"Incidents of an exciting character have been quite rare at Georgetown, though the town has been notorious for stage robberies and burglaries - on account of which Wells, Fargo & Co., discontinued their office in town..."

Quoted from El Dorado County GenWeb

Mining camps started as clusters of tents and other makeshift shelters. If the mine was productive, wooden buildings were erected and a town was born.

Conflagrations were a recurring curse. Often entire town were repeatedly destroyed by fire. Stonemasons, especially Italian immigrants from Liguria, began building "fire proof" banks and stores of stone or brick with iron doors and iron window shutters to protect the contents from fire.

Many of these stone buildings survive. Some of them, such as the Butte Store, are the sole reminders of a lost mining town.

Some of these buildings are: