Hugo Miller Building - West Miner Street-Third Street Historic District - Yreka, CA
N 41° 43.907 W 122° 38.213
10T E 530198 N 4620060
The Hugo Miller Building is located on historic Miner Street in downtown Yreka, CA.
Waymark Code: WMHA4Q
Location: California, United States
Date Posted: 06/13/2013
Views: 2
This building is one of many contributing buildings that make up the West Miner Street-Third Street Historic District. There is a historical marker that hangs in front of the Hugo Miller Building on historic W Miner St. There are numerous older buildings along Miner Street that contain historical markers that relate the history of each building, a few mentioning Yreka's great fire of 1871. This historic building's marker reads:
Hugo Miller Building
217 W. Miner St. The Arcade Saloon once stood on this site in 1856 where Lotta Crabtree began her singing and dancing profession, and John C. Heenan, 'The Benicia Boy' started his fighting career. The building was completely destroyed by the Great Fire of 1871, but rebuilt in 1880 by Hugo Miller who operated a hardware store here. The second story was expressly designed by Miller to be used as a lodge hall by the Redman of the World.
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I located a nice article on the history of the Hugo Miller building here. Lotta Crabtree's life is detailed on Wikipedia here. Yreka's Chamber of Commerce website contains a paragraph mentioning Ms. Crabtree and reads:
Described as “the Shirley Temple of the 19th century,” this daughter of a miner began her legendary career in the gold-rush towns of Northern California. It is believed that she spent about two years in the Yreka area in the mid-1850s, and frequently performed at the Arcade Saloon on Miner Street. According to legend, local miners, undoubtedly starved for female beauty and entertainment, would throw thousands of dollars worth of gold nuggets onto the stage after each performance.
Wikipedia also has a good writeup on John C. Heenan
here. It's a neat fact to note that the door this this historical marker hangs on is original to the building's construction date and really gives the front a vintage look.
Yreka has a few websites devoted to preserving its rich history. Siskiyouhistory.org is a good place to start and breaks up the town's history into groups of years. Yrekapreservation.org contains some nice pictures of original homes and commercial buildings from yesteryear. Finally, Yrekahistory.blogspot.com is a good blog website which contains great stories and events of Yreka's past and all their articles have been archived.