Nevada City California
— the town the gold rush left whole.
Not only on a wall.
“Nevada City sits about an hour northeast of Sacramento, in the Sierra Nevada foothills where gold was found in 1849. The town never quite stopped being itself. Broad Street still climbs past brick storefronts built after the fire of 1856, gas streetlamps still come on at dusk, and the National Hotel has been pouring drinks since the same decade. Deer Creek runs through the gulch below. In December the whole town turns Victorian for a few weekends, families in long coats walking under the gaslights. The hills around hold what is left of the old mines and the south fork of the Yuba. Most days it is quiet.
Nevada City California, on ceramic.
Each tile is finished by hand in our Knoxville studio. Artwork is slowly infused into the ceramic surface under high heat and pressure, and rests beneath a thin glossy finish. The colour lives in the surface, not on top of it.
Pick any four 4-inch tiles — National Parks you've been to, a Smokies set, the four seasons of one place. $ for a set of , cork-backed, ready to live on the table.
Each tile ships in a kraft box, tied with cream ribbon, with a handwritten note from the studio if you'd like to add one.
Three or five different vistas, hung together — a chapter of places you've been, or want to go.
The place, in three passes.
Nevada City sits at about 2,477 feet (755 m) in the Sierra Nevada foothills of California, the seat of Nevada County and one of the best-preserved Gold Rush towns in the United States. The downtown is listed on the National Register of Historic Places as a National Historic Landmark District, with brick storefronts, gas streetlamps, and a working theatre dating to the mid-nineteenth century. The town grew up along Deer Creek in 1849 and 1850 after placer gold was found in the surrounding ravines and at its peak ranked among the largest cities in California. The South Yuba River runs through the canyon to the north, and the older mining town of Grass Valley sits about four miles south along Highway 49.
Most of what stands on Broad Street today was rebuilt in brick after the fire of 1856 swept through the wooden town. The National Hotel, at the corner of Broad and Main, has operated as a hotel since the 1850s and is among the longest continuously running hotels in the American West. The Nevada Theatre two blocks up opened in 1865 and is widely recognised as the oldest existing theatre building in California; Mark Twain lectured there in 1866. Gas streetlamps still come on each evening along Broad Street, a system whose lineage traces back to the 1860s. The brick storefronts now hold bookshops, a cinema, and bars where the floors still tilt with the hillside.
The town's calendar turns on a few well-marked weekends. The Victorian Christmas street fair runs the Sunday afternoons and a Wednesday evening before Christmas, closing Broad Street to traffic and lighting every storefront and gas lamp; the event began in 1968 and pulls visitors from across northern California. Summers in the foothills are hot and dry, often in the high 80s and low 90s; winters are cool, with a few snowfalls a year that briefly whiten the rooftops. The oaks and big-leaf maples along Deer Creek turn in late October and into November, the short window when the canyon glows. Through most of the rest of the year the town stays small and walkable.