Angels Camp is a small Gold Rush town in the Sierra Nevada foothills, best known as the setting for Mark Twain's first famous story, "The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County." Every third weekend in May, the town hosts the Calaveras County Fair and Jumping Frog Jubilee, where contestants try to coax their frogs to out-leap the competition — a tradition dating back to 1928.
It was at the Angels Hotel on Main Street that Twain heard the tale from a mining-camp storyteller during the winter of 1864-65. Main Street retains genuine Gold Rush character, with stone commercial buildings from the 1850s including the Calaveras County Bank and the Sam Choy Brick Store, the only surviving building from the town's once-substantial Chinese community. The Angels Camp Museum covers the mining history well. It is a convenient base for visiting the nearby Moaning Cavern and the Calaveras Big Trees State Park.