Travel

HISTORIC TREASURE A handful of early-day buildings remains at Chinese Camp on Highway 49 in the Sierra foothills.

SHOWCASE The El Dorado Hotel is a cornerstone business in downtown Sonora in the gold country Mother Lode.

Tarmo Hannula

Family roots in Gold Country

By TARMO HANNULA

On Oct. 16, my wife Sarah and I headed out of Watsonville on a week-long road trip into gold and silver country, the Mother Lode of the Sierra foothills and the other side of the mountains in Nevada.

We started on Highway 129 that took us to Highway 156 and then over to Highway 152 along the frighteningly low San Luis Reservoir. We connected with Highway 99 south to Fresno, where we joined relatives for the celebration of our granddaughter's one-year birthday. I’ll spare you the boastful photos of Kenzie in her party hat surrounded by gifts, balloons and a cake with one candle.

The following morning we headed north toward Columbia in the gold country’s Mother Lode, the town where I was born in 1954. We followed Highway 41 through the small town of Coarsegold (where we

Tarmo Hannula

just missed the annual Tarantula Festival) and then Oakhurst, taking in the beauty of the crisp, brown hills and stone dry creek beds. In Oakhurst, we switched onto Highway 49 and rolled through places with great names like Nipinnawassee and Ahwahnee and into the small town of Mariposa.

Highway 49 then led us into the craziest zigzag, switchback mountain road I’ve driven, a snakey twolane highway that threads through the hills to one of our chosen destinations, Chinese Camp. The tiny ghost town of a couple buildings, caving in old wood homes and the original old hotel, now embraced by vines and cobwebs, stand beside an historic landmark with a brass plaque that reads: “Mark Twain, Bret Harte Chinese Camp. Reportedly founded about 1849 by a group of Englishmen who employed Chinese as miners. Much surface gold found on hills and flats. Headquarters for stage lines in early 1850’s and for several California Chinese mining companies ... Historical Landmark No. 423.” Not the greatest wording—and even a typo: 1850s doesn't need a possessive apostrophe.

Wandering through the quiet dirt roads, among the dilapidated simple wooden homes, and the hillside cemetery was a treasure trove of history for us. I was stunned by the notion that this little town, once a buzzing hot spot on the gold rush map, is still there, plain and simple.

In the early afternoon we drove into Sonora and checked in at the Gunn Hotel on the main drag, Washington Street, downtown. Built in 1850, the two-story building is a showcase of early days, marble fireplaces, Wainscoting and brass beds.

Just a few miles north is the small historic town of Columbia, my birthplace. Back then, my dad taught at the high school and was a lifeguard at the campus pool. An unusual highlight of the trip was when we visited the house on State Street where my family lived at the time.

It was on Facebook several years ago that I learned that my friends, Rory and Jim, who I met years ago at Bay Photo in Watsonville Square, had bought that very house. So, by plan, we swung by. Rory and Jim kindly showed us around the first house I ever lived in. I only have a few dim memories of the place, like the time I was sitting on the front steps with my older sisters and was attacked by an army of red ants.

In the next phase of this story, we will drive east through a snow-covered pass into Nevada and take in the bounty of Carson City, where a wild deer stuck its head in my car window and we learned about Kit Carson and his 1843-44 trek to find an easy passage through the Sierra Nevada.