Second Garrotte is a ghost town a few kilometres east of Groveland along Highway 120 — a small collection of weathered Gold Rush-era structures returning to the forest. The community flourished in the 1850s as a placer gold mining camp and had stores, a saloon, and a school at its peak. When the easily accessible gold was exhausted, the population dispersed almost entirely.
The remaining structures — walls, foundations, and a few standing buildings — are scattered through the pine trees and accessible from the highway. It makes for a quick and evocative stop, showing how rapidly the landscape of the Sierra foothills was settled and abandoned in the span of a single generation.