420 RESOURCES OF CALIFORNIA. 
are now pretty nearly abandoned. The harbor is good, but 
the land in San Diego county is not rich, and it may be said 
that the town has no brilliant destiny before it, at least not in 
the near future. The Mission of San Diego was the earliest 
in California and was founded in 1769. 
In Santa Barbara and San Luis Obispo, nearly all the inhab- 
itants are Spanish Californians, and nearly all the houses are 
of adobes. Both are small, dull places, founded in the last 
century, and the sites of old missions. The San Luis Obispo 
Mission: was founded in 1772, that of Santa Barbara in 1782. 
§ 277. Mining Towns.—Weaverville, Shasta, Oroville, 
Quincy, Auburn, Downieville, Mokelumne Hill, Jackson, and 
Mariposa, are large mining towns, and are the county-seats of 
various mining counties, but they possess no features of suf- 
ficient importance to entitle them to separate notice here. 
The mining towns of California, as a general rule, are built in 
cations, with irregular crooked streets. The main business 
street runs through the middle of the cafion and is densely 
lined with stores, billiard rooms, liquor shops, restaurants, and 
inns. Many of those houses are of brick and fire-proof. The 
dwellings are scattered about irregularly; some are neatly 
built and are surrounded with pleasant gardens; the majority 
are miserable little shanties or log-cabins, with no yard, flowers 
or fruit-trees to give an appearance of home. The population 
of these towns is not permanent. One year they are here, 
next they are elsewhere. In 1854 Oroville was laid out; in 
1857 it cast one thousand votes, and was the third town in the 
state; in 1860 its glory had departed, and at least a dozen 
towns have now a larger population and a larger trade. 
§ 298. General Remarks.—In taking a general view of the 
towns of California, we perceive that all those of the most 
note are exclusively American. San Francisco, Sacramento, 
Marysville, Stockton, Nevada, Grass Valley, Placerville, Co- 
lumbia, Petaluma, Yreka, Shasta, Sonora, Oakland, Vallejo, 
Santa Clara, Downieville, Weaverville, Mokelumne Hill, Au- 
burn, Oroville, Jackson, Santa Cruz, Santa Rosa, Healdsburg, 
