Placerville, El Dorado County - A California Gold Rush Town

The town of Placerville or Hangtown, as it was commonly called during the California Gold Rush, is a beautiful little town with a gold rush flavor that currently attracts many tourists. Perhaps the largest attraction in the area is known as "Apple Hill". It is an area consisting of a series of small apple orchards which cooperate to host a festival celebrating all the many products of this delicious fruit each fall at harvest time. The festival coincides with apple harvest season and generally lasts from September into early November. Although apples are the biggest attraction today, that was not always the case, and Placerville was not originally founded by ranchers hoping to grow apples. It was once a wild and wolly gold rush town full of miners seeking their fortunes in the surrounding hills.

The town does celebrate its gold rush heritage, and although gold is no longer mined, a few tourists do try their hand panning in the local creeks. Back in the early gold rush days, the town consisted of one long straggling street of wooden board houses and log cabins, built in a hollow along the side of a creek, and surrounded by high and steep hills. The diggings here were once exceedingly rich, and men used to pick the chunks of gold out of the crevices of the rocks in the ravines with no other tool than a bowie-knife. Although many men did make their fortune in the creeks here, most of them barely made enough to get by, because food and other supplies were sold at extremely high prices. Mining went on for many years and eventually the whole surface of the surrounding country showed the scars of the hard work which had been done. When the miners had completed their work the beds of the numerous ravines which wrinkle the faces of the hills, the bed of the creek, and all the little flats alongside of it, were a confused mass of heaps of dirt and piles of stones lying around. Among the piles were innumerable holes, about six feet square and five or six feet deep, from which the stones had been thrown out.

The original course of Hangtown Creek, which runs through the town, was completely obliterated, its waters being diverted and distributed into numberless little ditches, and from them the waters were conducted into the "long toms" of the miners through canvas hoses, looking like immensely long slimy sea-serpents. The gold, being heavier than lead, is caught in these devices and then later recovered. The number of bare stumps of what had once been gigantic pine trees, dotted over the naked hill-sides surrounding the town, showed how freely the axe had been used, and to what purpose was apparent in the extent of the town itself, and in the numerous log cabins scattered over the hills, in situations apparently chosen at the whims of the owners, but in reality they were built with a view to be near to their diggings, and at the same time to be within a convenient distance of water and firewood. Luckily, the hills have now re-grown, and a blanket of green forest timber again grows where the miners once cut down every tree in sight.

During those pioneer days prospecting for gold was conducted along the whole length of the creek, as far as one could see, on the banks of the creek, in the ravines, even in the middle of the principal and only street of the town. In fact even inside some of the houses, there were parties of miners, numbering from three or four up to a dozen, all hard at work, some laying into the gravels with picks, some shoveling the dirt into the "long toms," or with long handled shovels washing the gold bearing dirt thrown in, and throwing out the stones. Still others were working pumps or baling water out of the holes with buckets - fighting the waters that kept seeping in. When the miners were at work, there was a continual noise and clatter, as mud, dirt, stones, and water were thrown about the workings in all directions; and the men, dressed in ragged clothes and big boots, wielding picks and shovels, rolled big rocks about, as if they were working to save their very lives. Those pioneer miners dug for gold with a will, and a degree of energy, not usually seen among laboring men. The difference was in the fact that they were laboring on their own behalf, each man hoping to strike it rich. It was altogether a scene which conveyed the idea of hard work in the fullest sense of the words. A huge amount of gold was found, and the hills around the town yielded quite literally millions of ounces of the beautiful yellow metal.

A stroll through the village then known as Hangtown would have revealed the extent to which the ordinary comforts of life were attainable to the old miners. The gambling-houses, of which there were several, were of course the largest and most conspicuous buildings in the town. Their mirrors, chandeliers, and other decorations, suggested a style of life totally at variance with all the outward indications of everything around them. The town was a picturesque sight, the street itself was unpaved and in many places knee-deep in mud, plentifully strewn rubbish and goods almost too numerous to itemize. Those pioneer miners dressed in picturesque rags, with large muddy boots, long beards, and brown faces, were the only inhabitants to be seen - females being almost completely absent. Placer gold was found almost everywhere, and in certain spots, even in the middle of the streets, there would be a square hole about six feet deep, in which one miner was digging, while another was baling the water out with a bucket, and a third, sitting alongside the heap of dirt which had been dug up, was washing through a rocker to see if any gold was to be found. Wagons, drawn by six or eight mules or oxen, were navigated along the street, stopping and discharging their strangely-assorted cargoes at the various stores and bars.

The town was quite a sight in those days, and certainly nothing like it is today. Civilization took a few years to get there, but it did arrive. The more civilized name of Placerville has long replaced the old "Hangtown", the miner's picks have been quieted, and the gambling houses are all gone. Still the charm of the old town remains and it is well worth a visit, especially when one can travel a few miles east to samples the many apple flavored products of the nearby ranchers. It's interesting to think of the history that once went on here. Placerville lies close to other destinations like Sacramento, Reno and Lake Tahoe, so it is not difficult to reach, even just for a day's visit.

For more info on prospecting take a look at www.prospecting-for-gold.com
reat info on how to get started, where to prospect and the rules you need to knwo before dredgine!