GLITTER RETURNS TO GOLD COUNTRY.

Byline: Peter Hecht The Sacramento Bee

Nearly 150 years after bustling mining towns sprang up amid the woods of the western Sierra, California's Mother Lode is enjoying a different sort of excitement - a seasonal, and increasingly celebratory, holiday rush.

Along the length of Highway 49, many historic towns that nearly succumbed to neglect and decay only a generation ago are brimming with Christmas shoppers. And both locals and tourists are rediscovering the small-town feel in the Gold Country.

Whether in Nevada City or Auburn, Angels Camp or Columbia, Grass Valley or Jackson or many other restored mining towns, visitors can hear the melodies of downtown carolers, breathe the aroma of roasted chestnuts or savor the warmth of hot cider.

Yet in a region rich with history and mining era legend, this holiday tradition is relatively new. Many Gold Country towns began hosting annual downtown Christmas parades or old-fashioned street festivals only in the past five to 15 years, after old Main Street revitalization programs took hold.

The seasonal rites are now reaping a holiday bounty for rural-county economies and stirring additional momentum for refurbishing and upgrading historic buildings. And in quaint foothill towns - the antithesis of shopping malls - local publicity machines are churning big time.

``I think people are getting the feeling of the old-fashioned Christmas and remembering the special things here,'' said Cathy Whittlesey, the Chamber of Commerce executive manager in Nevada City, where some downtown merchants reap 80 percent of their annual revenues between Thanksgiving and New Year's Day.

On each Wednesday evening and Sunday afternoon during the season, Nevada City gussies up for its Victorian Christmas celebration. The town is bathed in the light of old-fashioned gas lanterns. Visitors delight in hay wagon rides. And carolers frolic in 1800s costumes.

In nearby Grass Valley, downtown association director Lani Lott boasts that after a 10-year revitalization project ``we've built ourselves back up again.'' That was evident the day after Thanksgiving - when 7,000 people turned out to patronize restored shops and eateries and revel in the street theater of the town's annual ``Cornish Christmas'' celebration.

The colorful festival - a tribute to miners from Cornwall, England, who flocked to Grass Valley during the Gold Rush - will be repeated this Friday and Dec. 20. A popular draw for tourists, it is also a coming-out party for the locals.

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Photo: Gabriel Cashman, 10, sings with a group of carolers in Nevada City, Nev., during an old-fashioned Victorian Christmas celebration.

Associated Press