Exploring Amador County - 6/19/2014 | Libi's California Adventure

We kicked off our big summer trip with another visit to Gold Country. One thing that is challenging in being the navigator for these trips is that county lines aren't always cut and dry. Today we were planning to do Amador sites along with a few of the eastern Sacramento county ones. As we drove we noticed a sign for Campo Seco (CHL 257) which happens to be in Calavares County. We were able to use our phone and the CHL book to help navigate us to the site-- so we got one extra for the day!

This was a mining town which has the oldest living cork oak tree in California.

I'm not sure if any of the trees in our photos are the famous tree-- but I'm hoping that one of them was.

This town was said to have forty different nationalities of miners in its heyday.

We are also hoping that these are the iron doors of the ruined Adams Express Building. According to the state they were still on site in 1950-- and we found iron doors here today. Not 100% sure if they are one in the same, but they were really cool to look at.

This site was a ton of fun to photograph-- such rich texture and great shadows.

The barbed wire was also a cool site to behold up close-- it freaked Libi out, but Ron and I took dozens of photos of it!

Our first Amador County site of the day was Lancha Plana or Flat Boat (CHL 30).

In 1850 this location was named Flat Boat after the ferries that crossed the river. The surrounding area was settled to house folks from the hydraulic mining operations in the gravel beds along the Mokelumne River. The entire town was flooded when the river was dammed, so nothing remains today.

In the cute little town of Ione we found several sites. The first was the D. Stewart Co. Store (CHL 788).

Daniel Stewart built this store in 1856-- it was the first building in all of Ione. The store is made of Muletown brick (which was brought over from the nearby town).

This general store was one of the main suppliers to folks heading to the Mother Lode.

This also was our 300th site-- not bad for 8 months of adventuring!

Our next stop in Ione was high on the hill, Preston Castle (CHL 867).

This beautiful Romanesque Revival building was home to the Preston School of Industry-- a rehabilitation school for juvenile offenders.

The castle had 77 rooms, bricks made at San Quentin and Folsom prisons, 256 windows, and was built in 1894. It is supposedly haunted and you can stay overnight there to find out. Personally, I will pass on that experience! Some famous folks were wards of the prison including: Rory Calhoun, Merle Haggard, and tennis player Pancho Gonzales.

Our final stop in Ione was the Community Methodist Church of Ione (CHL 506).

The church was called the Cathedral of the Mother Lode, as it was the first one in the area.

It's cornerstone was laid in 1862 and the structure was completed in 1866. It is also listed on the national registry of historic places.

The next quaint town we stopped in was Sutter Creek (CHL 322). The entire place is listed as a historic site, but they also have one specific site called the Kinght Foundry (CHL 1007) which we visited first.

The foundry was established in 1873 to cater to the needs of the miners in the Mother Lode.

Samuel Knight, the owner of the foundry, created a high speed, cast iron water wheel which powered the foundry Knight Wheels, as his invention was called, were used in the first hydroelectric plants in California, Oregon and Utah according to the state.

This site was the last water-powered foundry and machine shop in California.

It was a really cool site to explore as many of the buildings seem to still be frozen in time.

We heeded all of the keep out signs, but were still able to take a bunch of cool shots of the machinery that was left to rot.

Next we went to City Hall to try to find out if the town had a California state plaque. While the clerk tried to find out, she allowed us into a meeting space to photograph some of the murals of the cities history.

Sadly they don't have a state plaque, but they do have a small private one in front of City Hall.

Sutter Creek was named after John A. Sutter who was the first to mine there in 1848. Around 1851 quartz gold was discovered and the Central Eureka Mine where a great deal of this gold was mined was in operation off and on until 1951. Leland Stanford was one of the most famous people to live in Sutter Creek-- I'm certain we will see him again in our journey.

We loved our time in Sutter Creek. Libi even made some friends in the Visitors Center. We definitely look forward to returning and exploring even more!

Drytown (CHL 31) was next on the voyage. The irony of it all is that the plaque for Drytown is located in front of some sort of a pond. The town wasn't actually "dry"-- at the height of its boom there were 26 saloons in town.

The town was founded in 1848 and is the location where gold was first discovered in Amador County. Many of the original buildings are still located on the main street.

The Plymouth Trading Post (CHL 470) was a neat looking building that was built in 1857.

Several mines in the area combined to form the Plymouth Consolidated group and this building was the office and commissary for the company.

The textures on this building led us to an impromptu photo shoot-- with some cool results!

Oleta also known as Old Fiddletown (CHL 35) was down a road in the middle of nowhere.

The town was settled in 1849 by settlers from Missouri. It was a trading center for the surrounding gold towns. It was named Fiddletown because the river ran dry during the summer, so no gold could be mined. The miners just fiddled during those months leading to the name. A resident disliked being from a town with such a lazy name, so he petitioned to rename the town Oleta after his daughter. It was changed for a short time, but was renamed Fiddletown in 1932.

The directions to find the site point to Dr. Yee's Chinese Herb Shop which was an adobe that was right across the street from the plaque.

There were lots of cool buildings near the plaque to explore.

The town was home to one of the largest Chinese populations in the state in 1860, hence all of the plaques honoring the local folks.

Our next site brought us to a winery, the D'Agostini Winery (CHL 762).

The winery was begun in 1856 by a Swiss immigrant, Adam Uhlinger and is the 3rd oldest winery in the state.

The barrel rooms are now a museum and they contain lots of the original equipment.

They even have some of the original vines that were brought over from Europe for you to see.

Inside the museum there were also some tiny guests-- a whole family of little frogs jumped out at us as we were exploring. We spent the rest of our visit making sure we didn't step on any of these cute guys.

We left Amador County and made our way into Sacramento County. Michigan Bar (CHL 468) was a city where gold was discovered in 1849. The city consisted of folks from Michigan who had settled here.

The town had over 1500 people during its heyday and they had a pottery works that was the largest in the state.

There is nothing left of the town except a plaque placed off the highway.

Our final two sites for the day were located 100 yards apart from each other in Sloughhouse. The first one was the Site of the Grist Mill Built by Jared Dixon Sheldon (CHL 439).

Sheldon built the mill in 1846 on land that we was given by Mexico in 1823.

Dixon also built the Sloughhouse (CHL 575) which was a hotel and stage station between Amador County and Sacramento.

The building was built in 1850, was burned down in 1890, was rebuilt that same year, and it still stands today. We actually had lunch inside the house and the food was fantastic!