CALIFORNIA GOLD RUSH TOWNS: Ione

Ione...formerly Bedbug or Freeze Out...is another of those Gold Rush era towns that didn't dig for gold. The city existed to be a supply and transportation center for those other towns up the hill that did the mining. It's gold came from the pockets of those miners buying supplies at precious prices from the town's merchants.

Founded on the banks of Sutter Creek down the hill from the city of Sutter Creek, the modern town of Ione got its name in 1848 and its configuration in 1853 when Thomas Rickey subdivided his land into lots around the creek.

After a few fires, the original wooden buildings were reconstructed with brick, which conveniently was mined and fired right here in town. One of the products that the town supplied was the eponymous Ione brick which rebuilt many a burned-out Gold Rush town.

While the city didn't engage in large-scale gold mining, other minerals were abundantly mined here. Copper, coal, sand, clay, aggreagates, and silica provided a big boost to the local economy. In fact, the only real large scale mining done in Amador County today is in Ione.

Cattle ranching took hold in the area and thousands of head still graze in the hills and ranches around town.

In the late 1800's, the city embarked on a new industry, corrections. A large reform school was built here in 1894 on 230 acres. The school, envisioned to be a place of reform for errant boys, would take the juvenile offenders from state prisons and teach them new careers to steer them from a life of crime.

Proposed by State Senator Edward Preston, the new school was named after him...the Preston School of Industry. 

A massive, gothic redstone building was built on top of the hill with supporting structures and houses for the staff below. This imposing structure was nicknamed "Preston Castle." 

Abandoned in 1960, it sat deteriorating for several years until a foundation created to preserve it was formed. They bought the castle and a few acres around it.

The foundation now gives tours on Saturdays during spring and summer. Reservations are required and can be booked online at Prestoncastle.org.

While not a gold mining town, Ione has a classic Gold Rush era downtown with several buildings dating back to the 1850's. Daniel Stewart built what is considered the oldest building in town for his general store in 1854. It now houses Salon Envy across the street from the Native Sons of the Golden West hall and the IOOF which both date from the same time.

A quick walk down the three blocks of Main Street yield more nuggets of history. It's also nice that Ione is the most wheelchair friendly downtown we've found in California's Gold Country.

The old Commercial Hotel, built in 1964, is now the City Hall. Still serving as a hotel, the Ione Hotel (no accessible rooms) has been in business since the 1850s but the current building dates to 1910. Another fire almost destroyed it in 1988 but it has been fully restored with a nice restaurant on the first floor (ask to see the haunted well that still exists in the middle of the dining room).

The old 1850s flour mill now serves as a charter school at the west end of Main Street. The original cabin from the 1840s has been expanded into a building shared by a real estate office and hair salon. You can still make out the diagonal swinging doors on the old saloon on the corner of Buena Vista Street but it is now a very fine butcher shop. A modern saloon, Tilly's, sits two doors down if you fancy a drink.

The old movie theater now houses another beauty salon and the town's ice cream parlor and candy shop. Another pub, Grumpy Jeff's, rounds out the block on the next corner (check our our Ione Pub Crawl). 

Look behind City Hall and you'll see Iron Ivan, the last steam locomotive of the old Amador Central Railrod. A couple of blocks away sits the old derelict train depot, along with the last locomotive of what was then called Amador Foothills Railroad, an old switching engine, next to the junior high.

That junior high was the original high school of the county with the oldest building dating to 1903. Around the corner, the tall brick spire of the United Methodist Church tops a building that dates back to 1864.

On the hill behind sits the original Catholic Church in the midst of its cemetery. Across the street, the Public Cemetery dates to 1850. Behind that, Howard park...formerly the racetrack of Charles Howard, owner of Seabiscuit...provides ample room for recreation.

The park is also the center of a three-day party and festival held each May called Homecoming.

Ione is not easy to find. It's not on the major highways...49, 88, or 16...of Amador County (you have to detour a few miles off of 88 on 104 or 124) and does not attract the crowds of tourists that other towns in the region do but it is truly an underrated and undiscovered historic gem.

Definitely worth it to spend a day or more on your Gold Country explorations.

Darryl Musick
Copyright 2022 - All Rights Reserved

THE COCKTAIL HOUR: A Hometown Gold Country Pub Crawl

(Please read our Covid 19 Statement first - Ed)  We had some visitors recently and Tim and I had slowly been working on a new pub crawl in Ione, California, so this seemed like a good time to finish it off.

Ione is in the Motherlode region of the state, in Amador County, but has never been a gold mining town. Instead, early settlers of this town (founded in 1848) realized that their path to riches was in selling supplies to the miners instead.

Many parts of the town are supposedly haunted, especially the imposing Preston Castle...a former juvenile detention center looming on a hill over the town...but we're here searching for another kind of spirit.

There are five places to drink in this down...six if you count the Mexican restaurant where you can get beer and wine to to with your food...and we'll be hitting four of them. The fifth is a little over a mile away at the clubhouse of the local golf course. It's a little far, at just over a mile away, for walking. The rest are all in a two block stretch of Main Street.

Our first stop might be a better place to end up but, since they close early at 5pm, we're going there first. Mane Street Tack Shop might seem like an unusual place to start a pub crawl. Heck, it is an unusual spot.

Here, in a store full of saddles, bridles, ropes, boots, chaps, and more equipment for the equine, you'd hardly look for a spot for drinking. Don, the owner, has other ideas, though.

A contractor in addition to tack shop owner, Don took some unused space in the back of the store and built himself a little party space. Through swinging saloon doors, you'll enter what looks like the inside of a covered wagon, with a bar on the right, a few tables to the left, and a TV showing old westerns nonstop in the back.

Instead of bar stools, there are saddles to sit on.  A few feet at the end of the bar has a lowered counter for the wheelchairs.

Luckily for us, Don decided to share his hangout with the world and is open to the public on weekends.

In addition to being yet another Amador County wine tasting counter, you can buy a variety of wines and beers by the glass and hang out with Don while he regales you with modern cowboy stories.

Having whet our whistles, we cross over to the other side of Main Street and head to the town's only functioning hotel, the Ione Hotel.  In the lobby, the Burke Family Restaurant operates a saloon on the other side of the lobby from the dining room.

It's a bit warm as the air conditioner isn't up to completely cooling this space today. We have some wine and cold beer while Jerry Lewis, a retired Los Angeles Police officer plays as the bars musical entertainment for the day.

Moving on, we go back across the street to Tilly's Club, the city's dive bar. We love a good dive bar, especially up here in Gold Country, and Tilly's is a fine example. It's a few shots of tequila to go with some pints of 805 ale while we also load up on the free popcorn.

Gypsy, a friendly pit bull belonging to one of the other bar flies, comes over to hang out with us.

We're finishing up at the Ione Public House. Actually, it's the coffee corner which has become the temporary home of the pub while the actual pub is renovated and a brewery is added. Brothers Jeff and Mike Bligh also own this coffee house, along with the pub, so they've built a bar here and moved the taps for the duration.

It doesn't quite have the character of the pub but the beer's still cold and you have the added benefit of having pastries from the coffee shop available (pic at top of post).

It's been a fun crawl and now we have to crawl back home where we'll spend the rest of the evening sitting on the porch talking shit about each other...literally (you had to have been there). Fun times.

Darryl Musick
Copyright 2019 - All Rights Reserved

House Hunters: Motherlode - Part 3

On our post-Christmas house hunting trip to Amador County, California, we've seen four houses. A dreary cookie cutter house in Jackson and three houses in Sutter Creek, including the one my wife was now anxious to buy.

We had two more houses to look at on this day and we were heading down the hill 11 miles to the little town of Ione to meet Tammy, our agent, at a house in downtown Ione.

We had driven by this house before and I'd researched it quite heavily online. Superficially a beautiful home but I'd found some issues with it that had me leery of it.

This 4 bedroom, 2 bathroom, 1780 square foot home on an almost 8000 square foot lot looked stunning, inside and out BUT...there was an apartment building directly behind it. Most of the driveway was turned into a landscaped patio.  Nicely landscaped, but still taking away from a parking area.

There was a large area behind the house that would be big enough for an RV and boat but, because the patio had been placed in the way, I could find no way to access it without rebuilding that patio.

Still, it was a gorgeous house and it was on the way to a new housing development the agent wanted to show us so we decided to give it a closer look.

Since there were six steps to get in, Tim stayed in the van while we went in to look.

Immediately, when we walked into the front door, my wife's jaw dropped. A gorgeous living room with 10 foot ceilings and wide doorways to the dining room and bedrooms spread out before us. One of the four bedrooms had been turned into an office in the front of the house. Two bedrooms were just off a bathroom that could work for Tim with a little modification, with doors he could drive his chair through.

The biggest surprise was in the back, however. A 400 square foot master bedroom with a master bathroom including an antique, clawfoot tub.

It was indeed quite a stunning house but I still had my reservations.

"There's a large parking area in the back but I don't know how you use it," I told the agent.

She showed me a hidden entry around the corner on the side street with a gate that opened, giving us access.

"What about that apartment building?"

"I know the owner, he's very picky about who lives there. There's never been a problem."

The tiny driveway out front was negated when I found the side entrance.

We would need to build a ramp for Tim before he could even set foot in the place but the 43 inch height of the porch was not too high to overcome.

Forget the house in Sutter Creek, Letty had found her Nirvana.

Still, we had one more to check out...brand new houses still being constructed that could be customized to our needs before moving in. Heck, this house was a year shy of being a century old.

Outside of town, across from a state prison, is Castle Oaks...a new housing development built around the town's  golf course. Tammy took us to the model homes.

With floor plans ranging from 1600 to 2100 square feet, 3 to 4 bedrooms, 2 to 3 bathrooms, and sitting on small 4-5,000 square foot lots with backyards facing the course, these homes could indeed be customized with accessible bathrooms and other features for special needs but still seemed a bit tight in the hallways and doors.

Not to mention that it looked like any other generic, suburban development with cookie-cutter houses jammed in very close together.

While Letty was off looking into another room in the house, I saw the writing on the wall.

"Tammy, as nice as these are, I think I know which one we're going to want," I told our agent.

"The house downtown? Great, are you ready to put in an offer?"

When Letty came back in, the answer was an enthusiastic yes.

The century old house in downtown Ione was listed for $400,000. We offered $380,000.

"I'll put the offer together and give you a call later when the seller's respond," Tammy said.

We set off back towards Rancho Cordova while our agent went to work.

About halfway to the hotel, my phone rang.

"The sellers have countered. All the conditions are fine but they want $389,000"

"OK, I'm driving back to the hotel with my wife and Tim. Let me talk it over with them and I'll call you when we get there."

After hanging up, my wife said "take it!"

When we got to the hotel, I called her up, accepted the terms, and was told I need to get $4,000 to the escrow office the next day to seal the deal and to sign the contract.

That would be an adventure in itself. More on that, next time.

Darryl Musick
Copyright 2019 - All Rights Reserved

Nibbling Around the Edges of the San Jaoquin

Thursday night in Lodi is market night. We didn't know that. Without that knowledge, it's hard to find a place to park.

Eventually we do, finding a spot in a parking structure near the train station. This only leaves us three blocks from our dinner destination, the Lodi Beer Company.

Watch the Video!

It is more of a slog than we imagined, just trying to get through the throngs of people only to find a large crowd outside of the restaurant but, what the hell, I'll give it a shot.

It turns out that the people waiting are waiting for an outdoor table. We don't mind eating indoors so we are immediately seated.

A brew each, a burger for me, and the mac 'n cheese Letty's been dying to eat again since our last trip a few years ago for her and Tim.  They pronounce it good but the portion is a little smaller than before and it's just not quite as exquisite as it once was.

Back up to the foothills for another quiet night by the pool, drinking a bottle of wine with a view of the vineyards it came from.

In the morning, we head home via Ione, another historic town.  Letty and I had spent a lovely weekend getaway here years ago at a B and B called the Heirloom Inn. Today, it's strictly a wedding venue and the only lodging option here is the historic (read inaccessible) Hotel Ione.

The Ione Café, across the creek from the old Heirloom Inn, will take care of us this morning with a heaping pile of pancakes, bacon, and eggs.

Afterward, we amble through the sleepy downtown while dozens of cops and their supporters run through the town on a fun run.  They've run from a nearby prison about 5 miles away. They stop here for a water and chat break at the Pizza Factory here before heading back.

Piling back in the van, we make one last stop in the nearby town of Lockeford and buy some of their amazing sausage.

It's so good, I even wait in line on the sidewalk over an hour to get some.

All's well in the end, though, now I have an ice chest full of a year's worth of sausage to take home.

Darryl
Copyright 2016 - Darryl Musick
All Rights Reserved

CLASSIC TRIP - Amador County and Gold Country, California 1998 - Part 2

For those of you who are tired of all the "Napa Valley" theatrics of the wineries...i.e. overcharging for tasting, castles, gondolas, etc...California offers many other wine countries.  From the almost completely unknown Cucamonga Valley by L.A., Temecula even farther south, Monterey, Mendocino, Lodi and more.  My favorite of them all is little Amador County, about halfway between Lake Tahoe and Sacramento.  Still mainly undiscovered, this is California's oldest continuing wine producing area.  It's unpretentious, has great wine (especially reds like Zinfandel), and you can still find free and cheap tastes there.  We go there as often as we can...we were there last in June of '09.

Here's part 2 of our Amador Country trip from 1998 where we go from possibly the most historic site in California (part 1) and delve deeper into the wineries and tasting rooms of the region...

After a few hours in Coloma, we start to head south on highway 49 towards our lodging in Ione. Along the way, we decide to have lunch in Plymouth-one of the many Gold Rush era towns dotting the hills here. Driving down Plymouth’s small main street we do not see a single restaurant though we do see many saloons. Back out on the edge of town is Marlene & Greg’s Diner which serves a very nice and reasonable lunch.

Still with a couple of hours to kill before check-in time at the Heirloom, we head over to our main weekend destination, the Shanandoah Valley just outside of Plymouth. This is California’s oldest wine region. There are still vines growing-and producing-in this area that date back over 125 years.

Picture courtesy of Wikimedia and Steve Howe at www.cheers2wine.com

Under CC-BY license

There are over a dozen wineries here so we just hit a few today with plans to return tomorrow. First is the Montevina Winery, recommended by our local wine merchant. In the modern mission-style tasting room we try several good wines. Our favorites are the superb refosco (which is my number one pick of the entire weekend) and the sangiovese.

Next, we head over the Shanandoah Vineyards. Shanandoah is owned by the oldest winery in the state, the nearby Sobon Estate. The wines here are okay, but I guess being the oldest is not necessarily the best. Nothing to knock your socks off here.

We finish off this afternoon’s tasting at Renwood Winery. Several wines here really, really blew us away. The barbera was like drinking velvet, but at $35 was a bit out of reach today. Their old-growth zinfandel was superb and a drink of living history made from vines that were alive with the 49'ers. The sangiovese bested even Atlas Peak’s stunning entry. We take a couple of bottles of the sangiovese and some delicious muscat for later and head over to Ione to check-in to our room.

Driving into Ione is much like any of the other Gold Rush era towns here except Ione is not a gold town...it’s a brick town. Ione, while contemporary with the other mining towns here such as Sutter Creek, Jackson, and Amador City, was not a gold-harboring site. Rather, it made it’s living making bricks from its abundant clay that the other more famous nearby towns were built out of.

Coming in the first thing you notice is an imposing, castle-like building on the north end of town that dominates the landscape. It turns out that the “castle” is the main administration building of the local juvenile hall.

Today, Ione’s main industries are inmates (the facility has since been closed-ed) and fireworks. The local pyrotechnics factory supplies Disney with it’s spectacular shells that light up the magic kingdom. Due to this, Ione proudly puts on the Sierra’s biggest and brightest fireworks show...for free! Only, the skip the fourth (the company’s biggest business day) and celebrate on the fifth when more of the employees can put on and enjoy the show.

The Heirloom is located at the end of a 1/4 mile drive just off of the main highway through town. Separated from a nearby strip mall and the rest of the town by a barrier of big old trees, it retains a seclusion and tranquility that really help recharge your batteries.

The owners, Millicent and Pat, go out of their way to make you comfortable at the 6 room inn. 4 rooms, including ours, are located on the second floor of the circa 1863 main building and 2 more are located in an adobe walled cottage nearby.

Our room included a fireplace, private bathroom, queen size bed and balcony. After a day of touring & wine tasting we quickly settle for a nap after checking in.

Dinner that evening was at the Palace Hotel and Saloon in nearby Sutter Creek. While looking a little tacky from the outside, we were pleasantly surprised by the quality and value of the food. The service and atmosphere were also top notch. The owners of the inn and other guests were surprised at this because the Palace is kind of considered the “low rent” dining establishment of the area.

Breakfast the next morning, July 4th, was served out in the garden with a quiche, fruit, and a special patriotic shortcake with an America flag sticking out of it. Despite Millicent and Pat’s efforts to include at least two parties at each table, most guests stuck to themselves on this first day, which is too bad because a big part of the B & B experience is to meet new people. The next day would be different though.

Now we had a full day to tour the local wine country. First stop: California’s oldest continuously operating winery...the Sobon Estate.

If you’re a wine lover, you know that California is one of the top wine producers in the world. What most don’t know is that Napa Valley is not where the state’s wine industry started. That honor goes to Amador County and the Sierra Foothill area known as the Shanandoah Valley.

To see where it all started, I recommend that all wine lovers make the pilgrimage to the humble little cellar...dating back to before the Civil War...here at the Sobon Estate. The estate has a historical museum...admission free...with artifacts of 19th century life and wine making. The museums goes through 5 areas, each one a little older, until you end up in the original wine cellar dug into the hill those many years ago.

It’s a small room actually, no larger that many living rooms, that is still used by the winery to age the wine in oak barrels. Nothing has changed, except the addition of electric light, in all those years. It’s an awesome sight.

For all that, however, the wines produced by Sobon are rather pedestrian but it is worth it to buy a bottle as a souvenir of California wine history.

Next, we head over to the Deaver Vineyards. The Deavers not only run a winery, but also run the Amador Harvest Bed & Breakfast (on the grounds of the winery) and the Amador Flower Nursery nearby, which is world-renowned for its day lillies.

Being July 4th, there are numerous red, white and blue banners and baloons. Tables and a big barbecue are set up on the grounds. A 2 man band is preparing to play. Is it a private party? We don’t know but a sign out front says the tasting room is open so we head on in.

Mike Deaver, his family, and employees are busy manning the tasting counter. We quickly line up for some samples and taste some fine wine. The Deavers best, however, are their port wines which just tickles the palate and goes down ever so smoothly. Mike then asks us “are you staying for the barbecue?”.

We don’t know, we reply. “It’s free”, he says. Well, in that case...

We feasted on barbecued bratwurst and burgers. Washed down with free sodas and water. To ease our guilty conscience, we buy a bottle of Deaver’s sauvignon blanc to drink with our meal. This was all while we sat on the beautiful green lawn on the banks of their little lake and listening to the surprisingly good music put out by the band...easily the biggest bargain of the weekend.

After lunch, we took a walk around the lake, watching the local birds and getting a close-up look at the vineyards.

After the great lunch break at the Deaver place, we continued over to Story Winery with its tasting room in the ancient miner’s cabin. The wine at Story is good, very good, especially the whites. What really sets them apart from the rest is the view over the Consumnes River canyon from their tasting area. We saw several eagles while relaxing here. Story also has an old growth zinfandel (like many here do) on ancient vines...but with a difference. These vines recieve only rain water, no irrigation. The result is an intensely flavored fruit that passes that excellent quality on to the wine.

That was it for the wine tasting, although there are many other wineries in the area we’ll have to get to next time. For now, it was back to the inn with our trunk load of wine to wind down, relax, and get ready for dinner.

After a nap and a very pleasant stroll along the banks of Sutter creek, we head over for dinner at the nearby, historic Ione Hotel.

Here you can have some very good food served by candle light right off of the old western-style saloon. Service is also excellent here and prices, while not cheap, were still reasonable. We walked around the small downtown area of Ione and then headed back to the inn.

Another restful night, another great breakfast (this time with some other guests to share our table) and then it was time to head back home. That evening they tell us Ione had a great fireworks show, oh well, maybe next time we’ll get to see it.

-Darryl

CLASSIC TRIP - Amador County and Gold Country, California 1998 - Part 1

Please indulge us for another classic trip, a new trip will be up next week.  For now, it's time for another trip in the WayBack Machine.  This time, way back to 1998.  One caveat is that our lodging in this report no longer appears to operate as a bed and breakfast.  It is now just a place to hold weddings and receptions, which is too bad because it was a very nice place to stay.  Kind of like a Tom Sawyer house along the banks of a nice little creek.  Oh well, time marches on...

After driving 300 miles and getting lost on some country back roads, it was amazing looking at this humble little stretch of sand that is the epicenter of California history. For it was here, on a January day 150 years ago that a sawmill manager bent over to pick up a shiny fleck in the outflow of the mill. From that moment on, things were never to be the same in California again.

Our latest getaway was taken over the July 4th weekend. Again, we find ourselves drawn to the Gold Country, this time to the area south of Placerville and east of Sacramento.

In planning this trip, we originally were thinking of seeing the star wine country of the state, Napa Valley. We were soon discouraged over the high lodging prices and the long drive. Looking over the appellations of the wine bottles at our local shop, the name Amador County popped up again and again. A little research into this area showed that it is a great area for wine and travel value so Amador County is was.

We settled on the great little Heirloom Inn in Ione, CA for our lodging. This antebellum style inn, built 135 years ago, sits on the banks of Sutter Creek and provides a secluded, private base to explore all this area has to offer.

As stated above, our first day in the area started with us taking a wrong turn near Placerville and getting lost trying to find Coloma. Unfortunately, our AAA map of California was missing some key roads in the area and was of no use. Knowing that Coloma should be somewhere northwest of Placerville, we stumbled along until we found a sign pointing in the proper direction.

The town of Coloma...really more of a village these days...is a state historic park. Coloma is the spot where James Sutter built his sawmill to process the logs from the nearby mountains. John Marshall was Sutter’s manager at the mill.

On that fateful day in January of 1848, the tailrace of the mill (where the water that powered it flowed through) was clogged with debris. The waterwheel that powered the mill would not turn. Marshall supervised the dynamiting of the tailrace. The blasting was successful and the water again flowed freely.

Marshall then went to inspect the exit of the tailrace to make sure there was no more clogging debris when he noticed something shiny in the water. There, at the spot pictured above, he bent over and picked up the gold nugget that started the California Gold Rush.

150 years later, we find ourselves looking for another kind of gold. We are frantically looking through our car for loose change because of the $5 park admission fee. We have a $20 bill, but the toll booth is unmanned and no one is available to make change. Finally, we find our $5 worth of change and somehow manage to cram it through the narrow slot of the toll booth and park our car.

From the lot it is about 100 yards to the replica of Sutter’s Mill. It’s about another 200 yards from that spot to where the mill was originally located, marked by a monument (the American River has changed course since 1848 and inundated the original site). Next to the replica is a shed containing some original wood from the real mill.

It’s what lies down river that intrigues me even more. First is that spot where the mill was actually located. As you stand on the banks of the river watching the rafters go by, all it takes is the thought that 2 of the most important men in the state’s history stood on this spot. Indeed, they worked and lived here.

Further downstream as you come upon that humble little beach (see the picture up above), again the thought comes into your mind...this is where John Marshall actually bent over and picked up that nugget. My son kids me sometimes about my getting thrilled over history, but it’s the same feeling I get when I’m in Washington, D.C. and standing behind the balcony in Ford’s theater thinking about the assassination that took place right in front of the spot I’m standing in.

Later on we visited the park’s museum and wandered around what’s left of the town...many of the old buildings were torn down as prospectors looked through the ground underneath them for gold. Of interest here is the old jail and the many pits left from those early diggings.

Up the hill is John Marshall’s grave which is marked with a prominent monument pointing down to the discovery site. It’s sad when you learn that he died broke and dejected...only after his death was his place in history noted with this monument.

Just below his grave is his old cabin. Still standing, complete with the outhouse. Adjacent is the old cemetery and an old canal, still carrying water, left over from those gold rush days.

Stay tuned for Part 2...

-Darryl
Copyright 1998 - Darryl Musick
All Rights Reserved