JACKSON — The Gold Rush cities of Jackson and Sonora have a lot to offer the motoring tourist from the Central Valley and beyond.

Jackson’s colorful business owners relish the chance to recite the history of the area to their flatland customers crossing their thresholds.

Antique shops, art galleries, home décor, hand-made pottery, kneading and fiber arts along with American west and Indian Crafts are on sale for the visiting shoppers.  There’s also fine jewelry Celtic imports and new and vintage apparel on display in the array of shops.

One of the most successful towns to come out of the Gold Rush days, Jackson grew out of a renowned and colorful past with its girls, gambling and its underground tunnels that still shroud the secrets of its scandalous past.

Mid-March will bring the Lions Club Dandelion Days Flea Market followed by the Gold Country Car Show in the middle of May.  Amador County Heritage Days are set for next October.

High-spirited shop keepers and innkeepers have kept the historic main street alive and jumping for the new generations of visitors and shoppers searching out the past in the Wild West.

Sonora is only three miles from Jackson at the junction of highways 49 and 108.  St. James Episcopal Church is the most impressive landmark in the old community with its 100-year-old mine shafts snaking beneath the floor of the frame structure.  Built in 1860, it has been noted to be the second oldest Episcopal Church in the state.

The historic city sits in the lush Mother Lode at an altitude of 1,825 feet above sea level drawing thousands of tourists to the once rowdy mining camp.

To the north are the towns of San Andreas, Ione and Mokelumne Hill, as well as the Columbia State Park, are all worthy of curiosity seekers stopping  along the way of a weekend trek.   



— GLENN KAHL
209 staff reporter