The Tuolumne City Memorial Museum preserves the history of this mining and logging town on the western slope of the Sierra Nevada in

California California is a state in the Western United States, located along the Pacific Coast. With nearly 39.2million residents across a total area of approximately , it is the most populous U.S. state and the 3rd largest by area. It is also the m ...

. Exhibits trace the area's history going back to early

Miwok The Miwok (also spelled Miwuk, Mi-Wuk, or Me-Wuk) are members of four linguistically related Native American groups indigenous to what is now Northern California, who traditionally spoke one of the Miwok languages in the Utian family. The word ...

Indian culture, early agricultural endeavors, gold mining, and the extensive logging operations of the West Side Lumber Company. Tuolumne, which was originally known as Summerville, and later Carters, was the site of the West Side's large sawmill, which operated from 1899 until the 1960s, when it burned during a labor strike. The company also operated an extensive narrow-gauge railroad into the Sierra to bring logs to the mill. Standard-gauge tracks of the well-known

Sierra Railroad The Sierra Railroad Corporation is a privately owned common carrier. Its Sierra Northern Railway freight division handles all freight operations for all branches owned by the Sierra Railroad. The company's Mendocino Railway group operates th ...

came to Tuolumne to take finished lumber to market. Some trestles and other remnants of the logging railroad still exist, and the museum organizes annual field trips into the woods to visit such sites. The museum has a number of exhibits chronicling the lives of prominent citizens of the area, including a collection of family Bibles and historic cemetery records."Historic Cemetery Records are Legacy of Local Genealogist and Librarian Joyce Crawford," ''Tuolumne City Memorial Museum Newsletter,'' p. 11, Summer, 2011, Tuolumne, CA.

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* {{Coord, 37.9615, -120.23587, type:landmark_region:US-CA, display=title Museums in Tuolumne County, California Forestry museums in the United States History museums in California