It was written: "Gamblers, girls and roughnecks...they were a tough lot,the worst in the southern mines. They reverenced nothing but money, cards and wine...blood was upon nearly every doorstep and the sand was caked in it." Hornitos. Gold Camp.

The early history of Bear Valley is similar to that of many other gold camps of the Southern Mines. The placers were discovered by Mexican miners in 1850, who took out near $250,000 worth of gold in just a few weeks. It wasn’t long after the arrival of the white miners that the Mexicans were forced out of the camp, made to begin their search for gold anew. A short boom occurred and the camp grew quickly, but within a year’s time the placers had been exhausted and many of the miners left for better diggings.

The poetic name Mariposa, Spanish for "butterfly," was first applied to this region by members of the Moraga Expeditiion, to a small stream at the foot of the Sierra Nevada mountains. The party had left the Mission San Juan Bautista on September 21st of 1806, on an expedition to locate suitable sites for a proposed string of inland missions to parallel those located along the coast. Led by Alferez Gabriel Moraga, they crossed the San Joaquin River on September 27th and during that afternoon encountered "myriads of butterflies, of the most gorgeous and variegated colors, perched about on the surrounding trees."

The town of Oakhurst, originally known as Fresno Flats, was never much of a mining town; rather, it prospered as a lumbering and farming community. As the town marks the southern terminus of Highway 49, it is a great starting point for a tour of the Gold Country.