The Dutch Flat Historic District contains 480 acres with forty-five contributing buildings.

Dutch Flat was originally called Dutch Charlie's Flat after Charles Dornbach, one of two German brothers who settled here in 1851. (Dutch is a common corruption of Deutsch as in the Pennsylvania Dutch who were immigrants from Germany, not the Netherlands. In his book California Place Names, Erwin Gudde notes that California has almost one hundred places with Dutch in their names, but only two with German. In his 1857 book, Three Years in California, John David Borthwick, a Scottish artist and gold prospector, wrote: "Europeans ...save French, English and 'Eyetalians,' are in California classed under the general denomination of Dutchmen.")

For more information on Dutch Flat, please see California Historical Landmark 397.