Along the San Juan Ridge was the scene of the most spectacular hydraulic gold mining operations in the eighteen seventies. Three companies controlled the majority of these operations. They were Eureka Lake and Yuba Canal Company, headquartered at North Columbia, who owned four reservoirs and two hundred miles of ditches; The North Bloomfield Mining Company with forty-three miles of ditches, and the Milton Mining and Water Company of French Corral who owned eighty miles of ditches.

In order to have effective management of the water in all of these ditches these three companies combined to cooperatively build in 1878 what is reputed to have been the first long distance telephone line in the world.

At a cost of $6,000, this line was sixty miles long and extended from French Corral through Birchville, Sweetland, North San Juan, Cherokee, North Columbia, Lake City, North Bloomfield, Moore's Flat, Graniteville, Milton and Bowman Lake. It was called the Ridge Telephone Company and owned jointly by the three aforementioned companies.

Although much of this country has been washed away by hydraulic mining, it is possible to trace the probable route by the locations of the above mentioned towns as traces of them do remain.

At one time some of the Edison instruments, built in Boston in 1876 could be found. Whatever became of the line and insulators is a question.

It is probable that trees were used to carry the wire and between lumbering and hydraulic mining, when great sections of the ridge were cleared and washed away, that all traces are long gone.

Before this historic line was built, research authority reports that a ten mile long phone line had been built by a group of young men just for their personal pleasure and the satisfaction of accomplishment.

This group, having heard about the wonderful invention, sent East for the necessary materials and proceeded to build what is reputed to have been the real first telephone line in California.

Known as The Liberty Hill Phone Line it connected Liberty Hill, Little York, Walloupa and a couple of other camps. These locations were long ago washed away by the "Giants" that tore down the mountains to reach the gold.

Where are the insulators that were used on this line? Deep in the soil and sawdust where the You Bet sawmill of Louis Voss once worked? More likely in the twenty feet of silt that buried the original farms of Marysville. There must be some tucked away in the debris left by hydraulic mining.