Pomona
Valley - the name itself almost tells the story of mining days. It pictures
mines and wealth; it portrays tales of hope and faith in search of gold.
Along the Valley, eager miners drove their tunnels, and prospectors combed
the mountainside and canyon bottoms, all in search of signs of precious
metal.
Indians
and Spanish Californians were boring into the Pomona Valley area to extract
the precious yellow metal when such famous strikes as Sutter’s Mill
in 1848 was discovered. On a sunny day in March 1842, while combing the
nooks and crannies of Placerita Canyon east of present day Newhall, Francisco
Lopez discovered deposits of gold amongst the rocks. In the coming years,
Francisco and his family moved south to Rancho San Jose to begin the making
of what is now called Pomona Valley.
From
Indian times to the present, gold has been panned, sluiced, long tommed,
hydraulicked and blasted With the arrival of prospectors, new shops, hotels
and saloons emerged. It is in the tradition of the gold grubberies and
saloons that the Pomona Valley Mining Company was patterned. The Pomona
Valley Mining Company actually sits near one of the old mine sites of
the Valley. Relics displayed within the restaurants interiors are genuine
artifacts of the mining era.
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