Angels Camp, CA

Angels Camp sits at about 1,400 feet where Highway 4 drops out of the pines and meets Highway 49, the Gold Country's spine. It is the town you pass through on the way to and from the cabins, and the one where you will find the supermarket, the hardware store, the petrol and most of the restaurants that stay open on a Tuesday in February.

It is also a genuine Gold Rush town rather than a reproduction of one. The brick storefronts on Main Street are the originals, the hills behind are honeycombed with old workings, and the Mark Twain connection — the jumping frog story he heard in a bar here — is the thing the town has cheerfully built an identity on for a century.

The walkable heart is a few blocks long: antique shops, a couple of good bakeries, brick facades with iron shutters, and brass frogs set into the pavement commemorating past jumping champions. It takes half an hour to walk and an afternoon to do properly if you like poking through shops.

The Angels Camp Museum, at the north end of town, is better than its modest frontage suggests — a yard full of wagons, stamp-mill machinery and mining hardware, with a carriage house that surprises people. Hours are seasonal and it closes some weekdays in winter, so check before you plan around it.

Every May the fairgrounds south of town host the county fair and the frog jump, which is exactly as unusual and as fun as it sounds: rodeo, livestock, funnel cake, a destruction derby, and people coaching frogs down a jumping stage in front of a full grandstand. It is the biggest weekend of the year in this county.

It also fills every bed for thirty miles. If you want to be here for it, book early and expect traffic on Highway 49 and Highway 4. Dates and tickets are published by the fair each year — check them rather than assuming a weekend.