Placerville is one of those places not too far up the road from where I live that I rarely visit, so this episode of Huell Howser’s Road Trip series is a good reminder how much great Gold Rush history is still preserved there. There’s plenty of fascinating stuff to see in this hour-long episode, including a trip to the Gold Bug Mine — which by coincidence I visited for the first time almost exactly a year ago.

Mine docents

Historic record books

Hardware store

Gold Bug Museum, May 2018

Path to the stamp mill, May 2018

Join Huell as he visits Placerville, founded after the highly publicized discovery of gold in 1848 in the tailrace section at Sutter’s Mill in Coloma, only 10 miles away. The resulting migration of thousands of fortune-seekers established Placerville as an important supply center for the surrounding mining camps.

(Click on the linked image below to see the video.)