Highway 49 is the fabled highway that cuts through California’s Gold Country. 

Highway 49, often referred to as the “Golden Chain,” slices through eleven counties; dozens of hamlets, villages, and towns; hundreds of acres of open space; and thousands of years of history.  As the red-tailed hawk soars the highway covers about 240 miles, but the road itself snakes along roughly 325 miles of mostly two-lane asphalt.

The highway provides the spine of the Gold Country, a wondrous land populated by the unusual and the breathtaking.  Highway 49 is the avenue of discovery for the Mother Lode region – a special place that is a landscape of the imagination.