Mokelumne

Rising in the central Sierra Nevada, the Mokelumne River flows west towards the Sacramento–San Joaquin River Delta. Its basin was home to Miwok, Yokuts and Wintun peoples, with many villages along the lower river between the foothills and the delta. The name Mokelumne comes from Plains Miwok words for a fish net and a people, while another Miwok name for the river was Wakalumitch.

Spanish military expeditions probably reached the river in the late eighteenth or early nineteenth century. In 1817 the missionary Narciso Durán recorded the name Muquelumnes. French fur trappers established an outpost at Happy Valley in 1830, near what would become Mokelumne Hill. Their arrival introduced a new presence into a watershed long inhabited by its Indigenous communities.