The history of Mammoth Lakes began 200,000 years ago, before the human populated the area. There were a lot of volcano bursts in the area of Mammoth Lakes. The last eruption took place 50 millennia ago.

The Mammoth Lakes were not populated by white people at first. First were the Native American tribes - Paiute, Shoshone, and Washoe tribes. Later in time in 19th century the white people started to populate the Mammoth Lakes with the California gold rush. A lot of saloons, hotels, houses were built in that time. The process of city growth slowed down when people found out, that the Mammoth Lakes were not really full of gold.

The Mammoth Lakes tourist history began after the year 1890, where the first tourists started to visit the Mammoth Lakes. They came to hunt, relax, take pictures, swim, fish in the pristine nature environment. The skiing part gave Mammoth Lakes more importance. The Village of Old Mammoth was born in that time.

A lot of people were coming to Mammoth Lakes from Los Angeles and the trip took around 2 days from Los Angeles. A store, hotel, bakery and post office were built to represent Mammoth Lakes. Also a lot of camps started to open up. Those people built cabins in the Lake Basin Area. During the winter only few of them stayed to protect the properties and mail and supplies were delivered to them with dogsleds.

Mammoth lakes got its name from the mining era, Mammoth Mining Company.

Mammoth Lakes became a township in 1984. The population is around 10000, but it triples on the weekends. Mammoth Lakes is now one of the favorite California mountain resort paradise.

Mammoth Lakes measures approximately 2,500 acres. It has successful schools, college, hospital, different art centers and an airport.

More details of Mammoth can be found here: http://www.bestofcalifornia.info/mammoth_lakes.html

You can read more about lodging, recreation and services of Mammoth Lakes here http://www.bestofcalifornia.info/