The folks left for home one week ago. Our trip to Gold Country was illuminating. We stayed in Sutter Creek because it sounded good, not because there is anything there so spectacularly interesting. The day of our arrival, we paid homage to the gold by visiting Coloma, where James Marshall found gold on the north bank of the South Fork of the American River. That piece of information amuses me because it has such an "only in America" sound.
We visited Placerville, which used to be called "Hangtown" because the white people there, back when it was called Old Dry Diggins, hung two men from France and one from Chile without even understanding what they had to say. It turns out placer means something gold-related in Spanish. It refers to pockets of gold found in crevices of rocks in river beds. I read all the guidebooks because I was navigator in charge of selecting where we should go -- once we flipped a coin to decide whether or not to tour northern Gold Country or or southern Gold Country. The northern loving people won the flip, not that it did much good because it rained two days out of three. I really wanted to see Sutter Buttes, but we did not go that far north.
So the new things:
1) I tried a "Hangtown Fry," a concoction of scrambled eggs, bacon and oysters. One of the miners who turned up in Hangtown with a big find ordered the "best meal in the house." I liked the one I ordered at the Buttercup Pantry in Placerville (where I also saw my first turtle-shaped pitcher).
2) I heard about Lakeside Classics books. My father brought the Lakeside Classics book from 1993 which had Gold Country stories in it, called From Mexican Days to the Gold Rush by James W. Marshall and E. Gould Buffum, an account of the life of James Marshall that was written in 1870 and a firsthand account by a prospector who came in 1848, before the big rush in 1849. Lakeside Press books are gifts to the employess of R.R. Donnelley and Sons publishers. They are never sold in stores, but are given to Donnelley employess as Christmas gifts. I've enjoyed reading the Lakeside Press book my father brought. 2.a) This is also the first time in ages that I have read a book that is NOT LISTED on Amazon. Whoo hoo!
3) We had pasties (rhymes with patsy) in Grass Valley. These meat pies came to California with the Welsh miners who settled the area.
4) I had a beer in the Golden Gate saloon in the Holbrooke Hotel in Grass Valley. The bar itself was all ornate carved Italian marble and wood that the builders had had shipped around Cape Horn and installed in Grass Valley in the early 1850s. Not only that, but it is the oldest continuously operating bar in Gold Rush country. None of these facts impressed my traveling companions, so I sat at a table by myself while my nearest traveling companion waited in the hotel hallway.
5) We went to our first gold mine. Empire Mine, part of the California State Park system was a real eye-opener. The mines are now flooded below 150 feet, which is unfortunate because the shafts go down over a mile. We bought a fossil-laden serving platter made out of limestone -- also another first
I will continue adding to this list during the next couple days. I feel a need to add details, which requires actually looking up the names of places. Right now, though, I must go off to work and to vote.
Comments