Placerville

Seat of El Dorado County, northern-central California, USA, near the South Fork tributary of the American River, in the western Sierra Nevada foothills, 60 km/37 mi northeast of Sacramento; population (1990) 8,400. It is an expanding dormitory community for Sacramento, and a distribution centre for locally grown pears and other fruit. Limestone is quarried, and lumber and building materials produced. Its tourist industry focuses on the town's Gold Bug Mine and memoribilia of its days as a boom town during the 1849 gold rush. It is also the headquarters for the El Dorado National Forest and a gateway to Sierra Nevada resorts.

The 1849 gold rush began just to the northwest of the town in Coloma. Placerville was first known as Dry Diggings, because its ore was found away from running water; it then became Hangtown, because of the numerous executions that took place at the height of the rush.