Foothills? ghost towns are where the past and present meet

There are few true ghost towns in the foothills, but there are plenty of places where the past meets the present.Hundreds of mining camps sprouted in the lower slopes of the Sierra Nevada as men from all over the world rushed to claim their shares of its riches. Some of the settlements blossomed into cities that still thrive; others bloomed and faded in a few weeks. Many held on as gold fever subsided, only to die out in later years as world wars and economic recessions undermined their industries or fire consumed their structures.There are two state parks in the region that maintain vintage structures and sustain a sense of history: Malakoff Diggin?s in Nevada County and the Marshall Gold Discovery State Historic Park in El Dorado County. Farther away are Bodie and Columbia, two more living ghost towns.Bodie, which sits on the eastern edge of California about 20 miles from Bridgeport, once bustled with more than 10,000 citizens. It?s century-old weathered buildings are maintained in a state of ?arrested decay?, giving it the feel of a place time passed by. The only inhabitants of this high-desert preserve are State Park Rangers and the spectrals of past residents, many buried up on Boot Hill.To the south, in Tuolumne County, the Columbia State Historic Park is a spiffy venue where antiquated buildings hold fresh businesses aimed at tourists. Painted like a pretty lady, this park features stagecoach rides, melodramas performed at the Fallon Theater, family-oriented saloons, candy stands, and souvenir shops.Closer to home, the Marshall park at Coloma is another active ghost town, without the theme-park personality. Straddling Highway 49, it boasts a museum, many renovated buildings, ranger-led tours, self-guided walks and shaded picnic grounds along the South Fork of the American River. The park is the site of many seasonal celebrations with blacksmithing and gold-panning demonstrations by period-clad docents. Malakoff Diggin?s was once a major center of hydraulic mining and still bears the deep scars made from blasting away the hillsides in search of lodes of gold. Trails wend through the gouged canyons, with picnic areas, campgrounds and cabins in the vicinity. A cluster of refurbished structures near the ranger station gives visitors a little taste of the Old West here.The state parks are guardians of these selected sites, but the majority of the region?s ghost towns are unheralded; either vanishing back into the soil or living on as modern versions of their frontier counterparts.In Placer County, most of the first encampments were littered along the banks of the three forks of the American River. Those that survived into the 20th century were washed away when the Folsom Dam was built in the 1960s. Place names within the 18,000-acre Folsom Lake State Recreation Area ? such as Rattlesnake Bar, Dotons Point and Mormon Bar ? commemorate the Gold Rush-era communities that drowned as the reservoir filled. But mining towns were found throughout the foothills, with many spread across the Foresthill Divide. Yankee Jim?s was the earliest settlement in the heavily forested spine of land backing the North and Middle forks of the American River, and the site of the state?s first hydraulic mining operation. It faded into the pages of history when water cannons were banned in 1882 due to environmental concerns. Although a marker still identifies the locale of Yankee Jim?s, the territory is now just a part of Foresthill, the largest modern community on the Divide.Northeast of Foresthill was Michigan Bluff, Deadwood, and Last Chance. About 40 families still live in Michigan Bluff but the other two cities are now just sites near the Western States Trail. Northwest of Foresthill was Iowa Hill and another collection of mining suburbs that disappeared as quickly as the gold did. Illinoistown near Colfax, Elizabethtown and Wisconsin Hill were more villages that prospered then played out within a few years. Damascus and Sunny South were some of the few that managed to hang on into the 1920s, only to be lost in fires.In the hills west of Auburn, Ophir, Gold Hill and Virginia were major mining districts, rich with gold and dependent on the water ditches that helped harvest it. Today, they are precincts of country homes, with sagging barns and rustic ranches decorating their landscapes.Some of the oldest settlements are historic landmarks, such as Dutch Flat, which is one of the few communities to remain relatively untouched by flame. It lives on as a healthy mountain hamlet.There are no empty cities full of abandoned buildings in the foothills. But the ghosts of the pioneers and prospectors that tackled and tamed the western wilderness can be felt and heard in the places where the past and the present cross paths.