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The compact communities of GRASS VALLEY and NEVADA CITY , four miles apart in the Sierra Nevada Mountains, were the most prosperous and substantial of the gold mining towns. Since the 1960s, artists and craftspeople have settled in the elaborate Victorian homes of the surrounding hills and gorges. In Grass Valley, the North Star Mining Museum (donation; May-Oct daily 10am-5pm) at the south end of Mill Street is housed in what used to be the power station for the North Star Mine. Its giant water-driven Pelton wheel , fitted with a hundred or so iron buckets, once powered the drills and hoists of the mine. Dioramas show the day-to-day working life of the miners, three-quarters of whom had emigrated here from the depressed tin mines of Cornwall (bringing the Cornish pasty with them).

The last mine in California to shut down was its richest, the Empire Mine , now preserved as a state park in the pine forests a mile southeast of Grass Valley (daily 10am-5pm; summer 9am-6pm; $1). It closed in 1956, after more than six million ounces of gold had been recovered, when the cost of getting the gold out of the ground exceeded $35 an ounce, the government-controlled price at the time. Machinery sold off when the mine closed has been replaced from other disused workings and now augments the excellent and very informative museum at the entrance.

The excellent Grass Valley visitor center at 248 Mill St (Mon-Fri 9.30am-5.30pm, Sat 10am-3pm; tel 530/273-4667 or 1-800/655-4667) is in a replication of Lola Montez's original home. Lola was an Irish entertainer and former mistress of Ludwig of Bavaria, who retired here after touring America with her provocative "Spider Dance" and kept a grizzly bear in her front yard.

Towns don't get much quainter than Nevada City . Amid all the shops and restaurants in the city center, the newly restored Old Firehouse at 214 Main St, a lacy, balcony and bell-towered piece of gingerbread, houses a small museum of local social history (donation; May-Oct daily 11am-4pm; Nov-April Thurs-Sun 11am-4pm).

Several daily Amtrak Thruway buses from Sacramento and Auburn stop on Sacramento Street in Nevada City and on West Main Street in Grass Valley. The Gold Country Stage connects the two towns every half-hour (Mon-Fri 8am-5pm, Sat 9.15am-5.30pm; $1, $2 for a day-pass; tel 530/477-0103).

North on Hwy-49, an hour's drive from Nevada City, you'll head into the most rugged and beautiful part of the Gold Country, where waterfalls tumble over black rocks bordered by pines and maples. DOWNIEVILLE is in the midst of an idyllic setting and particularly popular with mountain bikers; it abuts an extensive trail system with moderate to extreme bike trails. Oddly, as the only mining camp to have ever hanged a woman, the town has restored a gallows to commemorate that grisly passage of its history.