1828 - The first Euro-American contact in the region occurred when Jedediah Smith's expedition blazed a trail to Southern Oregon.
1844 - Pearson B. Reading was the first white person to move to the area. After receiving a Mexican land grant, he built a house, ran cattle, planted fruit trees, and grew the first grapevines 
north of Sacramento.
1848 - Reading mined the Trinity River at what is now Readings Bar. His return route established what is now known as the Shasta-Weaverville road. Reading traveled from the Weaverville basin up Rush Creek to the Lewiston area, over the Trinity Mountains, then down to the town that became known as Shasta. News of Reading's success drew miners to the remote diggings in Trinity County.
1850 - Sacramento newspapers publicized the diggings along Weaver Creek and miners rushed to the area. The town and creek were named for a prospector named either John or George Weaver who is credited with building the first cabin in the basin.
1851 - Weaverville consisted of one round tent and four log cabins.
1852 - A German immigrant, Federick Walter, established the Pacific Brewery (the building still exists on Highway 299). This was the beginning of entreprenuerial growth - artisans, professionals, clergymen, and other permanent settlers arrived.
1853 - The first of several fires burned nearly half the town. In 1855, another fire burned 29 houses and only two months later, in December, a third fire destroyed many more buildings. The damage would have been greater, but townspeople had begun to construct buildings with brick.
A Chinese temple, the "Joss House," was built by the city's first Chinese residents. The structure was destroyed by fire in 1869 and rebuilt in 1874. This is the oldest continually used Chinese temple in California and a State Historic Landmark.
1854 - By 1854, the Chinese had established a Chinatown with four stores, four gambling saloons, and a restaurant. Their a population in the area totaled about 1000.
1855 - Weaverville was incorporated as a city and elected its first municipal officers.
1857 - An urban American society had been created out of the wilderness. Weaverville had churches, schools, a water system, a fire company, two hospitals, two newspapers, brick business buildings, a basic town plan, and German, Jewish, and Chinese ethnic associations.
Later in the year, the editor of the Trinity Journal wrote "It is pleasant to note the change in the state of society in this place which a few years have effected. Formerly every other house was a gambling saloon, or something equally as bad. Fatal quarrels were of daily and nightly occurence; drunken men paraded in the streets; blasphemy was heard on every side, and law and order were things heard of but never seen. Now gambling is abolished; a very drunk person is a curiosity; deadly assaults are of rare occurence. Ladies now promenade our streets and the air resounds with the innocent prattle of little children."
1859 - Twenty brick buildings had been built in Weaverville, dramatically decreasing the fear of fire.
1862 - Weaverville visitor William H. Brewer wrote the following about the area: "There are twenty-eight saloons and 
liquor holes in the place, and gambling and fighting are favorite pastimes ... Along the whole length of the creek, as far as one could see, on the banks of the creek, in the ravines, in the middle of the principal and only street in the town, and even inside some of the houses, were parties of miners, numbering from three or four to a dozen, all hard at work, some laying into it with picks ... while others were
working pumps or baling water out of the holes with buckets. There was continual noise and clatter, as mud, dirt, stones, and water were thrown about in all directions; and the men, dressed in ragged clothes and big boots, wielding picks and shovels, and rolling big rocks about, were all working as if for their lives, going into it with a will, and a degree of energy, not usually seen among laboring men ..."
1870 - Weaverville was producing $1.5 million worth of gold annually. Later in the year, hydraulic mining was introduced to the area, allowing miners to expand operations to high benches previously inaccessible or unprofitable due to their distance from water. The natural environment of the area dramatically changed in the following years.
became known thereafter as the La Grange Mine. During its lifetime, over $3.5 million dollars of gold was extracted from the mine, which became the largest hydraulic mine in the state. La Grange covered more than 3,000 acres, 3,000 feet of sluice boxes, and 27 miles of ditches and flumes. La Grange also hosted a sawmill, ice house, and electrical plant. The site is now a California Historical Landmark.
in Weaverville reached its lowest point since 1849. Agriculture and logging dominated the economy of Trinity County through the 1920s.