THE MOTHER LODE ROAD : CALIFORNIA'S HIGHWAY 49 A SCENIC TRAIL TO HISTORICAL TREASURES.

Byline: Susanne Hopkins Daily News Travel Editor

Highway 49, eastern California's 325-mile, two-lane strip of blacktop, runs over one of the richest veins of gold in the world.

This is Sierra Nevada country, where mountains bump into blue sky, trees stand broad and tall, and the earth coughed up $2.5 billion in gold from 1848 to 1958 when thousands of fortune-seekers swarmed through the region - also known as the Mother Lode - in search of the precious ore that surfaced in creeks and rivers or sliced through mountains of granite.

They took the gold they could reach. Still, there's a lot left in California's Gold Country, but it would cost too much to dig it out, geologists say.

Remnants of some of the old mining towns remain along this highway (also called the ``Golden Chain'') that stretches through nine counties - Mariposa, Tuolumne, Madera, Calaveras, Amador, El Dorado, Placer, Nevada and Sierra - from the town of Oakhurst in the south to Sierraville in the north. It's a fascinating trek into the past.

The scenery is as rich as the soil. Lower elevations feature picturesque rivers and burnished gold hills dotted with oaks and straggly pines; higher up, granite outcroppings are studded with stately pines and delicate aspens.

You'll encounter legends of the famous and infamous here, too - Mark Twain, Black Bart, Lola Montez and Joaquin Murieta among them. Veer off Highway 49 and you can go antiquing; visit vineyards, caverns and mines; or take advantage of the hiking, biking, white-water rafting or kayaking opportunities that abound in the area's dozens of national and state parks.

Here are some of the special places along the way.

Mariposa:

The gateway to Yosemite National Park, Mariposa - 26 miles north of Oakhurst - is home to California's oldest county courthouse, a New England-style, white-frame building erected in 1854 for $9,200 (it's still operating; tours are available). On Bullion Street, you'l find the old granite jail, which you can look at but can't enter, and the California State Mining and Mineral Museum, which holds spectacular glittery minerals and gemstones.

The best site here is the Mariposa Museum & History Center, which introduces early resident Horace Snow. Snow struck out from Massachusetts in the 1850s to find his fortune in California. By July 1854, he lived in a crude, 12-by-15-foot cabin in Mariposa with four hens, a dog and a cat. He wrote letters to his boyhood buddy Charlie back in Massachusetts. Those letters, chock full of interesting data, enhance the exhibits and bring the era to life.

Coulterville:

Nestled in a valley, this ranchers' market town retains a Gold Rush ambience. Some original structures, such as the 1851 Hotel Jeffrey, once a stagecoach stop, are intact. Across from the hotel on Highway 49 is the old hanging tree and the little locomotive called ``Whistlin' Billy,'' which once hauled ore from the Mary Harrison Mine on the ``crookedest railroad in the world.''

The sole survivor of Coulterville's once-lively Chinatown is the Sun Sun Wo Co., an adobe built in 1851, which now houses an antiques store.

Jamestown:

A Mother Lode of antiques stores housed in brightly painted buildings along Main Street, some dating to the 1870s, is a big tourist attraction. The venerable National Hotel overlooks Main Street, and ``High Noon'' and ``Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid'' were filmed in this area.

Railtown 1897 State Historic Park, operated by the California State Railroad Museum in Sacramento, is a complex of railroad shops paying tribute to the Sierra Railroad, which once hauled passengers and freight along a route that included Jamestown, Angels Camp, Tuolumne and Oakdale. If you visit on a summer weekend, you can take a six-mile train ride from Jamestown to Wood's Creek.

Sonora:

Four miles north of Jamestown, Sonora was once a completely lawless place, the wildest of the southern Mother Lode towns. Today, it's a little calmer, featuring walking tours of Victorian homes, the Tuolumne County Museum and History Center (which features a collection of gold nuggets) and the city's trademark rust-red St. James Episcopal Church.

Columbia:

A detour via Parrotts Ferry Road to this restored town, now a state historic park, transports visitors to the 1850s. Several blocks of brick-and-board buildings are intact and some have been turned into shops. You can watch a blacksmith at work, visit a saddlemaker's shop, stop in at the restored Wells Fargo office or nurse a sarsaparilla in an old saloon.

Angels Camp:

This is the place Mark Twain put on the map when he wrote ``The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County'' (a story he is said to have heard at the old Angels Hotel, which still stands at the southern end of the town). Angels Camp, which climbs up the side of a ravine, takes the amphibian seriously. There are even painted frogs grinning up at you from the sidewalks. The city annually celebrates its history the third weekend in May with the Jumping Frog Jubilee.

(There's a statue dedicated to Twain in Utica Park; eight miles south of town, on Jackass Hill Road, there's also a replica of the Gillis brothers' cabin where Twain stayed. It's a weathered brown place, near to collapsing, but it boasts the original fireplace and chimney.)

There's also a quirky museum of Victorian and Gold Rush memorabilia, the Angels Camp Museum, which shares a building with the local police. Its most interesting feature: the Carriage House behind the museum with its dozens of buggies, wagons and carriages.

Murphys:

A nine-mile detour via Highway 4 east of Angels Camp, Murphys is a charmer of a place, with graceful old Gold Rush buildings stretched along a tree-shaded street, some classy shops and inviting restaurants. The Murphys Hotel, which dates to 1856, has bullet holes in its front door, courtesy of some rowdy guys in the town's wilder days. The Old Timers Museum, which occupies an 1850s building that was once a general store, houses an eclectic mix of antique items donated by residents; an outside display called ``Wall of Comparative Ovations'' is made of plaques dedicated to pioneers and Gold Rush personalities.

Jackson:

This is hardrock mining territory, and you can still see the framing of such mines as the Kennedy and the Argonaut jutting from the hillsides, as well as the Kennedy Mine Tailing Wheels, giant wooden wheels that once transported tailings from the mine to an area two hills away. Only two of the four original wheels remain today; the others have crumbled into splintery wooden heaps. You can wander the old structures that line Main Street and step into the National Hotel, one of California's oldest continuously run hostelries.

The Amador County Museum calls one of its rooms a ``Congress of Curiosities.'' The most noteworthy feature: On the wooden floor of the gold exhibit room, there's a taped note that gives visitors an idea of the size of a typical gold-mining claim - 400 square feet. And, the note says, all waste dirt and tailings must be removed to an area not under the claim. ``As you are surrounded by claims, it should be quite a hike,'' the anonymous writer notes.

Chaw'se Indian Grinding Rock State Historic Park:

California's only state park dedicated to American Indians teaches visitors about the Miwok culture. There are 360 petroglyphs preserved here, as well as a limestone outcropping used by the Miwoks to grind acorns. The small museum and visitors center are housed in the modern version of a roundhouse, a typical Miwok structure that served as the center of ceremonial and social life.

Inside, films about Miwok life are shown and there are exhibits of artifacts. A short walk from the museum, there's a small Miwok village of tepee-shaped summer houses created from brush.

Sutter Creek:

A charmer of a town with an inviting, rustic look that belies the sophisticated shops, Sutter Creek's claim to fame is the Knight Foundry. Opened in 1873 to supply heavy equipment and repairs to the gold-mining and timber industries, it is said to be the nation's only water-powered foundry still in operation. You can take tours, but the doors are shuttered when I arrive.

Fiddletown:

Named, so legend has it, because the Missourians who founded it were ``always fiddlin','' Fiddletown was once home to a thriving Chinese community. Now, it's a backwoods hamlet with a narrow main street shaded with locust trees and lined with batten-board houses that date as far back as the 1850s. The brick Fiddletown General Store dates to the 1850s. The most interesting feature is across the road - the Chew Kee Yee Store. Yee was a Chinese herb doctor who practiced here at the height of the Gold Rush. His store is rammed earth adobe (tightly packed adobe, rather than bricks); the walls are said to be more than two feet thick. The place is a museum now.

Coloma:

This is where James Marshall, one fine day in 1848, noticed a peculiar glitter in the fork of the American River that runs through here. Gold!

The little village is now Marshall Gold Discovery State Historic Park. Some of the old structures remain, others have been restored, and still others are remembered only with markers. There's a replica of Capt. John Sutter's mill and you can follow a trail to the site where gold was discovered.

Auburn:

Auburn - with 11,000 residents - is the most populous of Mother Lode cities. It sits on a bluff above the north fork of the American River. Lumber is the big industry here now. Not far from the handsome Victorian courthouse, there's Old Town. Brick and wood buildings housing restaurants, antiques and gift shops climb up a few narrow streets radiating from the downtown plaza.

The most-photographed structure is the narrow little red wooden firehouse; the most venerated is the post office. Until September, when the state closed it, the building in a small plaza in the center of the historic area was the oldest continuously operating post office in California.

Grass Valley:

This inviting town includes the impressive Empire Mine State Historic Park, which yielded 6 million ounces of gold in its 105-year history.

A few miles away, the North Star Powerhouse Museum next to the burbling Wolf Creek offers re-creations of mine rooms and an awesome 30-foot Pelton waterwheel. And the Grass Valley Museum artfully tells the story of the old town and its Cornish heritage.

Rough and Ready:

Just four miles west of Grass Valley is the only town to secede from the Union. Ticked off by the Mining Tax levied by the federal government on all claims, the townsfolk of Rough and Ready voted to secede from the Union April 7, 1850. The hullabaloo lasted until the Fourth of July when, without further ado, folks raised Old Glory on the flagpole and left it there. End of secession.

Remnants of the past: the William Fippin blacksmith shop, erected in the mid-1850s (mining camp darling Lotta Crabtree is said to have given her first performance here), the 1851 Grange Hall, an old toll house and post office.

The neatest feature: the Little Wayside Wedding Chapel built in1959 as a tribue to God's goodness by Lisetta Scheave, who was reunited with her husband many years earlier after a shipwreck near Eureka. Scheave died in 1982; now, her daughter, Jacqueline Kelly, lovingly plans the weddings in the intimate chapel.

Nevada City:

``It's my favorite city in the Gold Country,'' a visitor tells me. And Nevada City ital

is a pretty charming place. Handsome Victorian homes decorate the steep hills on which the city is built, and picturesque white church spires jut from among the colorful sugar maples. The downtown is a pleasant place of historic buildings, such as the Nevada Theater which, at 137 years of age, is one of the state's oldest; the Nevada Hose Co. Firehouse No. 1, a white frame and brick structure with a fancy belfry; and the National Hotel with its long white balcony.

Malakoff Diggins State Historic Park:

A pretty, if somewhat formidable, drive 26 miles northeast of Nevada City via steep, dirt roads, it's an intriguing place. North Bloomfield, a tidy, quiet town of some original and some reconstructed Gold Rush homes and shops, leads to the diggin's. It is also the site of the Malakoff visitors center and a small museum of pioneer relics.

A mile down the road. the diggins provide dramatic testimony to the ravages of hydraulic mining, when giant hoses were used to wash away entire hillsides and the ore was retrieved from sluices that captured the mud. While Malakoff is a heavily forested area, the scars of such mining remain in the stark white hillsides where nothing will grow.

On Location

The Gold Country draws millions of visitors each year (state tourism officials do not keep comprehensive records on the area, but said based on counties' reports, more than 11 million people a year could travel through the area).

Most visit in the summer, which means Highway 49 is often very slow going. Consider going in spring when wildflowers are in bloom, museums and other attractions reopen after the winter lull and you can rev up your spirits with such events as the Jumping Frog Jubilee in Angels Camp.

This is a big deal here - it's been going on since 1928 and hundreds of frogs (with their handlers) come from all over to stretch their legs in the contest that this year will be held May 16-18 at the Calaveras County Fairgrounds on Highway 49 about two miles south of town. In addition to jumping frogs, the jubilee traditionally includes rodeos, concerts, carnival rides, and arts and crafts. A tip from the Calaveras County Visitor Information Center: If you plan to attend, make your room reservations now. Information: [phone].

Or try autumn, when the trees, such as the aspens, don their fall colors of gold, orange and red, the weather is crisp, the crowds have gone home and the bed-and-breakfast inns have lowered their prices. (YouM may, however, find some attractions closed until spring).

You can easily spend a week here or a few days in a concentrated area.

For information on specific areas in the Gold Country, contact:

Amador County Chamber of Commerce, P.O. Box 596, 125-B Peek St. Jackson, Calif. 95642; [phone].

Auburn Area Chamber of Commerce, 601 Lincoln Way, Auburn, Calif. 95603; [phone].

Calaveras County Visitor Information Center, P.O. Box 637, Angels Camp, Calif. 95222; [phone].

El Dorado County Chamber of Commerce, 542 Main St., Placerville, Calif. 95667; [phone].

Grass Valley and Nevada County Chamber of Commerce, 248 Mill St., Grass Valley, Calif. 95945; [phone].

Mariposa County Chamber of Commerce, P.O. Box 425, 5158 N. Highway 140, Mariposa, Calif. 95338; [phone].

Nevada City Chamber of Commerce, 132 Main St., Nevada City, Calif. 95959; [phone].

North Mariposa County Chamber of Commerce, P.O. Box 333, 5009-B Main St., Coulterville, Calif. 95311; [phone].

Tuolumne County Chamber of Commerce, 55 Stockton St., Sonora, Calif. 95370; [phone].

Outtakes

The gold trail has plenty of interesting detours, including visiting local vineyards, antiquing and following the footsteps of writers Mark Twain and Bret Harte. There's also several days' worth of hiking, biking, kayaking, canoeing - opportunities for outdoor activities are endless.

At Mercer Caverns in Murphys and Moaning Cavern in nearby Vallecito, visitors can explore limestone caverns filled with underground wonders honed by water - stalagmites, stalactites, columns, curtains, flowstone (the latter three named for their appearance on the walls of the caverns) - and lots and lots of steep stairs.

All told, 910 steps. But if you and your legs are game, it's a worthy expedition.

On a recent day, 70 kids and a few adult chaperones maneuvered down Moaning Cavern's historic 100-foot spiral staircase. BMrave visitors rappel into the largest underground room in California (you could put the Statue of Liberty in here).

Their guide, Pam, describes the gigantic white outcropping and oddball formations, which are even now being shaped by water dripping down the walls. (Oddly, while it's cool - about 55 degrees - in the cavern, it's not damp).

Moaning Cavern got it's name because centuries ago, American Indians heard moaning sounds coming from the cave from as far as two miles away. The sound was was caused by water dripping off the wall formations - called draperies or curtains - through holes and onto the bottom of the cave. The staircase covered a lot of the holes, so these days, that moaning sound is quite obscured.

To give the kids a thrill, the lights go out in the cavern and Pam wields a flashlight around the chamber. With a little imagination, they spot a screaming skull, Santa Claus and an angel's wing.

The lights come on. ``Look at how high that is,'' says one kid, pointing at the stairwell. ``Do we have to go back up it?''

The guide grins. ``It's the only way out,'' she says.

At Mercer Caverns, there are wild crystalline formations and 10 rooms to visit that rise a total of 16 stories from deep underground - it takes 208 stairs to get down, 232 stairs to get back. (If you think that's bad, consider the early days just after Walter J. Mercer discovered the cave in 1885. For 50 cents, you could take a five-hour tour, descending into the cave on a rope and carrying your own candle - in your teeth).

It's a fascinating place. Tree roots are visible through the ceiling, the flowstone takes on a variety of patterns (``Now, I'm going to show you the face of the blue witch,'' says our guide, Sue, shining her torch on what does indeed look like a witch), there's a 7-1/2-foot stalagmite that's about 200,000 years old, and there's an American Indian burial ground in here.

And where else can you spy a buffalo, whale, chicken, carrots and a grasshopper hanging on a wall?

FoMr information about Moaning Cavern, call [phone]; for information on Mercer Caverns, call [phone].

CAPTION(S):

3 Photos, 2 Boxes, Map

Photo:(1-2--Color) At left, the buildings and machinery of the Empire Mine in Grass Valley are quiet these days, but in its 105-year history, the mine yielded 6 million ounces of gold. Above, the handsome Victorian courthouse still stands tall in Auburn, which, with 11,000 residents, is queen of the Mother Lode cities.

(3--Color) Typical Miwok tepee-shaped summer houses are just some of the attractions of Chaw'se Indian Grinding Rock State Historic Park.

Box: (1) On Location (See text)

(2) Outtakes (See text)

Map: On Highway 49 in California's Gold Country

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