Heritage Trail Museum Tour

Generally, when junk mail comes in, it becomes kitty litter. But a little card came in that caught our attention. On the weekend of August 11-12, all museums participating in the “Heritage Trail”, from Roseville, California to South Lake Tahoe, were free. Now we usually catch a museum or two when we travel far from home, but who ever goes to museums near home? It’s not something I would ordinarily do on a Sunday, but we figured why not.

First stop was the Maidu Indian Museum in Roseville. We had passed it a thousand times and never even knew it was there. Inside the museum are a number of millennium-plus old artifacts and artistic, interactive displays and films of the lifestyle and culture of the Nisenan Maidu tribe, who for thousands of years, lived in the oak savanna along the American River before they were pushed out by the gold rush settlers in the 1800s. The land became farms, and then the farms became today’s jungle of asphalt and concrete. A few Nisenan Maidu remain to preserve, share, and teach their ancient culture. Behind the museum, we took a walking tour through a 30-acre parcel of open space, which holds what remains of a Maidu village, with petroglyphs, grinding stones, and carved-out rocks that even our interpreter didn’t know what they were used for. 

Surrounded by houses, streets, schools, and a large community park, a walk through the ancient Maidu village was like a walk into the past. Understanding Maidu culture is to understand nature--to respect, love, and give thanks to the grasses and the trees, the acorns and the waters that gave this area life.  

Our next stop was in the small foothill town of Colfax, lunch at the Colfax Max diner, where the menu offered elk, kangaroo, and alligator burgers (but I stuck with the beef). Then the Colfax Heritage Museum, situated by the old railway depot, next to a decommissioned train car that is now a music shop. The small building was filled wall-to-wall, ceiling-to-floor with history. Every antique household product, gadget, tool, or you-name-it was there, from the temporary campers building the railway in the 1800s to the agricultural tycoons of the early 1900s. It’s not a place I could walk into and see everything in one half hour. But I could imagine myself as an old railroad worker, shopping for a bottle of this or a cask of that or an ancient pharmaceutical sitting on the shelf. But there was so much more to see in one afternoon, so we grabbed our free cookies and started back down the hill.

Free root beer floats and dramatic historical enactments were the lures that brought us to the museum in the historical courthouse in Auburn. Auburn is the seat of Placer County, and the first floor of the grand capitol-style 1889 courthouse had displays of native Maidu and other historical artifacts, the Sherriff’s office of the early 20^th century, and a large chunk of pure Placer gold. Annie, the husband murderer, was locked up in the women’s jail below the courthouse, or at least the volunteer who acted as her was kind enough to sweat all day in 1880s clothing in a dungeon of Auburn heat for our edutainment pleasure. Two more Auburn museums filled up the rest of our afternoon—the Auburn Joss House Chinese museum downtown and the Bernhard Family museum complex, an estate next to the Placer County fairgrounds. The latter consisted of a restored 19^th century ranch house, winery, and garage with 19^th century farm wagons. A horse-drawn wagon of the time sat in the driveway, and we were invited to climb aboard and have our photo taken. While we took our tour through the well-preserved lifestyle of the past, a volunteer churned out homemade ice cream, while another volunteer provided fresh-baked buttermilk biscuits. Lack of refrigeration in those days meant ice was hauled off of the mountain and brought down in a covered wagon, used for ice cream, and placed in an “ice box” to keep the freshly slaughtered meat cold. The wood-burning stove kept the kitchen so hot, the residents had to do a lot of their cleaning and cooking duties outside, such as baths in a bucket and laundry on a washboard. We brought some of the historical simple-life home with us—buttermilk biscuit batter in a small cloth bag tied smartly with a bow, which provided a delicious snack while working in our overly complex, modernized world.