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Sierra County was formed from parts of Yuba County in 1852. The county derives its name from the Sierra Nevada.
Prior to the California Gold Rush, the area was home to both the Maidu and the Washoe peoples. They generally summered in the higher elevations to hunt and fish, and returned to lower elevations for the winter months. After the discovery of gold in the Sierra foothills sparked the California Gold Rush, more than 16,000 miners settled in Sierra County between 1848 and 1860. Most mining settlements in the county sprung up along the North and Middle Forks of the Yuba River, both of which had rich deposits of gold. While some of the mining boom towns faded away once gold fever died down, other settlements such as Downieville and Sierra City have remained.
Notable gold nuggets found in the county include a 26.5 pound specimen, avoirdupois, found by a group of sailors at Sailor Ravine, two miles above Downieville. A 51-pound specimen was found in 1853 by a group of Frenchmen in French Ravine. The 106 pound Monumental Nugget was found in Sept. 1869 at Sierra City.
The Bald Mountain drift mine in Forest City was founded in Aug. 1864, and was the largest of its kind in the state at the time. The Bald Mountain Extension was located in 1874 east of Forest. The Monte Cristo Mine was located in 1854. The largest quartz-mine is the Sierra Buttes Gold Mine was located in 1850 near Sierra City. The Gold Bluff Mine was located near Downieville in 1854. By 1880 the county was "crushing" 70,000 tons of quartz and had 266 miles of mining ditches.
Since the enactment of the statute in which the California State Legislature defined the common boundary between Nevada and Sierra Counties in 1874, no survey was conducted to determine where the straight line segment of the common boundary between the two counties ran. In particular, the statute, at the time codified as Section 3921 of the California Political Code, at the time stated:
...thence south on said state line (state of Nevada) to the northeast corner of Nevada County, a point east of the source of the South Fork of the Middle Yuba River; thence west to the source of, and down the South Fork of the Middle Yuba River to a point ten miles above the mouth of the latter.
Since the line was not surveyed and the legislature never defined where the "point east of the source of the South Fork of the Middle Yuba River" was, the location of the straight air line between the state line and this point was unknown. As such, both counties claimed that the point east of the source, which itself was also unknown, was located in different places. This created a situation where a strip of land averaging 1.22 miles in width and around 31.29 square miles were under dispute, with Sierra County claiming that Nevada County was encroaching on their jurisdiction when attempting to levy property taxes. The trial court, that of Plumas County, sided with Sierra County, declaring that the disputed area had always belonged to Sierra County since the legislature defined the boundary in dispute by referencing Public Land Survey System lines. It also determined that the source of South Fork of the Middle Yuba River was that of several springs in the Sierra Nevada, contrary to the artificial English Lake, which ceased to exist after the failure of its dam in 1883, which is where the source of said waterway was in the eyes of Nevada County. The California Supreme Court affirmed the trial courts decision on December 28, 1908.
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