Shasta is an unincorporated community in Shasta County, California. A bustling town of the 1850s through the 1880s, Shasta was for its time, the largest settlement in Shasta County and the surrounding area. Sometimes referred to today as "Old Shasta", the town was an important commercial center and a major shipping point for mule trains and stagecoaches serving the mining towns and later settlements of northern California. The discovery of gold near Shasta in 1849 brought California Gold Rush-era Forty-Niners up the Siskiyou Trail in search of riches - most passed through Shasta, and continued to use it as base of operations.
Situated about six miles west of Redding, California along Highway 299, Shasta was once home to some 3,500 residents and a thriving commercial district. However, in the mid-1880s, the newly-constructed Central Pacific railroad bypassed Shasta, in favor of Redding and the town declined into "ghost town" status.
The site of the town is now a California state historical park containing many of the original 1850s-era brick buildings, partially restored.
The poet Joaquin Miller refers to Shasta in his 1870s novel, Life Amongst the Modocs, based on the experiences of Miller as a young man living in the area in the 1850s. In this book, Miller describes his brief imprisonment in a Shasta jail for horse-stealing and subsequent escape with the aid of his Native American wife.
It is now a town of 750 people with the ruins of the gold mining town, a post office, a church, an elementary school, and a store.
