Placerville: Old Hangtown on the Mother Lode

Placerville sits in the Sierra Nevada foothills along US-Fifty, the old Pony Express and Emigrant Trail corridor. It sprang up in eighteen forty-eight when gold was discovered at a nearby ravine, and by eighteen fifty it had thousands of residents and a hanging tree in the center of town that gave it its early nickname: Hangtown. The placer gold that named it played out quickly, but Placerville survived by becoming a supply depot for the deeper hardrock mines and for wagon trains headed over the mountains.

Mark Hopkins and Collis Huntington, two of the four founders of the Central Pacific Railroad, both operated stores here before the bonanza sent them west to Sacramento. Philip Armour, who built the meatpacking empire, worked in Placerville in the early eighteen fifties, digging ditches and sluices for miners. The Gold Bug Mine on the edge of town is still open for tours.