The town was started by a French man named Vavasseur.[2] He built a hotel and store in 1854 at the site of Frenchtown, which soon numbered some 500 residents and had three hotels, three saloons, two blacksmith shops, a barber shop, and a bakery. However, the town was "virtually abandoned" by 1870, and by 1928 the only remains were an adobe wine cellar, a stone bridge, and an ore-processing apparatus.[3] In 1940, San Francisco attorney Thomas F. Califro bought the Frenchtown site and built a country estate there, using one of the stone rollers of the ore-processing arrastra in his front wall.[4] Today the Frenchtown area is a vacation destination, with wineries of the North Yuba AVA and country inns.
^ abDurham, David L. (1998). California's Geographic Names: A Gazetteer of Historic and Modern Names of the State. Clovis, Calif.: Word Dancer Press. p. 489. ISBN1-884995-14-4.
