Little Clipper Gap makes a big mark in Placer industry – By Janis Dice

Today, Clipper Gap is a rural community with little more than a gas station-minimart and vintage school house to identify its locale. But at one time, it was a major industrial hub.

Spread across both sides of Interstate 80 about six miles east of Auburn, this hamlet was settled before the iron rails for the Central Pacific Railroad cut a swath up the western slope of the Sierra Nevada. Some of the first pioneers to settle in the territory included the Bancroft family who established the Columbia Ranch between what is known today as Christian Valley and Meadow Vista.

According to his biographical sketch in “History of Placer and Nevada Counties” by W.B. Lardner and M.J. Brock, William Bancroft, a native of Connecticut, headed west with four other men in 1849. Leaving families behind, the men came looking for fortune in the California territory where the rivers supposedly shimmered with gold. The men traveled the overland route, using ox-drawn covered wagons to make the arduous journey. Arriving in Sacramento, Bancroft purchased a pack horse and headed up toward Marysville to pan along the Feather River.

After five years of profitable prospecting, Bancroft returned home to the East Coast. Still infected with gold fever, he returned to California three years later, accompanied by his wife, Susan, and their children.

The Bancrofts settled on 160 acres in Clipper Gap, then purchased an additional 160 acres and dubbed the homestead the Columbia Ranch. It soon became a gathering spot for the ranchers and farmers forging new lives in the golden foothills.

Around the same time that the Bancrofts were staking claim to their spread in Clipper Gap, Auburn businessman Henry Thomas Holmes was founding a lime quarry and kiln in the area. Used in the construction of brick and stone edifices, lime was in great demand as the Western wilderness transitioned into a newly formed state.

Clipper Gap also was home to a black powder factory, the only one of its kind in northern California at that time. Once the Central Pacific Railroad line opened the foothills to the rest of the continent, Clipper Gap became a bustling staging area and shipping point.

Freight included pig iron being harvested in the neighboring company town of Hotaling, which is known today as Christian Valley, and car loads of fruits produced in the surrounding countryside.

Eventually the Bancrofts opened a general store in the district that doubled as the post office and Wells Fargo stage stop. By 1881 Clipper Gap had its own school with one teacher instructing its 22 students.

The refurbished school house that sits on the southeast side of I-80, may be the original structure. But there is speculation that the old building was relocated from Applegate after Clipper Gap’s first school building was destroyed by fire. Now, the vintage educational facility serves as a Head Start preschool.

Clipper Gap prospered until the iron mine closed and its related industries — such as firewood cutting and hauling by teamsters — came to an end. When the powder plant closed, the busy industrial center became an agrarian village once again.

The massive wheel mills that pulverized and blended the powder ingredients are still visible in the pasture behind Oliver’s gas station on Lake Arthur Road. Across from the service station is the handsome home built for the powder work’s superintendent and chief architect, Walter H. Gaffett.

The train depot is long gone and the post office gave way to rural mail delivery. Reminders of the fruit industry that once dominated the county, gnarled old pear trees huddle together in abandoned orchards. New homes on acreage are the main crop now.

Once a major player in Placer’s industrial arena, Clipper Gap is back to being a quiet village. Who knows what changes the next 150 years will bring.