Weaverville Whites Massacre Wintu 153 Indians

A natural bridge in the Hayfork Valley of the Shasta-Trinity National Forest is part of the Northern California region’s history.  The bridge is a geologic formation created over time by water forcing a passageway through the soft limestone.
 
A Wintu Indian legend says the bridge was formed when a mystical man carrying a huge bundle of hides came down Bridge Gulch tired and hungry. He slipped and the bundle fell and rolled into the creek.  The Wintu called the bridge “Kok [coke]-Chee-Shuhp-Chee,” or “Bundle of Hides,” because of the texture and color of the walls. 
 
The bridge was also the site of a bloody and tragic incident known as the Bridge Gulch Massacre.  It was touched off when a well-known settler from Weaverville was murdered and his cattle stolen in 1852.  After his body was found, a search party tracked a group of Wintu to their camp located at the confluence of Bridge Gulch and Hayfork Creek.  About 70 whites set out from Weaverville and massacred 153 of some 155 Indian villagers in what became known as the Bridge Gulch Massacre. Reportedly only two or three children survived the attack.
nd hundreds of sponsoring businesses.
The corporation’s operating budget by 2013 had reached $660,047. The county government provides the four library buildings and the volunteers raise funds, operate the libraries and maintain and update the collection.
The county’s first library opened in 1886 in Stone’s Drugstore in Grants Pass. By 1958 the county funded a model library system, but lack of timber receipts in the 1980s led to hard times and short-term library closings. The county approved a special library tax levy in 1995, but state legislation rescinded it later. Voters turned down a first attempt to create a tax-raising library district in 2006.
Following voter rejection in 2014 of a second attempt to create a tax-raising district, the volunteer system faces hard times ahead.