Thousands of travelers along Interstate 80 zip past the statue of Claude Chana without knowing the significance of the concrete prospector that is forever panning for gold at the edge of Old Town Auburn.
Chana, a native of France, was staying in Wheatland in 1848 when he heard news of a gold find at a construction site on the South Fork of the American River. He and a few other men set out for the new millworks, blazing a shortcut through a camp known as Wood’s Dry Diggings.
While camped near a ravine, Chana stumbled across gold shimmering in the creek bed. Word of that discovery fueled the fever that enticed men and women from all over the world to leave homes and families behind for a chance to snare their share of the riches.
Chana eventually returned to the outpost in Yuba County, but he left behind the seeds of a city. The canyons, meadows and oak woodlands once occupied by indigenous people suddenly swarmed with trappers, traders and entrepreneurs looking to make their fortunes from selling goods to the novice prospectors.
Within a year of Chana’s strike, a community of crude shacks, tent stores and bark lean-tos spread across the ravine. While miners picked and panned for precious ore along the North Fork of the American River, innkeepers, saloon owners, merchants and tradesmen were opening for business in the ravine.
The rough settlement became the local nucleus for socializing, assaying and purchasing supplies. Hopeful new arrivals crossed paths with disillusioned drifters at the Traveler’s Rest Hotel. Now serving as the Bernhard Museum, the inn was built in 1851 as a waystation along the road to Folsom and Sacramento.
Down the hill, the American Hotel was doubling as the stagecoach ticket office. A post office, Wells Fargo and Company Express station, music hall and brewery kept the building boom buzzing.
To the south, a racetrack offered room for friendly competitions held on Sundays. No females were welcome to attend.
On the bluffs farther southeast, farms and ranches were turning the bald hills into bushy orchards and plush pastures. More formal residences grew up nearer the heart of the emerging city.
With a growing population of Asian miners, the lower section of town became home to a small Chinatown, with a Buddhist church that was later moved to Penryn. There also was a Joss House that served as an educational, social and spiritual center. Now, the Joss House is a museum honoring the contributions of the Chinese to the development of the region.
At the crossroads to mining camps strewn across the western slope of the northern Sierra Nevada, Auburn was perfectly positioned for prosperity. The addition of the Central Pacific Railroad line in 1865 cinched its hold as the hub of the county.
But nothing stays the same forever; especially not in Old Town.
The railroad’s easterly route drew businesses and customers away from lower town and set off a rift that divided the townsfolk’ loyalties and tested their friendships. The upper end of town became the more popular place for new endeavors, and lower town suffered from the blow.
Over the decades, the lower side of town declined. During World War II, when local Japanese residents were forced into detention camps, their businesses were boarded up. Auburn’s oldest environs were looking shabby and neglected.
But in the middle of the 20th century, the district began to shine again as a spirit of renewal smoothed its rough edges.
Today, Old Town Auburn is a colorful palette of restaurants, galleries, boutiques, niche parks and specialty shops sitting at the feet of the stately Historic Placer County Courthouse. The mining relics, elderly edifices, elaborate iron railings, welcoming benches and barrels of perky flowers radiate picturesque charm just up the street from Dr. Kenneth Fox’s sculpture of Claude Chana.
A treat for visitors and a treasure to area residents, Old Town is a place where respect for a bygone era and a penchant for revitalization keep the past and present in perfect synch.