Cali49

Let's go see what we can find

Hwy49

The California Gold Country: Highway 49 Revisited. Gold Rush Mining Camps in photo and prose. The Golden Chain Hwy through California's La Veta Madre.

California State Highway 49: The Golden Chain

“In the days of old, in the days of gold, in the days of ‘49”

— Bob Dylan

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.

January 31, 2014

Mountain Quarries Railroad Bridge

January 31, 2014/ Mountain Quarries Railroad Bridge/ Elliot Koeppel

Just downstream from the confluence of the North and Middle Forks of the American River stands the Mountain Quarries Railroad Bridge. Constructed in 1912, it was at that time the longest concrete arch railroad bridge in the world. The bridge was designed by John Buck Leonard and built by the Donaldson & Harrelson Company for the Mountain Quarries Company and the Pacific Portland Cement Company, at a cost of $300,000. It was built to haul limestone from a nearby quarry to Auburn, located 7 miles away. The bridge was in use daily until the Mountain Quarries shut down in 1941. The following year, the railroad track along the entire line was removed for the war effort.

November 08, 2013

James Wilson Marshall

November 08, 2013/ James Wilson Marshall/ Elliot Koeppel

Marshall and his men set out for the millsite that September. Their first task was to build a double cabin to house the millworkers and the Wimmers; Peter, Jennie (the camp cook), and their children. Another cabin was then built for Marshall. Some forty local Indians were hired to excavate the millrace and to build the diversion dam. The more skilled men set to felling trees and whipsawing them into timbers for the mill.

Cali49

Joshua Tree National Park, the California Gold Country, forgotten places in the Mojave Desert. These are a few of my favorite things.