Waterfall at MacArthur-Burney Falls Memorial State Park in Shasta County, California, by Carol Highsmith.
In the 1850s, several men from “back East” had come to the Golden State searching for their fortunes. While prospecting in Shasta County in northern California, they crossed the Sacramento River at Cow Creek, about 2 ½ miles East of Fort Redding. From there, the prospectors followed another creek eastward for about 30 miles when they came upon a high waterfall. There, they found a rich gold deposit sitting above the waterfall. However, this was a dangerous time in the region, as Indians, fed up with miners encroaching upon their lands, were often known to attack.
Taking what they could carry from the gold deposit, they fled for fear of the natives. Returning to Fort Reading, they asked for protection, but no troops were available. Soon, the men returned East, the way they came.
Years later, in the 1870s, one of the men from this original group and his son-in-law returned to the area, hoping to locate the waterfall again. In Redding, he asked about a creek with a high waterfall and was told there was one on Bear Creek near Inwood, some 25 miles to the Southeast. The pair soon arrived in Inwood, told their tale of the Lost Waterfall Mine, and spent weeks exploring Bear Creek Canyon. However, after a long search, the two finally gave up and headed back East, never to be seen again.
Locals speculated that the country surrounding Inwood was primarily volcanic rock and thought it an unlikely place to find gold. More likely, many believed that the gold might have been found on another waterfall on Clover Creek about three miles from Oak Run and 25 miles East of Redding.
©Kathy Alexander/Legends of America, updated September 2026.
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