Placerville
— — the town that outlived the rush.
Not only on a wall.
“Placerville sits on US Highway 50 in the Sierra foothills, the seat of El Dorado County and the geographic centre of Mother Lode country. The first settlement here was called Dry Diggings in the summer of 1848. By early 1849 it was Hangtown, after a stretch of vigilante justice on the oak at Main and Coloma. The town was renamed Placerville in 1854, as the placer gold worked from the streambeds began to play out. The Bell Tower at Main and Bedford has stood since 1865, the original fire alarm of the new town. Sutter's Mill at Coloma — where James Marshall found gold in January 1848 — is eight miles north along the South Fork of the American.
Placerville, 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.
Placerville is in the Sierra Nevada foothills of California, on US Highway 50 about forty-five miles east of Sacramento and roughly ninety miles west of South Lake Tahoe. It is the seat of El Dorado County. The town sits at about 1,870 feet, just above the western edge of the gold country. Coloma — where James Marshall found gold at Sutter's Mill on 24 January 1848 — is eight miles north along the South Fork of the American River. Placerville's historic district runs along Main Street under the bell at Bedford Avenue, where the 1865 fire-alarm bell tower has marked the centre of town for more than a century and a half.
The first settlement here was called Dry Diggings in the summer of 1848, when miners worked the local ravines after the discovery at Coloma. The name changed to Hangtown in early 1849, after a stretch of vigilante justice that included the hanging of three men on the oak at Main and Coloma Street in January of that year. The town's incorporation in 1854 came with a final renaming to Placerville, after the placer gold worked from the streambeds. The Bell Tower at Main and Bedford was raised in 1865 as a fire alarm and still stands. Several Gold Rush merchants began their careers here, among them John Studebaker, who built wheelbarrows for miners before returning to Indiana.
The historic district along Main Street is walkable in an afternoon. The Cary House Hotel (1857) anchors the centre and is still in operation; the Fountain & Tallman Soda Works (1852), one of the oldest brick buildings in town, now houses the El Dorado County Historical Museum's downtown branch. Apple Hill, east of Placerville between Camino and Pollock Pines, is a cluster of family orchards open from late August through December — apples and cider doughnuts in early autumn, pumpkin patches and Christmas trees later. Highway 50 climbs from Placerville straight up the divide toward Echo Summit and Lake Tahoe. South Lake Tahoe is about ninety minutes east in summer.