The road to Silver Creek doesn't so much end as dissolve. It narrows, the pavement crumbles, and soon you're winding through the Sierra Nevada mountains, rarely passing another car. By the time you reach the campsite and walk down toward the river, the world has gone eerily quiet except for the rush of water. There are no buildings, no cell service, nothing to suggest that 175 years have passed since someone stood in these same foothills and changed California's history.
I went with a group in late May to pan for gold. The most interesting question was not whether we would find any. It was whether, if we did, we would have the right to take it.
