FRENCHTOWN, CA (MPG) - By the 1850’s, over 30,000 Frenchman had ventured West in the hunt for California’s gold. For 350 of them, that Yellow Brick Road led to Frenchtown, and to gold worth over $29 Million in today’s dollars. One nugget hit the scales at 72 ounces, or $146,500 at today’s spot price. 

Paul Vavaseur was the first miner to see promise where Peter Rice’s trail from LaPorte crossed Dry Creek just above Oregon House, 25 miles northeast of Marysville, in Yuba County.

Boom town commerce followed quickly: blacksmithing and sawmill operations, a grist mill, two hotels, two butcher shops, several saloons, dance halls and gambling houses and the sizeable winery of Henry Gerdif.

Marysville, is named after Mary Murphy, a child survivor of the ill-fated Donner Party of 1846. Mary later married Frenchman Charles Julian Covillaud who moved from Cognac to New Orleans in 1841 before coming west.

But, by 1870, the gold was depleted, and Frenchtown became a ghost town. Some descendants from those early Frenchtown years found their way eastward, settling in Louisiana.

Now. . .fast forward to 2023.

A new Yellow Brick Road leads to Oregon House, and gold has resurfaced, not as gold nuggets, but in the form of Gold Medals earned by local world-class wines and olive oils. Gold Rush winemaker Henry Gerdif and prospector Paul Vavaseur would be proud.

French influence has again surfaced near the crossroads of Frenchtown Rd. and Marysville Rd. with Cordon Bleu trained restauranteur, Lynne Sanders’ Clover Café.  Fine food, coffees and teas, local musicians, and good company have made it a popular gathering spot. Sanders, fluent in French, found and followed her own Yellow Brick Road when she opened her fashionable Bistro Aix in the North London suburb of Crouch End, which she and her team still manage.

Clover Café strengthens a decades-long tradition of fine dining in the foothills following Café Collage, the gold standard Mediterranean eatery operated by Salim Ben-Mami and Anne Macfarlane. Their offering also includes a country comfort B & B at the same Rice’s Crossing Road location.

Also, as homage to its location, The Frenchtown Inn B & B just north of Oregon House offers spacious accommodations and tranquil, scenic views to match. The inn is also the venue for popular Farm to Fork Dinners that feature local wineries, and all varieties of local award-winning ingredients.

French pastry chef Herve, provides the local grocery with authentic croissant, while Artisan Lavinia Bakery & Stone Mill provides more flavor and aroma with popular varieties of fresh baked goods.

Local and noted author, Pamela Johnson (Heart of A Pirate, and A Nation of Mystics), adds another nuanced French accent, Johnson being a New Orleans native.

The local Charter School is thriving, and the Yuba Water Agency will construct new office space down Marysville Road past the Post Office.

The Yellow Brick Road still leads to prosperity in The Foothills.

Note: The above account is presented here, in part, from a June 6, 1931 Appeal Democrat news article written by Doris Mae Kenyon, an eighth grader from the Oregon House School and based on her interviews with old-timers and her own archival research.  Notes were also taken from The History of Yuba County, California by Thompson & West (1879) also from recent historian, Malcolm J. Rohrbough’s Rush to Gold (2013), as well as Yuba Sutter localwiki.org.