Hangtown

In the summer of eighteen forty-nine, a mining camp on the western slope of the Sierra Nevada acquired a nickname, and the nickname stuck for decades. The camp was called Hangtown. Placerville came later, the civic name, the respectable one. But for a generation, it was Hangtown, and it was called that for a reason.

Three men were hanged here in eighteen forty-nine by a mob of miners, without arrest, without trial, without legal authority of any kind. All three were accused in a single attempted robbery of a local gambler. The accusation was enough. The miners assembled, heard the charges, voted, and hanged the men the same day.

The term lynch law had been in use in America for decades by then. What happened at Placerville was not unusual for the mining camps of the rush, where the nearest court was a hundred miles away and the nearest judge might not exist at all. But the Placerville hangings were nationally reported. Newspapers in New York and Boston covered them. The camp wore the name Hangtown afterward as something between a badge of frontier justice and a warning to any man who might think about stealing another man's gold.

What the Hangtown Fry has to do with any of this is a matter of Gold Rush legend. The dish, an oyster-and-egg scramble, was supposedly ordered in eighteen forty-nine by a newly rich miner who wanted to prove he could afford the most expensive ingredients available in camp. It is real and it is still served in Placerville today. But the recipe has a way of overshadowing what the name Hangtown actually referred to.

There was no due process here in the summer of eighteen forty-nine. There was only a rope and a majority vote. The dish is on the menu at several local restaurants. The history is less advertised.