The Wintu called it qookshi chopchi, meaning "skinned hide," this stretch of Hayfork Creek south of the Hayfork Valley where a natural stone bridge spans the water. On the morning of April 23, 1852, the name would take on a darker resonance. In the pre-dawn darkness, 69 armed men led by Trinity County Sheriff William H. Dixon surrounded a Wintu encampment and waited for first light. When day broke, they attacked a community just beginning to awaken. More than 150 Wintu people, including women and children, were killed. Only about three children are known to have survived, scattered and hiding as their families were destroyed around them.
The massacre was ostensibly retaliation for the killing of Colonel John Anderson, allegedly by Wintu people. Sheriff Dixon formed his posse and tracked the Wintu through the hills of Trinity County, but he could not locate the specific band responsible for Anderson's death. Instead, his men found a different group, unrelated to the killing, camped at Bridge Gulch. Dixon chose to attack anyway. The legal framework of Gold Rush California made this possible. While state law did not explicitly permit the killing of Native Americans, it prohibited any non-white witness from providing evidence against white defendants. The men who slaughtered the Bridge Gulch Wintu faced no legal consequences. They never would.
The Bridge Gulch massacre was not an isolated atrocity. Throughout the 1850s and beyond, California's Native peoples faced systematic violence as miners, ranchers, and settlers flooded into the region. The discovery of gold had transformed California virtually overnight, and the newcomers wanted land, the very land that indigenous peoples had inhabited for millennia. Conflicts erupted across the state. Villages were raided. Men, women, and children were executed on the spot. The U.S. military sometimes participated or provided support. Newspapers published rumors of Native "savagery" that galvanized public consent for the killings. What occurred in California during this period meets the definition of genocide.
White settlers constructed elaborate justifications for their violence. Native Americans were portrayed as "savages" living in "misery," their deaths framed as a mercy. The ideology of Manifest Destiny held that white Americans had a divine right to all land to the Pacific, and that Native peoples were "wasting" resources that settlers could put to better use through farming and ranching. When livestock went missing, settlers responded with overwhelming force, raiding villages and killing indiscriminately. The punishment for livestock theft under California law was 25 lashes and a $200 fine, but many settlers found this inadequate. They took matters into their own hands, knowing the legal system would protect them.
Historical accounts put the death toll at Bridge Gulch at more than 150. Descendants of the Wintu people who survived tell a different story: 500 or 600 dead, with the few survivors escaping into nearby caves. These oral histories have been passed down through generations, preserving memories that official records chose to minimize or ignore. What is not disputed is that those killed at Bridge Gulch had nothing to do with the death of Colonel John Anderson. They were murdered for a crime committed by members of a completely different Wintu band. Sheriff Dixon knew this. He attacked them anyway.
Today, the natural bridge that gave Bridge Gulch its English name still spans Hayfork Creek, a geological formation that has witnessed far more than any stone should have to bear. The site lies within the Shasta-Trinity National Forest, accessible by interpretive trail. No monument marks what happened here on that April morning in 1852. The rolling hills of oak and pine appear peaceful, the creek murmurs over rocks as it has for millennia, and the stone bridge arches silently above. But the land remembers. The Wintu people remember. What happened at qookshi chopchi was part of a larger erasure that California is only now beginning to acknowledge and reckon with.
Bridge Gulch is located at approximately 40.49N, 123.10W in Trinity County, California, within the Shasta-Trinity National Forest. The natural bridge formation sits along Hayfork Creek, south of the Hayfork Valley. From altitude, the terrain is characterized by forested ridges, deep creek canyons, and scattered clearings. The nearest significant airport is Redding Municipal (KRDD) to the east. The area can be difficult to pinpoint from the air due to dense forest cover, but the Hayfork Valley provides a useful reference point. Weather in the area can be variable with morning fog common in the creek valleys.