Newcastle, California: Gold Country's Orchard Town

Newcastle sits in the Sierra Nevada foothills of Placer County, a place where gold was supposed to make fortunes but fruit ended up defining the town. The community grew in the eighteen fifties during the California Gold Rush, when miners worked the gulches of the lower foothills. But Newcastle's red volcanic soil proved better for orchards than for panning.

By the eighteen seventies fruit packing houses began appearing along the rail line. The Newcastle post office opened in eighteen sixty-four. Chinese laborers who had built the Central Pacific Railroad through the Sierra stayed in the area after the tracks were laid, and many worked in the orchards and packing sheds that made Newcastle one of California's early fruit shipping centers.

The hillside orchards that once shipped by the boxcar load have largely given way to wine grapes and rural homes, but the foothills character of the place remains.