The historic Calaveras County Bank building on Main Street is one of the better-preserved Gold Rush commercial buildings on the street. Built in the 1850s of locally quarried stone, it represents the transition from the rough-and-ready early mining camp to a more permanent commercial settlement. The thick stone walls that characterise these buildings were partly practical — stone was fireproof in a town that had burned down and been rebuilt several times.
Main Street as a whole retains more Gold Rush-era character than many comparable California towns. Walking its length gives a reasonable picture of what a successful Sierra foothills mining town looked like in its commercial heyday. The mix of stone commercial buildings and later Victorian wooden structures tells the story of successive boom-and-bust cycles in the California foothills.