Vibrant and captivating Nevada City began as a gold-mining camp called Deer Creek Dry Diggins. The large gravel deposits alongside this creek reportedly delivered a pound of pay dirt a day by the fall of 1849, when A. B. Caldwell�s general store opened to supply this haphazard collection of tents. By March 1850, somewhere between 6,000 and 16,000 boisterous souls called it home, and the new town was christened �Nevada,� meaning �snow covered� in Spanish. After 1861, townsfolk took to adding �City� to the name, to avoid confusion with the new state whose Comstock silver strike drained off many Nevada City residents.Seven fires burned early Nevada City to the ground,sparking a fashion for brick architecture that is evidentin many of the 93 downtown structures listed on theNational Register of Historic Places.