“In the days of old, in the days of gold, in the days of ‘49”
California State Highway 49, the “Mother Lode Highway,” can truly take you back to the days of ’49. The road connects gold rush mining camps, ghost towns and historic sites from Oakhurst in the south, to Sierra City in the north. It’s three hundred miles of beautiful country along the foothills of the Sierra Mountains. Twisting mountain roads, sheer granite walls, precipitous drops to swiftly moving rivers. Old buildings, gold mines, forgotten cemeteries. Let’s go see what we can find.
With the large number of prospectors, gamblers, storekeepers and settlers pouring into California during the early years of the Gold Rush, coins were in scarce supply. A small number of firms began striking private issue Gold coins to solve the problem. Of course, some of those coins didn’t contain the amount of gold they were supposed to, but that’s another story.
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Forty different nationalities were represented among the miners of Campo Seco during the early years, making it perhaps the most cosmopolitan of all the mining camps in the Gold Country. The area was first prospected by Mexican miners in 1849, and by the following year quite a camp had grown up around them. It was due to the severe scarcity of water that the place got its name, Campo Seco, meaning "dry camp" in Spanish.
Read MoreJoshua Tree National Park, the California Gold Country, forgotten places in the Mojave Desert. These are a few of my favorite things.
