Built where the Nisenan village of Ustumah once stood, Nevada built itself around gold and water with the first sawmill and the Gold Tunnel on Deer Creek arriving in 1850, and it became the engine of California’s mining world. The town was incorporated in 1856 and added “City” to the name in 1864 to avoid confusion with California, a neighboring state.Walk through historic downtown, and you can see history in clapboard, carved gingerbread, and the lofty windows of buildings that once financed dreams.
Ferndale is a small, storybook town on the edge of California’s Lost Coast that feels like stepping back into the Victorian age. Tucked into a broad coastal plain in Humboldt County, the town is famous for its brightly painted Victorian “Painted Ladies,” ornate storefronts, and a deep dairy heritage that once earned it the nickname “Cream City.” A stroll down Main Street—now part of a nationally recognized historic district—reveals the same gingerbread trims and turrets that brought movie crews and curious roadtrippers to town. 
Truckee feels like a town that learned to keep its winter boots close to a warm hearth. Born as Gray’s Station in 1863, around Joseph Gray’s roadhouse, then briefly known as Coburn’s Station for blacksmith Samuel Coburn, the place settled on the name Truckee when the Central Pacific christened its depot in 1867. The name itself was lifted from a Paiute chief—Tru-ki-zo—whose shouted “Tro-kay!” (“Everything is all right”) was misheard as a name by early travelers. 
Auburn sits where the western flank of the Sierra begins to steepen into real country — a Gold Rush town that never quite stopped being one. You still feel the geology of gold in the streets: the story of Claude Chana finding paydirt in the Auburn Ravine on May 16, 1848, is the spark that turned a cluster of camps called North Fork or Woods Dry Diggings into a named place by the fall of 1849, borrowed from miners who came from Auburn, New York. Placer claims were rich here; the Central Pacific Railroad reached town in 1865, and by 1851, Auburn was already the center stage, the county seat of Placer County.
California boasts a remarkable distinction among the states of the U.S. It’s not just the golden beaches, towering redwoods, or sprawling deserts that make it a treasure trove of natural wonders. With nine national parks within its borders, California holds the crown for having the most national parks of any state in the nation: