Gold Country
California, USA · Jamestown · Sonora · Columbia
4 places pinned — click any one for its story.
The place
California's Gold Country is the Sierra foothills where the 1848 discovery at Sutter's Mill set off the Gold Rush that made the state — a string of Highway 49 towns named for the '49ers, full of wooden storefronts, old mines, and the ghosts of the boom.
We poked around the southern mines — the steam engines of Railtown at Jamestown, the red church of Sonora, and the perfectly preserved 1850s street of Columbia.
Places I visited
History & facts for each spot — with a “then & now” archival photo where one exists. Every one has its own page; open it for the full write-up and all the photos.
A Gold-Rush town of 1848 in the Sierra foothills where the first gold in Tuolumne County was found — a preserved main street of wooden storefronts and the terminus of the historic Sierra Railway.
Full history & photos →Archival photo: SRR 3 and Caboose Jamestown Sept64xRPxq - Flickr - drewj1946 — Wikimedia Commons
The roundhouse and working steam locomotives of the old Sierra Railway at Jamestown — the 'Movie Railroad' that has starred in Hollywood Westerns for a century, from High Noon to Back to the Future III.
Full history & photos →Archival photo: SRR 3 and Caboose Jamestown Sept64xRPxq - Flickr - drewj1946 — Wikimedia Commons
The 'Queen of the Southern Mines,' founded by Mexican miners from Sonora in 1848 — the lively Gold-Country seat with its red St. James Episcopal Church anchoring Washington Street.
Full history & photos →Archival photo: Washington Street, Sonora, Tuolumne County, California LCCN2002719077 — Wikimedia Commons
The best-preserved Gold-Rush town in California — a living-history 1850s main street of brick storefronts, a stagecoach, and gold panning, once the second-largest city in the state and nearly the capital.
Full history & photos →Archival photo: Columbia Tuolumne County - General view from the South LCCN2002717169 — Wikimedia Commons