Confidence Hall: Placerville's Gold Rush Firehouse

The Italianate brick building in downtown Placerville that served as the town's firehouse, civic hall, and eventually city hall has a name with a story behind it. In eighteen fifty-seven, the local volunteer fire company raised money to buy a used engine from a Sacramento fire company. When the engine arrived, it bore the name Confidence Engine Number One so deeply engraved in the metal that it could not be removed.

The volunteers decided to adopt the name instead of fight it, and so the Confidence Engine Company was born. They built their hall in eighteen sixty, adding a wooden cupola to dry the leather hoses and a large rear space that hosted county fairs, New Year's balls, concerts, and plays. The company had started out as the Mountaineer Engine Company in eighteen fifty-seven, and an earlier hall was damaged by fire in September of eighteen sixty, so the present building went up that fall.

The building became Placerville City Hall in nineteen oh two and housed the county's first public library starting in nineteen oh six. The building stayed Placerville's city hall until two thousand five. It is a Gold Rush-era building in a town that was once known as Hangtown, and it sits on the National Register of Historic Places.

It joined the National Register on January fourth, nineteen eighty-two. The town was first called Dry Diggin's, and the county seat moved here from Coloma in eighteen fifty-seven.