Angels Camp

Town in Calaveras County, north-central California, USA; population (1990) 2,400. It is situated in the Sierra Nevada foothills, 108 km/67 mi southeast of Sacramento. It was named after the man who found gold on a creek here in 1848. A lumbering, quarrying, and ranching centre after the gold boom died, it is now primarily a tourist magnet.

According to legend, Mark Twain heard the basis of his 1864 story ‘The Jumping Frog of Calaveras County’ in a local bar; the event is commemorated each May in the Jumping Frog Jubilee held to the south, at Frogtown. Other local sites associated with mining days, with Twain, or with the stories of Bret Harte, include Carson Hill, Cherokee Flat (later Altaville, now part of Angels), Copperopolis, and Jackass Hill. The area now has a number of vineyards. The New Melones Lake, on the Stanislaus River, is to the south.