Page 156 - 2014 Travel Guide to California

GOLD COUNTRY
California’s dreams took root in the land
of the “Mother Lode”
B Y J O H N F L I N N
TOP CITIES
Sacramento, Sonora, Placerville, Auburn, Downieville,
Sutter Creek, Nevada City, Jackson, Columbia, Murphys,
Jamestown, Angels Camp
INTERNATIONAL GATEWAY
Sacramento International Airport (SMF), 13 miles (21 km)
from the city center
TOURISM WEBSITES
discovergold.org
visit-eldorado.com
POPULATION
650,000
GOLD
COUNTRY
Something caught the eye of carpenter James W. Marshall as he tended
to a sawmill in the Sierra Nevada foothills. Something glittering. The
gold nugget that Marshall pulled out in January 1848 altered the his-
tory of not just the American West, but the entire world. It set off a gold rush
that drew more than 300,000 would-be prospectors the following year from
the eastern U.S., South America, Europe, even China. They were known as
the 49ers.
Overnight, the Gold Rush transformed San Francisco from a sleepy port to
a rollicking city and persuaded Congress to put California—wrested from
Mexico by war two years earlier—on the fast track to statehood. Most of the
gold was found in a 300-mile belt that extended through the Sierra foothills,
from Downieville in the north to Coarsegold in the south. Miners called it
the “Mother Lode.”
In a state working tirelessly to invent the future, the Gold Country remains
the most visible manifestation of its not-so-distant past, with towns sporting
wood-plank sidewalks, swinging saloon doors, hitching posts and red-brick
buildings. (You’ll quickly discover that the best preserved of these belonged
to Wells Fargo and, curiously, the Independent Order of Odd Fellows.)
Today you can still pan for gold—it’s often said there’s more left in the
ground than the original 49ers ever took out—but you can also raft some of
California’s frothiest rivers, explore caverns and sample Chardonnay and
Syrah in a number of uncrowded, up-and-coming wineries.
154 2014 T R AV E L G U I D E T O C A L I F O R N I A
LARRY HABEGGER. OPPOSITE: RICK COOPER/CREATIVE COMMONS; SCOTT JONES/CREATIVE COMMONS