"A thick haze veiled the horizon and rendered the sunset less pleasing than we had expected to find it. A hurried walk of an hour in the twilight brought us to a small mining camp called Whiskey Diggings where we found good accommodations for the night, and to our surprise, found it a very quiet, sober place in spite of its suggestive name. I learned that the peculiar name of the camp originated as follows: Three Irishmen went there two or three years before from an adjacent mining camp to prospect, taking a bottle of whiskey with them, and returned drunk and reported that they had discovered not gold but "whiskey diggings," and the place was ever afterward called by that name."From: My Adventures in the Sierra, by OG Wilson, 1902, p. 117
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