Nevada City

Nevada City is a town of about three thousand people in the Sierra Nevada foothills of California, founded in 1849 and once among the richest gold towns in the state, the Queen City of the Northern Mines. Its entire downtown is a National Historic Landmark district: Broad Street's brick and false-front buildings, gas lamps and the oldest theatre in California climb the hill above Deer Creek, and the neighbourhoods above are a catalogue of Victorian houses in the pines. Mining fortunes built it, a 20th-century slump preserved it, and an influx of artists, musicians and back-to-the-landers from the 1960s on gave it its present character.

Broad Street is the sight in itself, with the Nevada Theatre of 1865, where Mark Twain lectured, still hosting films and plays, and the Firehouse No. 1 Museum covering the Gold Rush and the Donner story. Deer Creek runs under the town with a suspension bridge and swimming spots at its edge. The great days out are the South Yuba River, where granite pools and the Bridgeport covered bridge, the longest single-span wooden covered bridge in America, draw swimmers all summer; Empire Mine State Historic Park in Grass Valley, five miles away; and Malakoff Diggins, where hydraulic mining washed away a mountain and left badlands in the pines.

Broad Street and Commercial Street hold a good foothill spread: farm-led restaurants, a famous old saloon in the National Exchange Hotel, bakeries, coffee houses, wine and beer bars, and enough live music between the Nevada Theatre, the Miners Foundry cultural centre and the bars to keep evenings busy in season. The Miners Foundry, a Gold Rush machine-shop turned arts venue, hosts everything from the Wild and Scenic Film Festival to weddings. It is an early, friendly nightlife, more pub than club.

Staying options centre on the restored National Exchange Hotel and small inns on Broad Street, B&Bs in the Victorian neighbourhoods, vacation rentals in the hills, and the Inn Town Campground at the edge of town, with more motels in Grass Valley. Sacramento's airport is an hour southwest. Gold Country Stage buses serve the county's towns, and the historic core is walkable if steep; the river parks, mine and lake country all need a car, and parking on Broad Street is tight on festival weekends.

Spring, when the foothills are green and the dogwoods bloom, and autumn, with colour in the maples and Victorian Christmas in December, are the town's best faces; summer is hot by day but made for the Yuba's pools, with Summer Nights street parties in July. Winter is cool and rainy at 2,500 feet, with snow an occasional guest and Donner Pass skiing forty minutes east, and Victorian Christmas fills the gas-lit streets with carolers and vendors on December evenings. The art deco county courthouse on Church Street and the town's Gold Rush-era churches reward the slow walk uphill from Broad Street. One to two days covers the town itself; it also serves as the characterful base for a Gold Country stay.

On the road, Nevada City sits on Highway 49, the Golden Chain Highway, in the northern Sierra foothills, five miles from Grass Valley, an hour from Sacramento via Interstate 80 and Highway 49, and under an hour from Truckee and Donner Pass east on I-80. It is the northern jewel of the Gold Country run that links Auburn, Placerville and the Mother Lode towns.