San Andreas, CA

San Andreas is the county seat, which in this part of California means a courthouse, a jail, a few solicitors' offices and not much pretending. It is about 35 minutes from Chalet Bruin and Koda Loft — down Highway 4 to Angels Camp, then fifteen minutes north on Highway 49.

It gets a fraction of the visitors Murphys or Columbia do, which is the appeal. The old town is small, quiet and real: brick buildings that have not been prettied up, hills of dry grass right at the end of the street, and a museum in the old courthouse that is genuinely good.

The 1860s courthouse and jail now house the Calaveras County Historical Museum. The building is the reason to come: you can stand in the courtroom where Charles Boles — Black Bart, the poetry-writing stagecoach robber who held up 28 coaches without ever firing a shot — was tried in 1883, and see the cells behind it.

The museum's collection covers the Miwok, the Gold Rush, and the ranching that came after, and the garden behind the jail is a pleasant place to sit. Opening days are limited and change seasonally — check current hours before you build a day around it.

Main Street is a short, mostly intact run of 19th-century brick and stone. It rewards a slow walk more than a shopping trip: there is a bakery, a few places to eat, and a handful of shops, but this is not a town that has turned itself into a destination.

Behind the street, the hills carry the tailings and diggings of the placer workings that made the place. The pioneer cemetery on the slope above town is worth ten minutes for the view and for how plainly it tells the story of who came here and how young many of them died.