Revenge at the Hildreth Hotel

For The Madera Tribune

This hotel was the centerpiece of the town of Hildreth. It is also the place where Harry Daniels got what was coming to him at the hands of the Williams brothers in 1888.

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Gold! It was Madera County’s first industry, and thousands followed its siren call in search of treasure in this land of Ophir.

From the 1850s through the 1880s, gold mining camps proliferated throughout our foothills. One of these ghost towns of Madera County is the townsite of Hildreth, located just a few miles from Spring Valley School on Road 210. There is little there today to indicate that a rip-roaring gold mining community of several hundred once occupied the land.

Likewise, there is nothing about the lonely rock wall at the bend in the road to indicate this was the site of the Hildreth Hotel where Harry Daniels was shot to death in a barroom scene that could have been lifted directly from the pages of a Zane Grey Western.