City Hotel is a rare surviving example of stone construction dating from the early days of the California Gold Rush.

It was built in 1852 as a two-story slate building with bricks squaring up door and window openings and accenting the four corners of the building. The exterior walls were originally plastered to protect the adobe mortar used to bond the two-foot thick slate walls.

When it opened for business, it was the chief hostelry in Sonora, the crossroads of the southern gold mining region and the commercial center of Tuolumne County. All of the stagecoach lines stopped here.

In addition to twenty private rooms, the hotel had a saloon, a billiard room, a dining room and several sample rooms where drummers (traveling salesmen) could show their wares to local merchants.

In the late 1880s, a two-story, wood-frame addition increased the number of rooms. A decade later, the old roof was replaced with a gable roof to add even more rooms.

Little of the original interior has survived.

Adapted from ther NRHP nomination submitted in 1983.