If you're visiting the gold country of California's Motherlode, chances are you're going to go to Coloma where the first nugget was found at John Sutter's mill, sparking the Gold Rush. While you're in the neighborhood, you might as well visit Georgetown, another little historic Gold Rush town located less than 10 miles north of Coloma.
Coloma is mostly a state historic park (and well worth spending a day in) but Georgetown is still a regular town which, while the home of a lot of history, is home to regular people like you and me and not such a tourist magnet.
That's not to say it's not worth a visit.
Georgetown was founded by a group of miners headed by George Phipps. It may or may not be named after him, the documentation is fuzzy in that regard.
The original townsite was just south of the current one. After founding in 1849, like most of these towns, a big fire roared through and it was decided that it would be prudent to move the town up the hill to its current location.
One thing you'll notice is that Main Street is wide. Very wide. It was thought that making the main street one hundred feet wide, with sixty foot wide sidestreets, that fires would have a harder time jumping over that divide. It seems to have worked.
A nice, solid vein of gold was located here and over $10 million worth of the metal was pulled out of the mines here during the first twenty years of the Gold Rush. Mining continued here into the 20th century.
Timber was also a big industry here and a tram was built to ferry the lumber across a steep canyon nearby at the turn of the 20th century. After a few of the suspended cages fell into the river below, the tramway was abandoned and trucks were used instead.
Visiting today, you'll find a nice, tidy town with a two block long Main Street. At one end of the downtown is the historic former American Hotel, originally built in 1863 and burned by a few fires, the current building dates to 1899. It is now the American River Inn Bed and Breakfast.
Almost like a bookend at the other end of the street, the Georgetown Hotel and Saloon (established in 1856, the current building was built in 1896) has a nice wheelchair accessible saloon with better than average food.
It's a great place to have lunch and whet your whistle and a lot friendlier than the dive bar at the other end of town.
Across the street is a cafe that is not wheelchair accessible next to a gift shop in a Civil War armory that is.
We also walked around the corner to the large, Gold Rush era cemetery and explored the tombstones.
Unfortunately, we could not find any accessible accomodations in town but you can find them in nearby Auburn or Placerville.
A couple of boutiques and the town's general store and deli round out the offerings. It's a nice place to visit for a few hours when you in the vicinity of Coloma's gold discovery site.
Darryl Musick
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