We’ve been considering the historic impacts the discovery of gold had on what we might call, today, the “California character,” both the brilliance of that—economic and social innovations—and its darker side.
It all started when James Marshall found flakes of gold in the tailrace of John Sutter’s sawmill on the American River. Hundreds of thousands of fortune hunters—a phenomenal human migration—soon arrived, in 1849, every one of them determined to strike it rich.
Almost overnight the arriving hordes swept aside everyone and everything that stood between them and the possibility of overnight wealth—native people, Spanish and Mexican settlers, land, plants, animals.
The California Gold Rush was largely responsible for the Americanization of the West. Without the gold rush the “West” might have been Mexican, known as El Norte, surely, or even Russian, perhaps referred to there as the Near East. Given the relentless exploration and colonization of the day, it’s hard to imagine any scenario allowing California to be left alone by the rest of the world.
It’s a big story. It’s also a very big territory. How do you experience California’s economic and political creation story on the road when there’s just so much of it? So much story and road.
Like you’d eat an elephant: one bite at a time.
Start with State Highway 49 and the communities it connects, that’s my first general suggestion. Some people still call 49 the Mother Lode Highway, but that’s not quite correct, because only the Southern Mines, from Oakhurst, roughly, north to Placerville, made up the mythical, never-found Mother Lode, the endlessly rich “mother vein” where miners believed all gold originated. Still coiled in places like a snake, the highway twists, turns, and also tours you through the Northern Mines, at least some of them.
Much of Highway 49 has been “improved,” of course, its hair-raising, historic eccentricities smoothed out and straightened by CalTrans and sometimes widened to four lanes. But there are still places where you’ll feel as lost and lonely as any trudging, forlorn 49er. I’m thinking in particular of the slow road to and from Coulterville, one of my favorite places, much of it listed on the National Registry of Historic Places. The fact that this middle-of-nowhere town offers a back-roads route into Yosemite National Park is just one of its charms.
I also suggest taking in California’s gold country a season at a time, a trip at a time, a week or weekend at a time. And mix it up, as far as your focus. Unless you’re a total history nerd, you probably don’t need to personally inventory the contents of the countless museums. They do pop up, all through the area, like mushrooms after a warm winter rain.
Take in a history museum or two on each trip, yes, along with those excellent antique and artisan shops. Study the headstones at gold rush-era cemeteries. What a story they tell. But also join locals at community events, hike and bike area trails, tuck into a good meal, visit a winery or two. Foothill wines are making quite a name for themselves.
