Jim Wood whacked away vegetation in 2000 on a maze-like trail in Placer County nearly reaching his wits end.

He sought to find a century-old historical site long discussed by Colfax residents but hidden by nature. Each time Wood attempted to locate the area, thick bushes and fallen trees obscured any noticeable path and he was forced to stop.

Fighting sharp thorns on blackberry brambles, Wood successfully navigated the difficult terrain. He beheld a 60-foot lime kiln sheltered by a dense canopy. Branches and vines hung from its base. A pine tree sprouted from one of its two looming smokestacks.

“It was like discovering a Mayan pyramid in the jungle,” Wood said.

The site, just a few feet away from a valuable quarry, serves as one of California’s best preserved lime kilns, he said. Rock from the quarry blasted into smaller pieces were included in notable structures, such as California’s State Capitol, the U.S. Mint building in San Francisco and Auburn courthouse, he said. Archaeologists, who conducted a dig around the site in 2023, collected artifacts painting a tableaux of workers enduring unhealthy conditions hoping to attain a middle-class rank, according to an archaeology report released in March.

But the monument remained inaccessible until flames reduced vegetation to cinders. A 2021 fire in Placer and Nevada counties burned away heavy greenery across 2,619 acres and revealed the monument on private land.

Now, the property owners seek to preserve the lime kiln for public viewings and hope to have it recognized on the county’s historical register this summer. Wood and other board members with nonprofit Colfax Lime Kiln Preserve are working to protect the site from scavengers taking artifacts, raise money and lead docent-guided tours.

Workers dropped limestone into the 60-foot stacks of the kiln in which its heated and processed for construction, fertilizer and other uses, according to the archaeology report. Lime kilns concentrated in Santa Cruz County, and another site was found in El Dorado County.

“Locals knew about it,” said Denise Jaffke, a retired California State Parks archaeologist who surveyed the lime kiln and president of the California Lime Kiln Conservancy. “But it was kind of just forgotten about.”

Before the lime kiln was built, JD Pritchard, a San Francisco entrepreneur, bought the property in 1860s to mine precious stone.

In one 1874 newspaper report, 300 tons of rock came from Colfax’s quarry to San Francisco to adorn private homes and businesses, according to the Sacramento Daily Union. The newspaper said dark slabs, striated with white veins, gleamed with a “beautiful polish” were of “superior quality.”

That glimmering earth led newspapers to brand it “black marble,” incorrectly labeling the limestone. Another San Francisco business, the H.T. Holmes company, sought to capitalize on the increased demand for lime and built the kiln in 1903. His product reached Nevada and Oregon, Wood said.

Processed lime helped aid booming development across California after Gold Rush fever brought thousands to the state, Jaffke said. Under a dense forest, many relics from the lime kilns’ workers remained buried and offer one of the state’s best preserved archaeological sites of life around a lime kiln, she said.

San Jose State University Professor Marco Meniketti, who studies California industries and labor, led an archaeological dig in summer 2023 and collected artifacts to piece together workers’ lives. The work was not funded through any external grants, and students earned class credit for participating, Maniketti said.

The site once included a wooden house used by workers, but the 2021 fire may have burned away any surviving structures. In a dig, archaeologists recovered tin cans, butchered bones, ceramics and glass bottles.

“They seem like trash,” Meniketti said. “But they are … just basically a story.”

The lime kiln would have operated continuously, filling the heavily wooded area with lime dust and soot, according to Meniketti’s report published in California Archaeology in March 2024. Lime dries out lungs by drawing out moisture from skin and when it’s inhaled, according to the report.

A recovered bottle contained a notable elixir called Angier’s Emulsion. It was advertised as providing “relief for irritated lungs” for miners suffering black lung disease and constipation, according to Meniketti’s report.

The rough terrain may not have been conducive to families. But archaeologists recovered shattered doll fragments and beautiful China decorated with pink floral designs. Both offer signs of a domestic life, but are not enough evidence to definitively confirm women and children roamed the site, the report said.

Chinese laborers, rare for that time, made rawhide bags on site to take the limestone and dump it into iron buckets on an aerial tramway, according to Meniketti’s report. A Pelton wheel, powered by water pressure to make electricity, ran a tramway to haul the lime, according to Wood’s report.

“The entire operation had electrical power which was astonishing for such a remote location in that era,” Wood’s report said.

But the lime kiln did not survive for long. The H.T. Holmes Company stopped operations at the kiln site in 1911, after the creation of cement which reduced the demand for lime, according to Wood’s report.

On a recent morning in June, Wood hiked on a wagon road built in 1866 to access the quarry while pointing out notable sights.

A rock face featured a hole where workers could stick dynamite to shatter pieces. Limestone stacked next to a sunken hole — perhaps used to wash it — left the impression workers hastily left the quarry when the lime kiln abruptly halted operations. A long piece of metal served as one of the last remnants of a railway for ore carts to transport the blasted rock.

The Colfax Lime Kiln Preserve, filled with volunteers, hopes the area could attract tourists similar to Placer County’s other historical sites. The Placer County Board of Supervisors could vote Aug. 5 to approve the site on the county’s official register of cultural and historic resources, according to a county spokesperson.

Jaffke, the retired archaeologist, said she was impressed as she examined the site months after the 2021 fire. Usually, her work involves structures that are mostly burned or damaged.

“The Colfax (lime kiln) has the complete story almost intact,” she said, “as if they had just left.”

Wood is offering tours of the area. To contact him, email sierrageology@gmail.com.

Distributed by Tribune News Service.