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GOLD COUNTRY The land of the "Mother Lode," where California's dreams took root SACRAMENTO capitol dome, left. by JOHN FLINN TOP CITIES Sacramento, Sonora, Placerville, Auburn, Downieville, Sutter Creek, Nevada City, Jackson, Columbia, Murphys, Jamestown, Angels Camp INTERNATIONAL GATEWAY Sacramento International Airport (SMF), 13 miles (21 km) from the city center TOURISM WEBSITES discovergold.org glittering.com POPULATION 650,000 164 2013 travel guid e to c al i fo r n ia SOMETHING CAUGHT THE eye of carpenter James W. Marshall as he tended to a sawmill in the Sierra Nevada foothills. Something glittering. The gold nugget that Marshall pulled out in January 1848 altered the history of not just the American West, but the entire world. Marshall's discovery set off a gold rush that the following year drew more than 300,000 would-be prospectors from the eastern U.S., South America, Europe, even China. They were known as the 49ers. Overnight the Gold Rush transformed San Francisco from a sleepy hamlet to a bustling city and persuaded Congress to put California—wrested from Mexico by war two years earlier—on the fast track to statehood. Most of the gold was found in a 300-mile belt that extended through the Sierra foothills, from Downieville in the north to Coarsegold in the south. Miners called it "the Mother Lode." In a state working tirelessly to invent the future, the Gold Country remains the most visible manifestation of its not-so-distant past, with towns sporting wood-plank sidewalks, swinging saloon doors, hitching posts and red-brick buildings. (You'll quickly discover that the best preserved of these belonged to Wells Fargo and, curiously, the Independent Order of Odd Fellows.) Today you can still pan for gold—it's often said there's more left in the ground than the original 49ers ever took out—but you can also raft some of California's frothiest rivers, explore caverns and sample Chardonnay and