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Phillips, California

unincorporated community in California

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General referenceInterpretive dossier study · Crown Archives visual atlas
Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionSep 7, 2026
Entity authorityQ7185863 ↗
Source-derived summary

Phillips (formerly Phillip's and Vade Post Office) is a small unincorporated community in El Dorado County, California, United States. It is located on the South Fork of the American River, 2.5 miles (4 km) west of Echo Summit, at an elevation of 6,873 feet (2095 m). It is the site of the Sierra-at-Tahoe ski resort. The ZIP code is 95720. The community is served by area code 530.

Joseph Wells Davis Phillips began cattle ranching here in 1859, and opened a hotel in 1863. The Vade post office operated at Phillips from 1912 to 1961. As of 2020, the Phillips family still owned the townsite, which has long been a site for manual surveys of Sierra Nevada snowpack.

Editorial summary

The public source identifies “Phillips, California” as unincorporated community in California. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Phillips, California and unincorporated.

Editorial reviewA concise reference frame for defining the subject, testing terminology and identifying the institution closest to the evidence. The current lead gives the account dated anchors—2095, 1859, 1863, 1912—that can be checked directly. The selected authority fields contribute no independent date. Its value is orientation rather than verdict, with Phillips, California and unincorporated providing the first useful test.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

A short description can identify a subject without explaining its stakes. For “Phillips, California”, the useful work is to connect “unincorporated community in California” to the records capable of establishing context and consequence.

Evidence profile

Named sources, stable identifiers and responsible institutions provide the strongest route from overview to verifiable evidence. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 7, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q7185863. Authority coordinates are 38.818, -120.078. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 2095, 1859, 1863 and 1912.

Critical limits

A concise general-reference account can conceal disagreements about scope, terminology or the weight assigned to individual sources. The source lead contains qualifying language; that uncertainty should survive quotation, summary and reuse. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.

How to read it

Use the entry as an orientation point, then follow its citations and revision history. Names, dates and institutional relationships should be checked against the original record.

Best used for
  • Subject orientation
  • Search vocabulary
  • Locating named sources
Verify next

The closest primary source, responsible institution and strongest cited specialist reference.

Three-step research path

  1. Establish the record: confirm the title “Phillips, California”, its source revision and the description used here.
  2. Expand the search: follow Phillips, California primary sources, Phillips, California archive and Phillips research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
  3. Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.

Questions for further research

  1. Which source most directly establishes the central claim about “Phillips, California”?
  2. Which institution is responsible for the underlying evidence?
  3. What terminology or title could unlock a more precise catalogue search?
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Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from “Phillips, California” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.