Trying To Hold Onto "Negro Bar"

A link to Gold Rush history:

A draft map from the mid-1850s by Theodore Judah of the city of Folsom includes small black squares along what was then the Old Road to Sacramento, denoting the settlements near Negro Bar. It’s now the location of the city’s solid waste plant, just off Folsom Boulevard.

...But through the 1930s, the area was known and identified with the racist term in newspapers, a Sacramento Bee review shows. In at least one U.S. Geological Survey map from 1941, the area north of the American River now home to the state park was also identified with the n-word.

...By 1850, Black miners had quickly established several mining camps along the southern bank of the American River just across where the current state park is located, according to historian Clarence Caesar in his paper “The Historical Demographics of Sacramento’s Black Community, 1848-1900.”

According to Caesar, who is also a former historian for the state’s park department, many of the mining communities along the river saw a “growing number of black prospectors, both slave and free. 

“The historical name of Negro Bar, here in Folsom, I believe, is very important to keep the name because it is based on a township that existed in this area of Folsom, and the residents have a really a historical treasure,” said Angela DeShields, a Woodland resident and visitor of Negro Bar.