2 Best Sights in Sacramento and the Gold Country, California

Take a self-guided tour of this fully lighted mine shaft within a park owned by the City of Placerville. The worthwhile audio tour (included) makes clear what you're seeing. A shaded stream runs through the park, and there are picnic facilities.

On weekends much of the year and some major holidays, docents conduct guided 90-minute surface tours of one of the gold-rush era's most prolific, and one of the world's deepest, mines. Exhibits inside the remaining buildings illustrate how gold flakes were melted for shipment to San Francisco and how "skips" were used to lower miners and materials into the mile-long shaft and carry ore to the surface.