Stewartville

Once a working-class coal town on the eastern edge of Contra Costa County, Stewartville now sits quietly abandoned about six miles northeast of Mount Diablo at roughly 558 feet in elevation. At its busiest in the 1870s, the community supported nearly 300 residents who worked the nearby Central coal mine — one of five towns that together formed the Mount Diablo Coalfield, alongside Nortonville, Somersville, Judsonville, and West Hartley.

Today Stewartville is a ghost town. Visitors drawn to its history will find a remnant landscape rather than standing structures, set within a rural stretch of unincorporated eastern Contra Costa County. The site rewards those interested in California's 19th-century coal-mining heritage and the broader story of the Mount Diablo Coalfield communities.