ABSTRACT
It took me around three hours to drive from San Francisco to Auburn, in the foothills of the Sierras. It was the weekend and the car-jammed highways shimmered in the heat as tens of thousands of Californians headed for the cooler climate of the mountains. By luck rather than design, I arrived in Auburn, a small town whose historic buildings looked more like fakes than real relics of goldrush days, on the day of the American River Festival.
