"There’s Gold in Them Thar Hills!" Those words were first spoken by a character, Colonel Mulberry Sellers, in a stage adaptation of Mark Twain’s novel, The Gilded Age. When news broke in 1848 that gold had been found at Sutter’s Mill in far-away California, it set off the famous California Gold Rush, where seemingly every foot-loose, dreamy-eyed wanderer in America headed west in search of the pot of gold they were certain they would find there. For a lucky few, there was indeed “gold in them thar hills”—or at least in the streams flowing through and from them. Early arrivals to the California gold fields in ’48 often did find gold, but ever fewer of those who followed in 1849 and later “struck it rich.” The rule of thumb was, the later you came, the less likely you were to find anything, and most likely you’d find nothing. That knowledge wasn’t enough to stop legions of rainbow-chasers from flocking to California, every one of whom no doubt believed that they would succeed where others failed. The rush for gold created boom towns, many of which have long-since disappeared. The rush for gold also broke many a prospector’s heart and bankroll. Over the centuries, the search for gold, be in yellow or black, has followed a predictable trajectory. The legends and legacy of the Forty-Niners live on today in the towns across Northern California that managed to survive the bust that inevitably followed the boom—towns like Placerville and Sutter Creek in the foothills of the Sierra Nevadas to Yreka and Weaverville further north and west in the Siskiyous and Trinity Alps.
For any reader who desires to explore historic California Gold Country, a good place to start would be San Francisco, where so many of the Forty-Niners once started. To get started, there is a fascinating walk you can take within the city itself called “The Gold Rush Trail,” billed as “an outdoor museum of San Francisco’s Heritage.” Information can be found on the web at www.goldrushtrail.org. Across the bay in Oakland, near Lake Merritt, you may want to visit the Oakland Museum of California which features displays covering the full range of California’s history and prehistory, from its ancient peoples through the Gold Rush era to the the present day. Information can be found on the web at www.museumca.org. By car it is a casual two-and-a-half hour drive in I-80 East from downtown San Francisco across the Bay Bridge, past Oakland and Berkeley and Sacramento, to Placerville in the heart of Gold Country in the Sierra Nevada foothills. Originally known as Dry Diggings, then Hangtown, Placerville got its present name in 1854 after local luminaries decided that touting their town’s reputation for hanging people was probably not the best idea.
Historically the hub of the California “Mother Lode,” Placerville today offers an attractive choice of food, wine and lodging options. It features many finely-maintained old homes and buildings dating from the Gold Rush era. The town’s most famous historical person no doubt is Levi Strauss, whose denim jeans clothed many a miner way back when and countless millions of the young and old today. For more information on Placerville, visit www.cityofplacerville.org. A short drive from Placerville is Sutter Creek, near Coloma, where gold was first discovered by workers at Pine Woods—today’s Sutter’s Creek. Like Placerville, Sutter’s Creek offers a varied range of B&Bs, hotels, motels and restaurants to choose from. For more information on Sutter Creek, visit www.suttercreek.org. Tourism options are many, ranging from mine tours to historic walks to wine tastings to cultural and art events and much more. If you want to be bored while visiting, you’ll have to work hard at it. Summer, fall, winter or spring, there are myriad reasons to visit California Gold Country.