WE'RE IN GOLD COUNTRY!

On Wednesday, Fran’s younger brother, Rick, with his two boys, Andrew and Cameron, joined us at Ponderosa for a few days, pitching their tent alongside our motorhome. They arrived with fishing poles, swim suits, and even prepared to pan for gold in the American River at our doorstep. We brought out our gas grill and were treated to one of Fran’s extra special outdoor dinners. Since the boys had never had S’mores, Rick brought up firewood and ingredients and we put together the marshmallows, graham crackers and chocolate for an after dinner dessert treat! Gooey, but good! One day we all went to the Sutter’s Mill Discovery Center to learn about the Great California Gold Rush of 1849.

On Thursday night, Andrew befriended a female duck, who came waddling down the road in search of a juicy tidbit. Andrew fed the duck little bits of bread and gave a piece to Cam to feed it, too. Well, to Cam’s surprise, the duck grabbed the whole piece out of his hand and gulped it down in one swallow!

News of the discovery of gold in January of 1848 at Sutter’s Mill in Coloma, CA (then no longer a part of Mexico) spread like wildfire throughout the country and then throughout the world as well, bringing hopes of easy riches to thousands of men who sold everything they had for a chance to make their fortunes in the Gold Country. Easy riches proved to be an exaggeration to all but a few astute businessmen who set up mercantile stores to sell supplies to the fevered miners. The riches to be had in California soon came to the attention of the U.S. Government who helped to spread the stories of “Mountains of Gold” to as far away as China. It is not a coincidence that California was taken from Mexico and welcomed into the United States in 1850. The State of California has built a Historic Park at the site of Sutter’s Mill with an excellent visitor’s center and many artifacts as well as equipment and buildings from the original town of Coloma. While Coloma was the site of the original gold discovery, the gold fields soon extended for over 200 miles along the Sierra-Nevada foothills along a route that is now marked by Highway 49, named for the miners who became known as 49’ers.

Placerville in El Dorado County, California, was probably the foremost town of the gold rush era of the mid 1800’s and also became known as “Hangtown” for reasons you will just have to imagine. The Bell Tower (shown here) is 150 years old and was built to call the fire fightwers in the event of one of the frequent disasterous fires of that time. (The tower is decorated here for the local BrewFest celebration) It lies in the western foothills of the Sierra Nevada mountain range between Sacramento and Lake Tahoe and was named for the placer mining procedure that became a popular method of gold mining of that day. Placer mining soon led to hydraulic mining which required huge volumes of water in monitors (canons) to wash down the gold bearing earth to then be examined through sluice boxes for the precious metal. Many small dams were built throughout the mountains to collect water which was then conducted to the various mine sites through wooden flumes, aqueducts, ditches and pipes where the force of gravity would create enough pressure to blast away at the mountains. Of course this method made quite a mess of the countryside and washed the silt and sand downstream, eventually clogging the Sacramento River. This procedure was eventually outlawed in 1884; however there are many sites of the devastation still visible today, over 120 years later.

And that should bring you up to date on our activities as well as providing your history lesson for today! ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~Bye