II. For this project I decided to visit the Auburn State Recreation Area. The Auburn State Recreation Area is located next to the town of Auburn in Placer County, California which lies in the western part of the United States. The Auburn State Recreation Area is a really cool canyon type geography with steep dramatic hillsides and a rushing river in the middle that continues to cut deeper into the mountains. The elevation of the places I hiked probably ranged from about 800 ft. all the way to 1500 ft. but that is just a estimation because where I started my hike was at 800 ft at the Cardiac bypass trail. The total size of the State Park area was about 35,000 acres and what is very interesting is that about 84% of those acres is federally owned public land. This area has a lot of history with humans, it is a bunch of land that was set aside for the Auburn dam. I'm not sure when this park became an official park but I am guessing it was when they ended up not building the Auburn Dam that the water guy was talking about in class. But anyways If you hike on this trail for a while you will come across this flat spot that is almost totally recovered by mother nature where an old mining town was that was home to thousands of miners during the gold rush and there is what looks like an old rock dam about 30ft. high behind the flats it is pretty cool. If you keep on going you find a plaque that is dedicated to Barbara Schoener who in a 1994 tragedy was attacked and killed by a mountain lion while jogging alone on the trail. The main trail has a Plaque that tells you that you are walking on The Western States Trail and it originally stretched from Sacramento to Utah. The Sierra Crest portion of the trail which goes from Auburn to Squaw Valley in the Lake Tahoe Basin was blazed by Paiute and Washoe Indians and later used by miners and Pony Express riders, and is now the route of two world-famous endurance horse races. This area is very ...