Named after the nearby Paloma Mine, Paloma’s renown rests with that enterprise, which was purchased by Sen. William McKendree Gwin, one of California’s first two U.S. Senators, in 1867. Renamed the Gwin, the operation became one of the richest quartz mines in California, yielding millions of dollars in gold. In the late 1890s, landowner Benjamin Franklin Foster subdivided an area south of the mine for a townsite, which now needed its own post office. Paloma, however, was already the name of a post office elsewhere in the state. As a result, the post office was named Fosteria. A decade after the mine closed in 1908, so too did the post office. Today, a few of the buildings from its mining past still dot the rural landscape.

by Sal Manna, 2010