Placerville

Placerville is the El Dorado County seat and the biggest town on the northern end of Highway 49. It grew out of a Gold Rush camp known as Hangtown, kept its brick and iron-shuttered Main Street, and became the crossroads where Highway 50 traffic heading for Tahoe meets Gold Country traffic heading north and south.

From Arnold it is about two hours up Highway 49 — the far end of the Gold Country drive, and the natural pairing with Apple Hill in autumn or Coloma any time of year.

The historic core is a few walkable blocks of nineteenth-century brick under the bell tower, with independent bookshops, antique stores, a long-running soda fountain, breweries and more restaurants than a town this size has any right to. The old hardware store on Main has been trading since the Gold Rush and is worth going into whether or not you need anything.

It is a working town rather than a preserved museum street, which is precisely its charm — parking is metered, the pavements are busy on Saturday, and people actually live here.

A mile from Main Street, the town owns a hard-rock gold mine you can walk into. Self-guided audio takes you through the lit tunnel, and there is a working stamp mill and a blacksmith shop on the site, plus picnic ground and short trails in the surrounding oaks.

It is a straightforward, genuinely interesting hour and easily the best value gold-mining stop in the northern Gold Country. Season and opening hours vary — the city publishes current park hours.