The Ghost Town of Howland Flat, Sierra County, California.

The Town of Howland Flat...aka Table Rock was first settled in 1853 when mines known as the Union Company and California Company were discovered, Howland Flat was once second in size and importance only to La Porte. Once a thriving community with some 1,500 people, an 1873 Sierra County business directory for Howland Flat includes three saloons, three merchandise stores, a barber, boot maker, stables, the North Star Hotel, and Frank Becker's Howland Flat Brewery. The community also was home to a school, church, Odd Fellows Hall, as well as a Wells Fargo Express Office. The post office located in the community carried the name and postmark of "Table Rock", named after the prominent peak to the east of town. Howland Flat is also reported to have supported one of the largest Chinese communities in northern Sierra County. A Joss House (a temple or place for worshipping the Chinese shen - deities, ancestors, and supernatural beings), and a sizeable Chinese store operated there as recently as the early 1900s. Anti-Chinese sentiment became prominent between 1869 and the 1880’s. A 1873 newspaper article reported that Chinese men were being hung in Howland Flat because the Euro-American population were tired of being robbed. In 1883, Becker’s Hotel and Saloon ran an advertisement stating that they employed no Chinese. It was not until 1886 that the first anti-Chinese meeting was held in Howland Flat. Fifty-one men agreed not to employ Chinese people. A few mining companies refused to replace their Chinese workers, and were publicly chastised in the local papers.