Grass Valley is a Gold Rush-era town in Nevada County in California's Sierra Nevada foothills, at an elevation of about 770 metres. It was one of the richest gold mining areas in California, and the Empire Mine State Historic Park — which operated from 1850 until 1956 and produced nearly six million ounces of gold — is the best reason to visit. The park preserves the shaft house, stamp mill, and owner's "cottage" (in fact a substantial Victorian house), along with the underground shafts that once extended more than a mile below the surface.
What made Grass Valley different from other Gold Rush towns is that it stayed. The discovery of quartz gold at Gold Hill in 1850 proved that the real deposits were in deep underground veins, not river gravels — and deep mining required capital, machinery, and a permanent workforce. The Cornish miners who came to work the hard-rock mines brought their expertise from the tin mines of Cornwall, along with their pasties, their community organisations, and their stubborn self-reliance. That heritage is still visible: the North Star Mine and Powerhouse museum displays one of the Pelton wheels that powered the mines, and Marshall's Pasties on Richardson Street still makes them the traditional way.
The Victorian downtown on Mill Street rewards an afternoon. The Holbrooke Hotel — the oldest continuously operating hotel in the Mother Lode — is where Ulysses Grant and Mark Twain slept. The Home of Lola Montez recalls the dancer whose affair with a Bavarian king brought her to California and set her up in this modest cottage on Mill Street. The Del Oro Theatre still shows films under its Art Deco neon spire. The surrounding Nevada County has become a destination for artists and Bay Area transplants, and there is an unusually sophisticated food and wine culture for a town of this size. Nearby Nevada City is similarly charming and the two are naturally visited together.