Black Bart satisfied his sweet tooth with candy from the local mercantile. Bret Harte likely wrote about it. John Studebaker is said to have apprenticed to the town's blacksmith. Mark Twain and Joaquin Murrieta stopped by. An exiled Polish count welcomed guests to the hotel, and more than 3,000 Chinese miners fought California's first Tong war here. It was the Crossroads of the Southern Mines, and it was called Chinese Camp for a reason: Thousands of prospectors from across the Pacific flocked to the Tuolumne County town during the Gold Rush. It was the gateway to Yosemite in the east, to Sonora in the north, to Mariposa in the south, and to Stockton and on to San Francisco in the west. It was a hub for stagecoach lines and a gathering spot for miners, merchants, outlaws, opium dealers, and ladies of the evening.

But the gold fever eventually broke, the government outlawed immigration from China, and motorcars put the stage lines out of business. The last Chinese residents left in the early 1920s, and today, fewer than 100 people remain. Main Street is deserted, and its buildings, boarded up or falling down, cast shadows in the twilight that shelter fading memories of a time long past.

The ghosts of Chinese Camp, whether restless spirits or mere echoes of the past, have cast an eerie pall over empty streets and abandoned buildings.

Author Stephen H. Provost has explored the history of Old West ghost towns before in Mark Twain's Nevada, his highway histories, and his book on Nevada's last boomtown, Goldfield Century. In Chinese Camp: The Haunting History of California's Forgotten Boomtown, he offers a look at a lesser-known but no less fascinating ghost town along California's Gold Rush Road, Highway 49. Packed with more than 130 photos and illustrations, some of which have never been seen before, Provost's book traces the history of Chinese Camp from 1849 to the present day.

Peel back the veil that hangs over the forgotten past of this boomtown-turned-ghost town, and discover what makes Chinese Camp a uniquely fascinating window into the past.