Tale of Two Cities

I’ve called many places “home” during my many years here on this big blue marble. Currently, I hang my hat in Placerville, California—a medium-sized town halfway between Sacramento and Lake Tahoe on US 50. Placerville started out as a mining camp during the California Gold Rush, and today it is the county seat of El Dorado County. And it may or may not be where Edgar Allan spent his final years, incognito.

The settlement was originally known as “Hangtown” because of the way justice was meted out from a big oak tree on Main Street. After the town got bigger and more respectable it changed its name to Placerville—a reference to the placer mining (that is, the relatively simple collection of gold from stream beds) which characterized the first years of the Gold Rush.

In addition to its gold mining heritage, Placerville is steeped in transportation history. Spurned by the original transcontinental railroad, Placerville was the eastern terminus of the Placerville and Sacramento Valley Railroad. It also served as a relay station for the Pony Express, and it’s where John Studebaker made his fortune selling wheelbarrows before he went back east to produce automobiles. (See my earlier blog post for more on these last two items.)

So, Placerville is a historic town with a unique and colorful history all its own. And yet about a month ago, my brother-in-law Scott was in Colorado and came across this sign:

Who knew?? It seems there’s a second Placerville about 900 miles to the east. Evidently this eastern upstart was founded on Colorado’s San Miguel River in 1878, about three decades after “my” Placerville.

The two Placervilles presumably take their name from their shared history of placer mining. And yet there are significant differences: California’s Placerville sits at about 1800 feet in the Sierra foothills, while Colorado’s Placerville is perched at 7300 feet in the Rocky Mountains. The California version has a population of about 10,700, while the eastern upstart only has about 3 percent as many souls.

So, what to do with this discovery of Placerville’s doppelganger? Why, plan a Placerville-to-Placerville road trip, of course! And that trip starts tomorrow morning. To spice things up, my route is going to take me through a foreign nation. All will be revealed over the next couple of days. Stay tuned!