Gold Country Holds a Rich Vein of Nostalgia With Holiday Celebrations

Nearly 150 years after bustling mining towns sprang up amid the woods of the western Sierra, California’s Mother Lode is enjoying a different sort of excitement--a seasonal, and increasingly celebratory, holiday rush.

Along the length of Highway 49, many historic towns that nearly succumbed to neglect and decay only a generation ago are brimming with Christmas shoppers. And both locals and tourists are rediscovering the small-town feel in the Gold Country.

Whether in Nevada City or Auburn, Angels Camp or Columbia, Grass Valley or Jackson, or many other restored mining towns, visitors can hear the melodies of downtown carolers, breathe the aroma of roasted chestnuts or savor the warmth of hot cider.

But in a region rich with history and mining-era legend, this holiday tradition is relatively new. Many Gold Country towns began hosting annual downtown Christmas parades or old-fashioned street festivals only in the last five to 15 years, after old Main Street revitalization programs took hold.

The seasonal rites are now reaping a holiday bounty for rural-county economies and stirring additional momentum for refurbishing and upgrading historic buildings. And in quaint foothill towns--the antithesis of shopping malls--local publicity machines are churning big time.

“I think people are getting the feeling of the old-fashioned Christmas and remembering the special things here,” said Cathy Whittlesey, the Chamber of Commerce executive manager in Nevada City, where some downtown merchants reap 80% of their annual revenues between Thanksgiving and New Year’s Day.

On each Wednesday evening and Sunday afternoon during the season, Nevada City gussies up for its Victorian Christmas celebration. The town is bathed in the light of old-fashioned gas lanterns. Visitors delight in hay wagon rides. Carolers perform in 1800s costumes.

In nearby Grass Valley, downtown association director Lani Lott boasts that after a 10-year revitalization project, “we’ve built ourselves back up again.” That was evident the day after Thanksgiving--when 7,000 people turned out to patronize restored shops and eateries and revel in the street theater of the town’s annual “Cornish Christmas” celebration.

The colorful festival--a tribute to miners from Cornwall, England, who flocked to Grass Valley during the Gold Rush--is a popular draw for tourists, and also a coming-out party for the locals.

“Not only do you walk the streets and smell the hot cider,” Lott said, “you see old friends you haven’t seen in a long time.”

In similar spirit on a recent Sunday, crowds lined the length of Placerville’s historic Main Street. They cheered as grizzled men in leather chaps drove stagecoaches and teams of horses down the boulevard as high school bands belted out holiday tunes and small children scurried for pieces of candy tossed out during a Christmas parade.

“It’s Main Street, America--the fantasy of Main Street,” said Scott Ingraham, co-owner of Placerville’s Trims & Treasures Christmas store. “Christmas in the Mother Lode is like no place else in the state.”

Ingraham, who has a second store in Jackson and lives in nearby Sutter Creek, has witnessed the holiday resurgence of towns that are now decked out every year in garlands, wreaths and lights.

Up and down the meandering Highway 49, the spirit has caught on.

At Columbia’s 141-year-old City Hotel, a nightly Victorian Christmas Feast--in which guests turn out in 1800s finery--has been sold out for months. “In the last 10 years, our feast just started taking off,” said hotel manager Tom Bender.

In Angels Camp, where wooden angels and red ribbons now decorate the rugged flagstone, wood plank and old brick buildings, downtown merchant Jim Turner recently helped drape garlands above the highway.

During the roaring Gold Rush days, the Calaveras County town boasted 7,000 residents. There are only 3,000 now. But on a recent Saturday, for the sixth year in row, Angels Camp held its Christmas parade and flickered with life in a candlelight procession and tree ceremony.

Turner, owner of a Western-wear store, is delighted that people are coming out.

“Anything you do is a draw for the business community,” he said. “But in my estimation, this is good for the town. It is something that Angels Camp needs.”