Trip Report:
Long Weekend in the California Gold Country September 1998
Friday- 11am leave LA, Cruise I5 (through rain all through the mountains) to 120 (Manteca), 120 to 49 (Sonora), 49 to Columbia (arrive 6:30pm). Very long drive for one day. Nothing is as mind numbing as I5- straight, flat, boring! Only the 3 rollovers we saw by the road kept us alert. The last hour was on curvy rural highway. Pretty scenery on that stretch.
Checked into the City Hotel in Columbia (a California State Historic Park). Note: This is not the 'City Hotel' across the road from the biker bar in Sonora! We made that mistake! The City Hotel is a beautifully renovated 1870 or so Victorian Hotel with a VERY nice restaurant. The State of California owns the whole town and runs it, with everything nicely restored and everyone in period costume. The staff is very friendly, and many of them are students in the Columbia College school of hospitality and hotel management.
Our room (#2) was a gorgeous room (furnished with nice antique bed, washstand and loveseat), with a balcony overlooking the main street (no traffic, except stagecoaches during the day). There was sherry in the parlor, which we had while sitting on the balcony. We had dinner at the hotel restaurant, and it was excellent! Oysters in cornmeal with chipotle sauce appetizer, Alison had a cheese tart, and I had crusted chicken and quail breasts with cherry/ancho dressing and black bean and corn salsa. YUM! For dessert they baked up a chocolate-hazelnut souffle (30 minutes to make, they asked as soon as they brought dinner), and I had a strawberry napolean. With a half bottle of wine, cappuccinos and big tip dinner was $90, and the receipt is attached to a nice postcard of the hotel. We waddled a short bit down the street, peeking through steel shutters and into the gold panning troughs, read a magazine and played a game of scrabble in the parlor, then went and zonked out until morning.
Saturday
Though there is a half-bathroom en-suite, showers at the hotel are down the hall. The hotel provides towels, robe, slippers and all your bathing needs in a handy basket for carrying. Very chic! Breakfast was buffet style in the restaurant. Very serviceable with nice quiches and delicious homemade breads and scones. At $105 a night, well worth it.
Columbia is very nice. There is a small museum (devoted to the gold rush of course), several shops set up with period displays (dentist, apothecary, Chinese store, firehouse etc.). There are horse and stagecoach rides, gold panning and a mine tour (none of which we did). Several little shops offer souvenirs, candy, antiques etc. We enjoyed the displays and the museum, without doing any shopping. Since we were out before much opened, we were pretty much through looking around by the time things started jumping. So, we hopped in the car and took a 5 minute drive to Sonora.
Sonora didn't impress us much (the biker bar on Friday evening might have been an influencing factor). The most interesting part may have been the farmers' market hidden on a back street for a couple hours in the morning. We walked through a few very overpriced antique stores and avoided the many many tourist/country tchochke shops like the plague. We did find one true golden nugget though- Sonora Used Books (21 S. Washington St.), probably THE best used paperback store we've ever seen (and we've seen a lot!). It was organized beautifully, and the owner, Matt Mattingly knew everything in the place, and had written reader's guides for various subjects (he also pushed his book 'A Long Walk' about his walk across the country). We walked out with a stuffed backpack and smiles! It was about lunchtime so we had decent sandwiches at the Miner's Cafe. Then we set off for the Railroad 1897 museum in Jamestown, a few miles down the road.
Railroad 1897 is yet another state owned historic park. It consists of a rail yard and large roundhouse, several steam locomotives and various rolling stock. They offer tours of the yard, but the real reason we came was to take the 6 mile, 40 minute steam train ride. We got there just in time to use the bathrooms before the hourly train prepared to depart. The locomotive pulls the cars backwards for the first leg, then stops, passes the train on a siding, and pulls forwards for the return trip (to look good pulling into the station I'm sure). Old train buffs in conductors costumes gave information and tales on the ride, which runs through some very pretty meadows and hills. We even got to see the train stop to take on water at the 'Petticoat Junction' water tower (as seen on TV). The best part of the trip came after the ride though. They were having an 'Ice Cream Social' to raise money for remodeling! So we had a sundae served up by the 'Harvey Girls', which cooled us down nicely.
It was about 3:30pm then, so we got on 49 and headed north for an hour and a half to Amador City and the Mine House Inn , our base for Saturday and Sunday nights. The house was headquarters for the Keystone mining company, and various rooms of the B&B still reflect their functions- some with supports for stone crushing machinery, one with a walk in vault! Our room (the keystone room), though, was on a much later tacked-on addition (though our bathroom was actually inside the old building!). The innkeeper, Rose, told us that there was no water (broken pipes), and that we might not be able to stay. It was social hour, so we sat and talked over wine and cheese, then we went to our room, changed, and went for a swim in their pool while waiting for the word. The word was positive. Knowing we were in for the night, we hopped in the car and went through pouring rain to find dinner at about 8:30. Unfortunately, nightlife isn't big in these little towns. We had to drive 3 towns away to Jackson to find anyplace open (Denny's, god help us). We did almost get caught in the crush at the fireman's dinner and dance in Sutter Creek though. Apparently everyone in the county was there but us!
Sunday
Sunday morning we had a nice breakfast out on the patio by the pool. The inn doesn't have a dining room, so breakfast is delivered to you on a tray (to your room, the balcony, the patio or wherever). Egg and cheese omelet, fresh banana bread, fruit, juice and coffee. Yum! Even being warned that there was a mountain lion spotted nearby didn't slow down our appetite (the deer walking by on the trail reassured us).
After cleaning the tray, we hopped in the car and headed north to the Marshall Gold Discovery State Park, in Coloma just north of Placerville. Since this is the sesquicentennial of the discovery of gold in California, it seemed a good place to visit. The drive (39 miles) took about an hour on the winding Highway 49, and was very scenic. The slowest part is getting trapped in a chain of antique cars (of which there are many) cruising the highway. The packs of motorcyclists don't cause a problem, other than noise.
The park is on the American River at the site of Sutter's Mill, and the mill itself (destroyed by flood long ago) has been reconstructed (and works!). Several historic buildings still stand, and have interiors done up as displays of mining technology, Chinese stores etc. The museum was small and nice, with lots of finds from excavations in the area. There was also a small theater where we watched a 'how to' video on gold panning.
After the video, we ran to the gift shop and bought a gold pan and went across the river to the area where panning is allowed. The day was warm, but we found a nice shady spot by the river with a comfy flat rock to sit on in the water and started panning away. After a couple of pans full we got pretty good at leaving nothing but the heavy (magnetite) black sands in the pan. Now, here we are at the site where gold was discovered in California, subject to 150 years of panning. Think we found any gold? Well, we did, but not here.
After an hour or two panning, eating blackberries, and soaking our toes, we headed back to Sutter Creek for lunch. The NY Times had articles on the gold country a couple of weeks back, and they raved about a diner/soda shop called the Chatterbox. We knew it closed early, so we drove like mad to be sure that we would make it there on time.
And it was well worth the trip! The diner was small, crowded and hot, but the food was FABULOUS!! I had the turkey pioneer burger (Jarlsberg cheese, barbecue sauce, grilled onions) and fries (squeezing through the kitchen to the bathroom I passed the guy peeling the potatoes). Alison had a grilled portabella mushroom burger on focaccia bread with beer battered onion rings. MMMMmmmmm!!! We were so stuffed that we had to get our blackberry and blueberry pie to go. As I was getting up, I noticed a small fleck of gold stuck to my arm. We hadn't found any in our pan, but a small lump had found me. We're rich!
We found ourselves barely mobile after such a meal, so we hopped back to the Mine House for a short rest, and to fetch directions to a secluded little beach spot on the Mokelumne river to sit and pan for gold as the sun set. Before going to the river though, there was an antique store down the road from the Inn that was going out of business, and everything was half price, including a huge, beautiful Tarahumara pot. Normally I look at such things and drool, shake my head and pass by, but this time I managed to convince myself that since the woman was retiring, I wasn't encouraging the trade of (possibly) looted goods (the woman says she got the pot from connections with the Amerind foundation. The pot is ancient though (passes the smell test), so my guess is that it wasn't from a modern context). I am now the proud (OK, possibly shamefaced) owner of a great pot. Alison picked up some wacky labels from patent medicine bottles, and we also got a fork (for eating our pie later).
The Mokelumne river was a lot deeper and colder than the American, so we spent most of our time trying to pan without getting too wet. But our feet went numb pretty quickly, so it didn't hurt long. I couldn't believe there were idiot teens in rubber rafts splashing by occasionally. Brr! Again, we found nothing more than a couple tiny flecks of gold and a couple of tiny garnets, but we felt successful and content.
Back in our room we were able to summon enough appetite to practically inhale the pie (both just stuffed with berries. None of that 'filling' stuff you get in many pies). Then we rolled into bed and passed out.
Monday
Another lovely breakfast on the patio. Sutter Creek is described in one guidebook as "a shoppers paradise", so we decided to hit it before leaving for home. Of course, nothing much is open at 9am. There was a (semi-permanent) yard sale going on, and I ended up leaving with an electric peanut warmer (the kind that used to be on the counters at Woolworths. 3 little trays for peanuts, mixed nuts and cashews, with a glass lid and a light bulb for warmth). It was a real steal, and just the thing for party snacks (besides, the little squirrels on the front were to cute to pass up).
We had an iced coffee and read the paper in a little cafe while waiting for the sidewalks to unroll, then popped into a couple of antique shops. That was either a big mistake or a wonderful twist of fate. Alison came running to me from one corner of a shop, insisting that I come see what she found. What she found was a beautiful Victor Victrola X (I think it is an X, maybe a 100?) in perfect working condition. A few months ago we saw a Victrola for sale for thousands of dollars, but fell in love with the idea. Now, here was one for just a couple of hundred, so how could we resist? We bought it on the spot, with the stipulation that it had to fit into the car (which it did, filling the back seat). Now that the car was full, we had no real choice but to head home. We picked up ice for our ice chest, cokes, water and sandwiches at Safeway, then headed home.
The drive was mainly uneventful as far as the Grapevine. Then there was a rainstorm, and for some unknown twisted reason CalTrans decided to do construction, blocking half the freeway and adding an hour to our trip. It was amazing how many cars we saw littering the roadway on the way through the mountains! Yipe! Whether it was the heat, out of gas, or just the hills, it was pretty scary.
So, that was our long weekend trip. Pretty successful by all accounts! If you get a chance, visit the gold country. It is really nice!
Bibliography of useful books on the Gold Country:
Kelly, Leslie A. (1997). Traveling California's Gold Rush Country. Helena, MT: Falcon Publishing.
And visit his web site at http://www.goldrush1849.com
Ludwig, Ann K. (1998). A Flash in the Pan Still Gleams. NY Times Travel Section. Sunday, August 16, 1998. pp. 12, 19.
Martin, Don & Betty (1987). The Best of the Gold Country. Walnut Creek, CA: Pine Cone Press.
Purdum, Todd S. (1998). In the Footsteps of the 49ers. NY Times Travel Section. Sunday, August 16, 1998. pp. 13-14.
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Last Updated 6 October, 1998
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