Columbia is more than a wide spot in the road; it is a warm spot in the heart. For more than any other Gold Country town, Columbia is designed to retain its Gold Rush atmosphere.

Columbia State Historic Park was established in 1945 to preserve and continually recapture the sights, sounds, and smells of the bygone era. Most motorized vehicles are prohibited on its tree-lined, deeply shadowed thoroughfares. Old buildings, called "historic structures" in the park literature, are painstakingly restored, replicated, or maintained in a state of arrested decay. On the 273-acre site, shops, restaurants, and hotels intertwine with the permanent residents of the town. And that is what gives Columbia an additional tang.

Unlike many Gold Rush settlements, Columbia was never completely abandoned. It stayed alive and kept many of its antique edifices intact. That is unique and leads to a particularly satisfying mood. It is a semi-sterile, touristy feeling but it provides the best physical example of a Gold Rush town extant. The reality and the myth combine seamlessly in Columbia. History is not just about the truth, but interpretation as well. What people think about an area or event is often as important as the cold, hard facts.
The cold, hard facts are these. In 1850, D. Thaddeus Hildreth and a gaggle of goldseekers established a camp. They found gold and other miners soon arrived. Within days, Hildreth's Diggins had a population exceeding one thousand. Eventually more than 6000 would pull into the narrow dirt streets. The mining camp was briefly renamed American Camp, and then permanently became Columbia. Gold totaling more than $500 million in today's money would be mined in the "Gem of the Southern Mines."

Slowly, as the placer and hydraulic mining expanded, the shantytown blossomed with wooden structures and a haphazard street plat. By 1852, more than 150 stores, shops, saloons, and schools had arisen. In 1854, many collapsed in the wake of a disastrous fire. Like the phoenix, Columbia reemerged from the ashes. Locally produced red brick, a tangible reminder of the Gold Country's red dirt, replaced wood. Thirty buildings were constructed of this solid material. Iron doors, metal window shutters, and brick roofs were added as fire protection. Water pipes for firefighting and domestic use were provided -- some of the original pipes were utilized until 1950. Colorfully adorned fire engines and handpumpers became welcome and practical augmentations. A volunteer firefighter brigade was formed -- Columbians loved to join, as attested to by the elaborate Masonic Lodge and a branch of the Sons of Temperance.

By 1860, the placers began to give out. Columbia declined. In the decades that followed buildings were razed and the vacated lots were mined. The gravel and the population depleted. By the turn of the 20th century less than 500 residents remained.

But Columbia did not die, it hung on and on. Years passed and Columbia slept. Its antique buildings became seedier and dangerous, but nothing else changed very much. Columbia waited.

In 1945, the California State Legislature recognized the special opportunity to preserve and resurrect an authentic Gold Rush village. With an appropriation of $50,000, the Columbia State Historic Park was born. It was a healthy birth, and a very happy occasion.

The first building looms as you leave the parking lot. It is the Fallon House Hotel and Theater. Originally constructed in 1857, the theater provided performances by traveling theatrical troupes and lecturers to the entertainment starved miners. It still offers amusement with regularly scheduled plays. As I walked by, I could hear the melodious strains of a rehearsal for the musical "Seven Brides for Seven Brothers." Next door the Columbia Gazette newspaper office stands. The original office was built in 1855; the present-day structure is a precise replica. An operating newspaper and a vintage hand press spread glad tidings ... hopefully. A neighboring lot holds a replica of the multistory and misspelled Eagle Cotage, which once housed a hundred miners. A few more steps leads to the most photographed building in Columbia -- perhaps in the Gold Country -- the two-story red brick Wells Fargo Office. Erected in 1858 by company agent William Daegner, it was in continual use until 1917. The original scales are on display -- scales so sensitive it is claimed they "could weigh a signature in pencil on a sheet of paper."

The Wells Fargo building guards the entrance to Main Street -- a classic Gold Rush vista. So classic in fact that the street was a venue for the movie "High Noon," and television shows such as "Little House on the Prairie." Simply cover the asphalt street with dirt, and another era pops to life. A leisurely stroll passes by the D.O. Mills Bank Building (1854); the Brady Building (1899); the Cheap Cash Store (1854); an old-fashioned barbershop (1865); and the New York Dry Goods Building (1855). A functioning blacksmith shop belches steam and agreeable hisses. The Jack Douglass Saloon (1857) offers sarsaparilla and adult soda pop. Firehouse No. 1 passes by on your right. The gaudily decorated two-cylinder fire engine Papeete rests inside. This handpumper is named for where it was originally delivered upon its construction … Tahiti.

A typical miner's cottage, the Franco Cabin, stands across the shaded street. This roughhewn wooden abode has a water ditch alongside, one of many that once crisscrossed Columbia. A little chicken coop is behind the cabin. Its numerous tenants are constantly squawking and fussing. These unusual birds are blanketed with a rainbow of mottled feathers. They are Booted Bantam chickens known as "Mille Fleur," or "A Thousand Flowers."

Additional exhibits are sprinkled through town with helpful interpretive information -- an ancient drug store, an old dentist's office with dental torture instruments on display, and an historic courtroom that is still used on occasion. Most interesting is an artifact-laden Chinese Herb Shop with a vivid public-address presentation in both English and Chinese.

At the end of Main Street is the St. Charles Saloon, with its droopy-shingled awning crawling around its red brick exterior. In use since the 1850s, this suds emporium was the location of an 1853 murder of the town leader John Parrott by a recent immigrant named Peter Nicholas. Nicholas stabbed Parrott in a brawl. There were fevered rumblings of lynching, but since Parrott was not quite dead, Nicholas was delivered to the gendarmes instead.