A GOLDEN OPPORTUNITY; IN THE 150TH ANNIVERSARY OF THE RUSH, THE MOTHER LODE MAINTAINS ITS APPEAL.

Byline: Story and photos by Eric Noland Travel Editor

In Coloma, a docent portraying James Marshall - sporting beard, floppy hat and grubby work clothes - recounts every detail of his famous discovery in the tailrace of Sutter's Sawmill. And he's fully in character. If your attention wanders, he taps you in the shins with his walking stick, as the impatient Marshall is reputed to have done.

In Columbia, a carpenter in similar attire demonstrates the operation of a cradle, used for separating gold from gravel and silt. He built it himself, following precise drawings left behind by a miner in the middle of the last century.

In Placerville, the proprietress of the Chichester-McKee House holds up a black morning coat that used to belong to a former resident of the house, a fellow who ran the town's hardware store. ``There are secret pockets in the tail,'' she says conspiratorially, revealing the hiding places. ``He probably carried the flask and the bank deposit in there.''

No wonder California's Gold Rush country, which stretches out along the Sierra Nevada foothills east of Sacramento, continues to hold such appeal. It is an easily romanticized era of the state's history - all the more so this summer, during the 150th anniversary of the 49ers' frantic stampede to the gold fields.

The prevailing imagery is of an intrepid loner swirling his tin pan while squatting at the edge of a creek, searching hopefully for a glint of shiny metal. There is curiosity over boom settlements with peculiar names: Dogtown, Chinese Camp, Cool, Rough and Ready. There is fascination with colorful characters, from the villainy of Black Bart to the fanciful storytelling of Bret Harte.

As with most romanticized events, however, harsher realities are conveniently masked with the passage of time.

``When you think about it, everybody was out for the dollar. That's what the rush was all about,'' said J.C. Herman, a state park ranger at the Empire Mine in Grass Valley.

``It's not much different than today. Greed. This was life in the fast lane.''

It was the original California lottery - with a perception of much better odds. And the obsession with sudden wealth can foster disturbing behavior.

Men deserted jobs and family obligations in the frenzy for a quick strike. Once here, they encountered back-breaking work in freezing streams, often for little return. Many times, gambling and drinking and the staggering cost of provisions ate up a great deal of what they could pull out of the ground. And it wasn't a particularly normalized social setting; in the census of 1850, women represented only 7.5 percent of California's population.

In disputes over claims and perceived wrongs, vigilante justice prevailed, and people who looked or talked differently than the American miners - Mexicans, American Indians, Chinese, Frenchmen, Hawaiians - were frequent targets of violence.

Exactly 148 years ago today, according to a newspaper account, Downieville miners who were ``fired with patriotism'' hanged a Mexican woman for stabbing to death a man who had entered her cabin. She claimed the man had previously molested her. The jury deliberated for only a few minutes before returning its guilty verdict.

The land was treated just as callously. In photographs of the period, not a sprig of vegetation can be seen near placer mining operations on the banks of streams and rivers. Later, in the 1870s, as placer gold became harder to come by, miners resorted to ravaging hillsides with powerful water cannons. Even today, the scars are evident at the Malakoff Diggins near Nevada City.

But whether the Gold Rush era is perceived as brimming with amusing folklore or as a troubling sociological study of the power of avarice, visitors find it endlessly fascinating.

There seem to be abundant appeals for making an excursion here.

Tourists have numerous opportunities to sift through the history of the period, in restored downtown districts, at state historical parks, in museums and at digging sites. Several old dwellings have been converted to bed-and-breakfast inns. Stores, meanwhile, stock much of the same merchandise as in Gold Rush days; the items were called goods then, they're antiques today. And the drive along Highway 49 can be a twisting, turning, unhurried pleasure.

Those who make their living along this route were anticipating a heavy invasion of tourism this summer - a Green Rush, if you will - especially in light of the state's pledge to spend some $3 million in tax dollars to promote California's sesquicentennial. But there is considerable grumbling over the fizzling delivery on the promises.

``We were strongly disappointed, because it was so highly touted initially,'' said Mary Louise Weaver, who operates Nevada City's 139-year-old Red Castle Inn with her husband, Conley, a former Los Angeles architect who helped design the Music Center. ``Other states promote highly on TV. There just wasn't any.

``I would say this year has been much quieter for us than other years. It was like a party you gave but just didn't send the invitations to the right people.''

For travelers from Southern California who are familiar with the Gold Rush country, this slackened promotion will probably be a blessing of sorts, since some of these towns and parks are subject to heavy visitation in normal years.

Whether a trip is taken in the summer peak or in the off-season, there certainly is much to see and do.

Highway 49, the vein that courses through the gold country, stretches about 270 miles between Mariposa in the south and Sierraville in the north. The popular heart of this country is directly east of Sacramento, in a region that runs south of Placerville to Sutter Creek, Angels Camp and Columbia, north to Coloma, Grass Valley and Nevada City.

There are a number of state historical parks along the route, and they shouldn't be missed.

The park at Columbia, for example, features a restored mining town with many working shops. A series of wooden troughs - some of them ``salted'' with gold flakes - are set up so kids can gently swish water and sand in a tin pan, in hopes that the heavier gold will separate toward the edge, like shells on a beach. The museum exhibits include such placer-mining implements as the cradle and the Long Tom. The saloon serves sarsaparilla. Mark Twain, who found endless fodder for his stories while combing the gold country as a newspaperman, will be portrayed by an actor at the Fallon House Theatre starting July 20.

At the park in Coloma stands a replica of the sawmill that John Sutter had built on the adjacent American River. It was in the balky first days of the mill's operation, when river water was diverted to turn the mill's paddle wheel, that Marshall inspected the channel that returned water to the river and made his momentous discovery.

Later, the town's hunger for gold sparked curiosity over the only dirt that hadn't been turned - that beneath the foundations of Coloma's mostly abandoned buildings. They were promptly torn down, the dirt sluiced. In several cases, only piles of rubble interlaced with weeds remain, but placards identify the old sites: Dukehart Bath House, Fashion Saloon, Express Office.

Farther north, at the Empire Mine state park in Grass Valley, visitors can descend a few steps into the mouth of a hard-rock mine - and gaze into a hole that ultimately extends more than two miles down and is interlaced with 367 miles of tunnels.

Many visitors to gold country cling resolutely to Highway 49, but excursions to out-of-the-way spots can be every bit as rewarding as the historical parks and roadside towns.

This is true in Volcano, population 99, which lies in the hills inland of Sutter Creek. It is wooded and quiet, far from the main highway, with a general store built in the classic, fire-preventive method of the time: a bizarre combination of bricks and rock. It looks as if it might fall down any second.

In Dutch Flat, off I-80 to the northeast of Auburn, Victorian homes are no bigger than cottages, and rose bushes cascade over rickety picket fences. A dog ambled slowly across the narrow street, smugly oblivious to the bright-red rental car that approached.

In Murphys, a short drive from Angels Camp on Highway 4, a pastoral creekside park features the frolic of children where miners once wreaked their havoc. Wade into that water for a few minutes, sense the chill - now imagine putting in 10 hours a day there, bending to scoop gravel and dirt out of the creek bottom.

Most of the towns along the route feature historic districts of restored Gold Rush-era buildings. Some are worth a visit, others seem in danger of collapsing from the weight of all the doodads for sale. Nevada City, a vibrant county seat - and, thus, less reliant on tourism - might be the gem of the route, with a warren of hillside streets, beautifully restored buildings, several nice places to eat and a reassuring preponderance of book stores.

The best advice is to explore various locales at your leisure and determine which ones are worth your time.

The charm of some towns is undermined by their reliance on visitor bucks. They can usually be identified by the number of stores selling antiques, which, apparently, are not to be confused with collectibles, which should never be mistaken for heirlooms, which are often confused with gifts.

With perseverance, determined hunters will find the occasional treasure trove - at the Victorian Closet in Amador City, for example, where owner Sally Knudson displays antique patchwork quilts of unsurpassed workmanship.

The drive along 49 can be equally rewarding - it's considered one of the finest motorcycle routes in the state, and, accordingly, the Harleys are in perpetual evidence.

Although some stretches dismay you with suburban and shopping-center blight (notably immediately north of Auburn), others wind through forests of oak and pine, alongside bursts of wildflowers and past orchards, vineyards, ranches, farms and plenty of California's unique foothill scenery: rolling hills parched brown in the sun, dotted here and there with dark-green splashes of oak trees.

Visitors to this region also find abundant opportunities to stay in restored buildings of the Gold Rush era - or in newer buildings made to look old. Most motels are confined to the outskirts of towns, far from the historic districts, so those interested in period immersion gravitate to the numerous bed-and-breakfast inns that pepper the foothills.

Particularly when choosing a historic building, it is wise to call ahead and get exact descriptions of the amenities, if such things are important to you.

The Chichester-McKee House in Placerville, for example, dates to 1892, and the tiny closets of the three bedrooms have been converted to half baths. In one bathroom, you have to straddle the commode to wash your hands in a fold-down steel sink that was lifted from a Pullman railroad car. For anything beyond a sponge bath, there is one room at the top of the stairs, featuring a substantial tub, that must be used by all of the inn's guests (though, fortunately, not at the same time).

In Murphys, the Redbud Inn is only a few years old and features spacious rooms with intriguing touches - enormous whirlpool tubs in some, clawfoot bathtubs positioned next to fireplaces in others. But corners were obviously cut on construction materials - specifically in the case of floor and ceiling insulation. Even kitchen conversation creates a considerable din, starting at about 5 a.m.

In Nevada City, the ancient Red Castle Inn is a red-brick, Gothic Revival structure built into the side of a steep, wooded slope. It is painstakingly decorated with Victorian antiques, such that you hesitate - for maybe a second or two - before putting your beer bottle down on some spindly nightstand.

The Red Castle also has a reputation for housing ghosts. A former governess reportedly has been encountered tucking in sleeping guests, as she once did the children of original owner John Williams, who arrived in '49 and went on to become a mine owner and local judge. An ethereal gentleman also visited one of the construction workers who participated in the house's restoration in 1963, ostensibly to oversee the work.

These are not the kinds of things you want to read about at 10:30 at night, especially when you're sitting in the otherwise-deserted parlor under some dim relic of a Victorian lamp - fully aware that you're the only guest for the night in this seven-room inn.

Fortunately, I had only one encounter with the spirit world. A runaway ghost freight train roared through the building just before dawn - at least that's what it sounded like when someone elsewhere in the house flushed a toilet.

The evening before, a walk up Broad Street in Nevada City had yielded a scene that might be unique to this region and capable of stirring endless musings about what life was like a century and a half ago.

The view to the east encompassed rugged, forested slopes where gold used to hide. At the stately National Hotel, which has been in continuous operation since 1856, the patrons were shoulder-to-shoulder at the dark, wood-paneled Victorian bar.

Clusters of people strolled the sidewalk, tracking down lodging or seeking out dinner, confident that their labors had earned them particular pampering.

At the top of the town's steep main street, a sunset in pastels was visible, directly behind the clapboard United Methodist Church and the silhouettes of tall pines behind it.

OK. On a visit to the Gold Rush country, maybe there is nothing wrong with romanticizing things a bit.

CAPTION(S):

4 Photos, Map

PHOTO (1--3--Color) Visitors to California's Gold Rush country can swish a pan at a state historic park in Columbia, left, or peer down the vast shaft of the Empire Mine, below, in Grass Valley. Top left, a modern-day Argonaut coaxed some gold flakes out of the American River near Coloma, not far from where James Marshall made his momentous discovery.

(4) Nevada City, perched on a wooded hillside in the northern reaches of California's gold country, has been faithfully restored.

Eric Noland

MAP: no caption (Area surrounding Amador City / Sutter Creek)