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ANGELS CAMP
Gold Rush, Wine Country and Mark Twain's Jumping Frog
In
the rush to find gold in “them thar hills” of 1849, miners
looking for the precious metal would move from camp to camp between the
rivers of the Sierra Nevada foothills, now referred to as “gold
country”. The gold had flushed down the rivers for eons of time
and the flakes and nuggets which first excited the rush to riches were
easily found in the rivers and along the banks. But the easy placer pickings
soon were gone and miners had to dig deeper in the
ground. The gold rush towns that remain today were the result of hard
rock digging and hydraulics.
Angels
Camp was the largest mining camp on the northern slope of the Calaveras
County side of Stanislaus River, where once
the flakes of real gold and
more often
pyrite “fool’s gold” would sparkle in the dark sand
of the river bottom, is mostly flooded now under the upper lake fingers
of New Melones reservoir. Angels Camp was first just a trading post set
up by Henry Angel, but underground mining called "pocket mining" flourished
in
Angels
Camp long
after others had folded tents and moved on. Today
the earth underneath Angels
Camp
is
still honeycombed
by mine tunnels and the water which supplied the miners still comes to
town through a wooden water flume cut through the high Sierra but the
Utica Water Company. Angels Camp is a unique gold rush era
stopover for the nearby lakes 
and
rivers and the crossroads of Highway 49 and Highway 4 which heads
up to Murphys and the Calaveras
Wine growing area (See Calaveras
Wine Tasting,
the Kautz Ironstone Winery entertainment center (See Ironstone
Vineyards)
and Calaveras Big Trees Park where the giant redwoods stand. Other unique
gold rush era town sites, Columbia State Park (see Columbia
Travel Gem of the Gold Rush)
and Jamestown (see Railtown
1897) are within 30 minutes
drive.
Find the best hotel
deals in Angels
Camp
Mark Twain’s Jumping Frog
Mark
Twain, famed author of the tales of “Tom Sawyer” and “Huckleberry
Fynn” first came to literary fame from his first published humor
fiction story “The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County”.
He first heard the story from a half-drunken miner friend in a saloon
in Angels Camp on cold December in 1864. Twain had been writing for a
newspaper in Virginia City, Nevada and during a trek across the Sierras
during
the
winter of
1864-65
shared a cabin on what was called “Jackass
Hill” a
stop for mule trains carrying supplies to miners in the hills of the
Mother Lode, located a few miles from Angels Camp. Twain, then still
using his real name Sam Clemens, didn’t stay long in the cold damp
mountain winter and headed on to San Francisco where
he continued as
a newspaper columnist until his friend
Bret Harte
encouraged him to publish the jumping frog story he would constantly
tell to social companions after a few drinks and cigars. Clemens
published the story under his new moniker Mark Twain and soon left the
newspaper business behind, traveling through Europe with his books and
speaking tours.
Twain left , but the frog legend stayed with Angels Camp which is now home to the Jumping Frog Jubilee held at the Calaveras County Fair the third week of May every year attracting 40,000 frog watchers. The current jump record of 21 feet ¾ inches has stood for over 20 years. The main street of Angles Camp is the 49er Highway straddled by the iron shuttered gold rush buildings which remain, along with a statue of the towns most famous though brief resident in Utica Park at the end of Main Street.
A
few miles between Angels Camp and the bridge which spans the Stanislaus
River and New Melones Lake a 
sign
points to a narrow windy short road to the top of a hill where among
the golden grass and green oaks, one
can find the cabin where Mark Twain spent his summer. The cabin on the
spot is for most part a reconstructed replica with some boards and chimney
stones left from the original, and few of the jackasses still watching
over it. © Bargain
Travel West
Web Info
Calaveras
County
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