Site Visit: November 9, 2019Have you ever had a really great day? Everything seems to go just right. People are nicer. The food tastes better. The weather is ideal. Well, the day I made this visit was that type of day. I like any day I get to drive through the Gold Country, but this was better than most. I headed first for the Calaveras County Fairgrounds (where they annually hold the best named county fair, Calaveras County Fair & Jumping Frog Jubilee!) to see my son complete in the high school cross country sectional finals. While the day didn't go too well for him that morning, after a really nice deli lunch I was left with all afternoon to track down old buildings, including the Angels Hotel, Angels Camp, Calaveras County. This building is fortunate. It has an owner who is continuing to care for it. During my visit, the building was in the middle of having a new façade added to it. It seems that only a few years of neglect, deferred maintenance, or even mild disinterest is the death knell to these buildings. Once they start to deteriorate, it's so hard to reverse the process by doing the needed repairs and maintenance, while keeping their historic character. By selecting to write about this building, I believe am required to inform you that during a visit to the hotel in the 1860s, Mark Twain he first heard the story that he would go onto write as "The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County. Needless to say, the building is old. Starting as a simple wooden structure erected in 1851, by 1857 it was re-constructed as a two story building which is partially obscured in the center of this 1857 bird's eye view drawing of Angels Camp. I think this is the oldest image I have found of one of the buildings from the 1848 Building Structures Survey. In the 1850s, the building was known as Lake's Hotel. C.C. Lake though wasn't completely sold on the idea of running a waystation. In 1855, prior to re-building as a stone structure, he put the operation up for sale and planned to leave the state. I guess he couldn't find any suitors for "so desirable a property", because a year later he hosted the New Year's Ball, which celebrated the opening of "his new Stone Hotel". The day was amazing but it wasn't perfect. Trying to get a clear view of a building when shooting across Highway 49 was a real challenge. Check out all these people who had no idea that they were going to end up on the internet when they got in their cars that day.
1 Comment
Sebastian Nelson
8/23/2021 06:42:53 pm
I wonder what C.C. in C.C. Lake stands for?
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AuthorMy name is Jeff and I am on a hunt to find historic brick and stone structures along Highway 49. Archives
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