Meadow Lake (previously: Excelsior; Summit City) was a historic mining town in Nevada County, California.

It was located on the southwest shore of Meadow Lake, about 18 miles northwest of Truckee as the crow flies.

The area contained an inexhaustible supply of water, which could be collected in reservoirs and conducted by aqueducts and flumes to lower elevation mining locales.

With John Simons and Henry Feutel, he formed the "Excelsior Company" to work their claims about one mile south of the lake.

[4] The town's heyday occurred from 1865 to 1868 with the economy built on the prospect of finding substantial gold ore.

[5] Judge Tilford, the respected author of the section on Meadow Lake in Bean's History, commented: “The writer is happy to have it in his power to state that assays since made, as well as results of milling on a large scale, have confirmed the judgment of the original locators, and demonstrated that these claims are among the foremost of the district.”[6] Soon, thousands of miners and speculators rushed in staking out over a thousand claims and creating a boom in mining shares.

An excursion vessel ferried revelers to four hurdy-gurdy houses (dance halls) at the lake's upper end.

[16] Tollroads spidered out from the town in various directions, including to the Henness Pass road, and to the Central Pacific Railroad in Cisco.

Pack trains ran regularly to Dutch Flat and Granville Zachariah, known as “Zack’s Snowshoe Express,” carried mail, newspapers and the like.

[23] federal government opened a post office in June and appointed Melvin Wilson as postmaster.

[28] On June 14, 1865, the Virginia City Union reported “very rich specimens of gold and silver bearing rock, which fully equal if not surpass anything we have heretofore seen.”[29] Its reporter Alfred Doten wrote that the rock "promises to be the richest discovered on this coast, and perhaps in the world.

[33] At the same time, that summer saw the creation of the Excelsior Stock and Exchange Board which helped fuel speculative trading in mining shares.

Judge Tilford had this to say about the Stock Board: “Considering that there was not at the time a mine developed, or ledge visible, in the whole district, the transaction was unique and refreshingly cool.

In the town the whole affair was regarded as a farce...”[34] As the difficulties being encountered in separating the gold from the metals to which it was bound became known, people begin to wonder whether the oft-discussed riches were just speculative.

[39] Mark Twain visited the city in 1866 and described it as: “the wildest exemplar of speculation I have ever stumbled upon….they have built a handsome town and painted it neatly and planned long wide streets, and got ready for a rush of business, and then - jumped aboard the stage coaches and deserted it!… A bright, new, pretty town all melancholy and deserted, and yet showing not one sign of decay or dilapidation.

By the summer of 1868, the town was reduced to a hotel, two restaurants, four stores, a brewery and six saloons, and the post office.

[44] Following the fire, one observer reported “the site was dreary enough to glad the eyes of a broken Meadow Laker, whose chief occupation was to drink whiskey and curse the day he ever saw the place.