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.

December 04, 2013

John Sutter

December 04, 2013/ John Sutter/ Elliot Koeppel

John Sutter was born on February 15th of 1803 in Kandern, Baden, a few miles from the Swiss border. Apprenticed to a firm of printers and booksellers, Sutter soon found the paper business was not for him. While clerking in a draper’s shop, he met his future wife, Annette Dubeld, and the two were married in Burgdorf on October 24th of 1826. A series of business failures resulted in Sutter’s decision to seek his fortune in America. At the age of thirty-one, he left his wife and four children, a step ahead of his creditors.

Cali49

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