It all started because Thaddeus and George Hildreth and their party of five got caught in the rain. They'd been prospecting for a month without a show of color in their pans. Frustrated, they set up camp in a gulch near a group of Mexican miners; rain fell during the night and added further to their miseries. The next morning, as they spread their blankets to dry, one of the party - a John Walker - did a bit of panning to kill time. It was March 27, 1850.

Gold glittered in his rusty pan!

They gathered thirty pounds of nuggets in two days and Hildreth's Diggins joined the mushrooming legions of tent cities in the Sierra foothills. Secrets of major strikes were impossible to keep, and soon thousands swarmed over the gulch. Segregating themselves from the nearby Mexican encampment, the American miners called their canvas ragtown American Camp - one of several that used that name. A Major Richard Sullivan got himself elected alcalde - the Spanish term for a combination mayor, tax collector and justice of the peace. With a poetic flourish, he re-named the settlement "Columbia, the Gem of the Southern Mines." Sullivan didn't stick around long; he was chased away for levying gold dust fines on both plaintiff and defendant in his court. But the name survived.

And Columbia indeed became the gem of the southern mines. By the late 1850s, it was one of the largest towns in California, with 6000 citizens, 53 stores, 40 saloons and 159 gaming halls. And 3 churches.

By the time the mines played out in the early 1870s, $87 million worth of gold had been taken out. At today's figures, the dollar amount would top two billion.

Columbia might have become just another former gold camp or, even worse, a themed shopping center. But in 1945, the state of California bought most of the buildings along Main and Broadway and began restoration.

After decades of preservation and reconstruction, a little show biz and occasional squabbles between residents and state officials, Columbia State Historic Park has become the most-visited attraction in the Mother Lode. It draws nearly half a million camera clutchers a year.

Initially, Columbia SHP functioned as a conventional town with a few historic exhibits. But in recent years the state's policy has shifted away from private ownership and more toward a blend of preservation and tourism. Concessionaires, while peddling their scented soaps and postcards, are encouraged to wear period dress and market products appropriate to the era. Tasteless souvenirs and wax museums - the ruination of places like San Francisco's Fisherman's Wharf - are forbidden.

Students of early Western architecture find their mecca in Columbia, with its rich gathering of false-front buildings, century-old wood frame homes and brick stores with iron shutters and doors. Inside the structures, oiled wood floors, high ceilings and frilly Victorian trim transport visitors back to the Gold Rush.

Of course, what we have here is a rather sanitized version of the original. There are no dirt streets, no bawdy ladies, no drunks being heaved through batwing doors to land plop in muddy gutters. It's history the way American tourists like it - rinsed clean and hung out to dry in the summer sun.

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