Dutch Flat (also, Dutchman's Flat, Dutch Charlie's Flat, and Charley's Flat) is a small unincorporated community and census-designated place (CDP) in Placer County, California, United States, about northeast of Auburn along Interstate 80. It was founded by German immigrants in 1851 and was once one of the richest gold mining locations in California. Dutch Flat is now registered as a California Historical Landmark. The community's ZIP code is 95714 and its area code 530. History Dutch Flat was founded by two German brothers, Joseph and Charles Dornbach who settled there in 1851 during the California Gold Rush. To the south of their settlement was the busy mining camp of Green Valley, where 2,000 men were at work when the Dornbachs arrived. Across the Bear River in Nevada County was another camp, Little York, and just west, a trading post at Cold Springs (later known as Gold Run). All these camps were supplied by mule train from Illinoistown, near today's Colfax. Mules drivers referred to the Dornbach's camp as 'Dutch Charlie's Flat,' and thus the town was named. During this period many Germans were referred as 'Dutch' as a shorthand for Deutschland. In the 1870s an attempt was made to change the name to 'German Level'. The Dutch Flat post office opened in 1856. Travel Center While Dutch Flat was originally settled by miners, it first gained prominence as an important stagecoach stop, making it one of the largest and most important towns in Placer County from about 1864 to 1866. In the fall of 1866, however, the railroad had reached Cisco, further up the ridge, and Dutch Flat lost most of its importance as a stage stop. In 1859 Dr. Daniel Strong of Dutch Flat invited railroad surveyor (later, chief engineer of the Central Pacific Railroad) Theodore Judah to come and evaluate a possible route across the Sierra Nevada mountains. One of the first large mining ditches to reach Dutch Flat had, in effect, demonstrated the existence of easy grades up to Emigrant Gap; from there, the line of the old Donner Trail across the Sierra Nevada was also such that a railroad could be built. Judah argued vociferously for the Central Pacific's financial backers—including California's "Big Four": Leland Stanford, Collis P. Huntington, Mark Hopkins, and Charles Crocker—to employ the route for a trans-Sierra route that would link up to existing Union Pacific service in Utah or Nevada, instead of