Upper Soda Springs

Upper Soda Springs is on the banks of the Sacramento River in Dunsmuir, California, USA. It consists of approximately ten acres (40,000 m²) of level ground on both sides of the River, the surrounding hillsides, and continues north along the eastern bank of the Sacramento River to the Dunsmuir City Park. The State of California and the City of Dunsmuir are creating a new park on this historic site. The Upper Soda Springs site contains a riparian ecosystem and includes its namesake mineral water springs. In large part because of its location on the Siskiyou Trail, the site mirrors the history of the state and of the American West.

Before the California Gold Rush, the site had no permanent inhabitants. The nearest inhabitants, members of the Okwanuchu tribe, used the site as a temporary campground during the annual salmon fishing season. Another nearby tribe, the Wintu, likely did not have regular habitation sites this far north along the Sacramento.

The first European or American visitors in the area were likely hunters and trappers, including Hudson's Bay Company hunting and trapping parties headed by Michel Laframboise, coming down from the Pacific Northwest during the 1820s-30s. As early as the 1830s, a pioneer cattle drive led by Ewing Young, along what was to become known as the Siskiyou Trail from Mexican-controlled California to settlements in Oregon, stopped at Upper Soda Springs. In 1841, an overland party of the United States Exploring Expedition with cartographers and botanists entered the upper Sacramento River canyon, and recorded visits to mineral springs sites on the upper Sacramento River, including passing through Upper Soda Springs.

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