Gold Country

In the mid-19th century, California’s Sierra Nevada Mountains were briefly at the center of the universe. The discovery of gold 50 miles northeast of the tiny trading colony of Sutter’s Fort (now Sacramento) in 1848 triggered an avalanche of immigrants who came from around the world to seek their fortune in the foothills. Dozens of towns erupted along a corridor stretching more than 200 miles from Yosemite Valley to Lake Tahoe to equip and prey on the desperation of 300,000 “forty-niners” with inflated prices, booze, and gambling.

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But the Gold Rush ended almost as soon as it began. By the 1860s, boomtowns like Mariposa, Sonora, and Placerville were deflating quickly, their mines, saloons, and Main Streets left like ghosts on the landscape.

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Over the last 175 years, much of California’s Gold Country has maintained the character of its early days, with historic cores so well preserved that some, like Columbia and Jamestown, frequently form the backdrop for movies and TV shows like Back to the Future III Little House on the Prairie Behind the Mask of Zorro And while places like Amador City, the state’s smallest town and home to the beautifully restored Imperial Hotel, are experiencing renaissances in art, wine, and food, the region remains relatively under the tourist radar.