Mine, all mine: This tour really pans out

The heat's on to find a cool place for a few hours of summertime relief. A golden opportunity exists less than 50 miles east of Sacramento at Hangtown's Gold Bug Park.

A few minutes' drive north of historic downtown Placerville, Gold Bug lures families with low admission fees ($4 or less), gold-panning possibilities (though you're better off playing the lottery if you want to get rich) and a well-conceived, self-guided audio tour through a mine drift in which temperatures are easily 20 degrees cooler than they are outside. Picnic tables, two-plus miles of pleasant hiking trails and a soothing backcountry ambience also beckon.

Visitors check in at the Hattie Museum, on the second story of a wooden structure whose first floor is a gift shop. After paying, they are given orange hard hats to wear in the mine and the option of spending a dollar more for a 13-stop audio tour. From the rented telephone-like apparatus comes a crusty voice that seems to be the norm for such Old West offerings; here the narrator's dubbed "the Ghost of Gold Bug." His commentary is worth the extra cash.

For one thing, Mr. Ghost will boost or refresh your mining vocabulary. His introduction explains you will be stepping into the "drift" (a tunnel that follows the mineral vein) through an "adit" (a horizontal entrance to a mine, as opposed to a vertical shaft). Ready "ore" not, into the mine you go.

Soon you will spot light-colored stripes of rock above the tunnel path. These mineral veins are where miners struggled to find gold, though for the casual viewer, "fool's gold" is in abundance. That brownish, comparatively worthless rock has been rusted over by water that has seeped through the tunnel's walls.

Mr. Ghost points out that slate is Gold Bug's dominant mineral, one that was not sought by 19th and early 20th century miners, though it can be used to make billiard tables and roofing shingles.

Past a series of archlike formations on the walls that represent how ancient sea beds have been twisted by earthquakes to be more vertical than horizontal, visitors pass through an example of "post and cap" timbering, which in tender spots supports the mine's ceiling. These big beams might reassure claustrophobic visitors.

The audio tour's sixth stop (reflective yellow markers indicate where Mr. Ghost's commentary is to be summoned) explains hard-rock mining. This old-school approach to precious-mineral extraction required two men, one holding a drill (which miners called a "steel") while the other pounded it from behind with a sledge. The resulting yard-long holes (whose diameter approximated a 50-cent piece, Mr. Ghost says) were stuffed with explosives. "Fire in the hole!" scrambling miners would yell.

Holes in which insufficient gunpowder was used, and therefore remained just holes, were referred to as "bootlegs." One such example is a farther down the drift, too dark to see but easy enough to finger just above the tour's No. 8 sign. By this time, visitors' shoe soles will be damp from unavoidable puddles. The situation would be wetter were the tunnel not slanted slightly so that water gravitates down the adit.

At a fork in the drift is a 110-foot air shaft under which a light breeze is detectable. What relief it must have provided for miners who, before the shaft's creation, could work hardly more than 15 or 20 minutes in the foul air, according to Mr. Ghost.

The fork's right tunnel fades off into darkness. "There may be more gold just beyond," the narrator says. "But we can't mine here no more 'cause this is a park and a protected site for all to enjoy." Small-time prospectors used the mine, visitors already had learned, from 1924 until its wartime closing in 1942.

An ore car and wall of drilled explosives holes mark the end of public access to the drift. Visitors turn around and make their way back to the adit, a few hundred feet away.

"Oh say," Mr. Ghost pipes up, grasping for a humorous finale. "Before I go, though, I'm going to answer a question that I bet has been on the tip of your tongue the whole time. And that is, 'Just how much gold did they take out of the mine?' Well, I would say that it was probably enough to keep them in beans and Levi's for a long time."

The mine tour is to be applauded, not just for its cooler temperature and cute audio accompaniment. It has the feel of a subterranean adventure, with the dank air, wet ground, raggedy walls and ceiling low enough to occasionally tap the hard hat of travel writers and other careless types.

Hot summer air can feel strangely refreshing as one steps out of the Gold Bug mine. Then it's time to pan for gold in one of the park's wooden troughs ($2 an hour per pan), rest and replenish at one of the many shaded tables, or go for a hike up above the mine (where the air shaft's top structure can be seen) or over to the Joshua Hendy Stamp Mill.

On Memorial Day, when my wife and I explored the 61.5-acre park, Doris Foster was on duty in the stamp mill. The sparkly-eyed senior, who has volunteered at Gold Bug for three years, explained how gold was extracted from rocks brought to the eight-stamp mill, which was erected in the 1890s to serve the area's many mining operations. (Coloma, where James Marshall discovered gold in 1848, is only a few miles to the north.)

The old stamps, which can be studied from many angles in the modern building that houses the mill, weigh 1,500 pounds apiece and administered 100 blows a minute to the rock, reducing it to the coarseness of flour. From that, a process that involved water and magnetism removed the gold particles from the sludge.

Foster encouraged a group of us to gather around a working scale model of the mill. She turned on the clackety contraption for a few seconds, pointing out that the original mill equipment would have been 100 times louder.

One of the most satisfying aspects of the trail that accesses the stamp mill is the manzanita forest through which hikers descend on their way back to the parking lot. The dark-red-barked plants don't grow very tall, but nevertheless provide welcome shade. Gold Bug's trails are on the tame side, though a few uphill portions are steep enough for hikers to work up an appetite.

My wife and I struck dietary gold a bit later at the Cozmic Cafe in downtown Placerville. The natural-foods eatery is housed in an 1859 building (Pearson's Soda Works) that is on the National Register of Historic Places. We enjoyed the Asian Style Rice Bowl (organic basmatic brown rice, cabbage, carrots and tofu with sesame ginger sauce, all over a bed of fresh spinach; $6.95) and Very Veggie Wrap (with guacamole and basil hummus; $6.25). Cozmic Cafe is at 594 Main St.; (530) 642-8481.

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Hangtown's Gold Bug Park

Location: A mile north of Highway 50; look for signs that will lead you there once you enter Placerville.

Dates: Grounds are open from 8:30 a.m. to 5 p.m. daily, weather permitting, year-round. The mine is open from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. April through October and from noon to 4 p.m. the rest of the year.

Details: Enjoy tours to the historic gold mine. Other attractions include the Joshua Hendy Stamp Mill and Hattie's Museum and Gift Shop. Gold panning is also available. There are more than two miles of hiking trails and picnic areas. Cost: $4 general, $2 for ages 7-16 and free for those 6 and younger. Self-guided audio tours are $1 extra.

Information: (530) 642-5207 or www.goldbugpark.org

About the writer:

• The Bee's Reed Parsell can be reached at (916) 321-1105 or rparsell@sacbee.com.

 

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