Highway 49 passes through a series of scattered mining camps as it flows toward its conclusion at Oakhurst. The villages are primarily bedroom communities or the present-day location of summer cabins. Mormon Bar. The hills retain their steepness but with more and more granite outcroppings visible. Bootjack. Tourist's buses headed to Yosemite become frequent. Usona. Look to the side of the road, the 1885 Chowchilla Schoolhouse flashes by. You cross the Chowchilla River and enter Madera County, the last of eleven counties along Highway 49. Nippinnawasee. The rebuilt 1903 Indian ceremonial center at the Wasuma Roundhouse State Historic Park offers a reminder that this land once belonged to someone else. The local high school hugs the highway. A baseball game is being contested on the home diamond of the Wasuma Wildcats. Ahwahnee. Almost there now. Just a few more miles. The end, or the beginning, of the road.

Finally. Oakhurst. One end -- the southern terminus -- of Highway 49.

Oakhurst is the least satisfying of the cities along the Mother Road of the Mother Lode.

There are a few historic structures on display at the Fresno Flats Historical Park just out of town, but Oakhurst exists to serve tourism.

Oakhurst is located at the conjunction of two highways -- Highway 49 and Highway 41, which is a main thoroughfare to Yosemite. The town retains none of the charm or historic atmosphere that other Gold Country townships relish. This is a contemporary world filled with strip malls, fast food joints, motels, and supermarkets. It is the least connected to its Gold Rush heritage of any community in the Gold Country. Many descriptions of the Gold Country do not include Oakhurst, claiming that the gold region stops at Mariposa. But the common thread of Highway 49 makes the town an integral part of the area. And it doesn't fit the mold. In one respect, the southern terminus of Highway 49 is similar to its northern twin in Vinton -- there is no monument, no park, nothing to indicate its historic value. However, while Vinton offers a promising portal to adventure, Oakhurst only provides a stoplight, four restaurants, a grocery store, a bank, an insurance agency, a snow cone place, and a tattoo parlor.

With tourists the new gold being mined, the Yosemite Sierra Visitors Center is a hub of Oakhurst. The office offers information to more than 50,000 visitors each year. The center provides information on lodging, dining, attractions, hiking, biking, skiing, both water and snow, and many other activities.

More visitors enter the doors of this Oakhurst center each year than visit most of the historic sites in the Gold Country combined. But that is not entirely surprising. The number of tourists that pass through the town is staggering.

According to the National Park Service statistics 3,648,384 people visited Yosemite National Park in 1999. And 35.46% of those were welcomed through the southern entrance that is nearest Oakhurst. That is 1,293,716 folks who most likely pass through Oakhurst on the way to the park. No wonder Oakhurst caters to tourism.