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What's in a Name? Sometimes, a Contentious History

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A cement California State Park sign that reads: Black Miners Bar, Lake Natoma Unit, Folsom Lake state recreation area.
The Black Miners Bar sign, freshly painted in summer of 2022. (Dorean Raye)

Read a transcript of this episode

On a stretch of shoreline near Folsom, where the northern end of Lake Natoma meets the American River, is a park called Black Miners Bar. Its name is a nod to a group of Black miners who discovered gold just south of Folsom back in 1848, just before the wider California gold rush.

But the park has only been called Black Miners Bar since June 2022. Before that, it was called by a different name for decades: Negro Bar.

This week on Bay Curious, we’re featuring an episode of fellow KQED podcast, Rightnowish, from their series on land in Northern California, ‘From the Soil.’

You can read the original story here. 

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