I didn't know it when I made my travel plans, but Placerville (one of my favorite little mining towns in California's Gold Country) was celebrating it's 151st anniversary this past Saturday, when I just happened to be in town. They shut down the half mile stretch of historic downtown, and threw an all-day street faire with a stagecoach, horses, old cars and fire engines, bands and hundreds of people wandering around dressed like it was the 1860's. It was a lot of fun.
One of the bands playing in the stage under the bell tower in the middle of downtown:
An 1860's woman by a couple old cars. I don't know if it was the cars or her that time travelled:
A bunch of costumed people by the stagecoach:
About every ten or fifteen minutes you'd hear someone shout "Staaaaagecoach coming!" and a few seconds later this thing would come tearing around the corner. The stagecoach rides around downtown were free, but there was a pretty long line waiting for them.
Kids from the Schnell School, singing:
There were also several gunfights throughout the day (Ashley didn't like these at all!):
Abe Lincoln even showed up! There were a few costume contests. This shot was from the "best beard" contest. Doc (in the center with the sheriff's badge) won and our former president placed second:
There was one pro photographer there (shooting Noinks) with a press pass. I recognized him, and can't quite figure out why. I'm almost positive it was here in one of the "chimping" threads where people were posting pictures of other photographers chimping, but no search word I can think of finds any pictures of him. Does anyone else here recognize him? Oh, and yes, I did get a picture of him chimping...
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