builders could expand the base of housing to accommodate growing families and bigger populations, forming the base of our modern day communities.

Placer County gets its name from the Spanish word for sand or gravel deposits that hold gold. The process of “placer mining” entailed washing away the gravel from pans, leaving the heavier gold. During the gold rush, Placer and El Dorado Counties saw 125 million troy ounces of gold mined which would be worth over $50 billion today.