Rattlesnake Bar Road and Bridge site

Folsom Lake has receded enough that artifacts the lake submerged over 70 years ago are visible once again. We have explored the site of the Rattlesnake Bar Bridge before. On this visit, we also walked the old road section that had made an appearance since the water has receded. We had wondered about the route of the road and how it made its way to the bridge. A wonderful section of the road is quite visible, as seen in the photo above. This is facing away from the bridge site, headed away from the bridge.

1873 map of the Georgetown Divide showing the bridge site and road. Click map for a larger view.

Rattlesnake Bar Road was a well used crossing of the American River all the way up to the lake filling in 1955/56. This was an easy way to cross the river and access Pilot Hill headed east or Auburn headed north west. Once the lake was filled this old crossing was inundated and the road on the El Dorado County side was changed to Goose Flat Road, still a county road, though not maintained and on now private land.

Bridge foundations on either side of the north fork of the American River. Looking from Placer County.

The above photo is from the Placer County side and shows the two foundations on either side of the river. The lake was low enough on the day we visited that the Placer County side's road is visible and shows the approach to the bridge site. The old road does not follow the present-day Rattlesnake Bar Road into the state park where the bridge stood but follows its own course, hidden from view most of the time. Below is a section we found covered with asphalt.

We have located the short sections of the road in the photo on the map below. You can also see the bridge foundation locations from this satellite photo, though the lake submerges both.

Click map for a closer view.

We enjoyed checking out the surreal landscape of a low Folsom Lake. All of the area around Folsom Lake was mined by gold seekers during the 19th and early 20th Centuries. That with the rising and lowering of the reservoir has created an otherworldly landscape with multiple levels of dirt of different colors. Quite striking and combined with the history of the area makes for a great day trip.

Below is a photograph of the old bridge. There is a man and a boy in the photograph along with smoke coming out of the bridge tenders shack. The printing above the man reads, “All persons driving or riding faster than a walk over this bridge will be fined to the extent of the law.”

The Rattlesnake Bar Bridge, 1860s to 1870s. Can you see the child in the photo?

The children of Long Valley School, Placer County, 1890

This photo from the Placer County Museums is full of personalities who once inhabited Long Valley, with a population of around 60. We see kids from the school enjoying their lunch around the school well. The teacher, looking very professorial, is enjoying a drink of that cool Long Valley water.

The fun is taking a closer look at the photo and the kids. You’ve got the older boys looking mischievous at the right while numerous younger kids look like they will burst out laughing at any moment. Be sure to check out the old-school lunch/water buckets.

One resident of Long Valley, born in 1893, was Clark Ashton Smith, writer and artist most famous for his fantasy writing along the vein of H. P. Lovecraft. You can read more about Smith here.

Long Valley was located on the Auburn Sacramento Road, a mile or so south of Auburn. Leaving Long Valley heading south on Rattlesnake Bar Road, you would have crossed the old Rattlesnake Bar Bridge, which we have written about before. Long Valley School still stands at the corner of Auburn Folsom Road and Rattlesnake Bar Road and is used as a community hall.

I’ve posted a map, The Georgetown Divide in 1873, and marked where the town was. To see the complete map go here.

1873 Map showing Long Valley and the Rattlesnake Bar Bridge site, Click map for closer view.

The Falls of Salmon Falls.

There were once falls at Salmon Falls, now inundated by Folsom Reservoir. The rocks were blasted away in the 1920s, helping with logging operations, which floated timber down the river. Below is a screengrab of our 1873 map of the Georgetown Divide showing the old townsite.

Salmon Falls got its start in 1849 with miners working the creeks, including Sweetwater Creek, which the town grew up next to. Once Folsom Dam was constructed, this entire area flooded. The town’s cemetery was exhumed and the bodies re-buried at the “Re-location Cemetary” at El Dorado Hills.

In low rainfall years, the town re-emerges from its watery fate, and you can visit some of the old town sites. Here is a link to more info on this area.

1873 map showing Salmon Falls. See the entire map here.

The old swimming hole at Rattlesnake Bar

The Rattlesnake Bar area between El Dorado and Placer Counties was once a famous crossing utilizing the old Rattlesnake Bar Bridge, seen towards the top of the photograph. That bridge was doomed, as Folsom Dam would be constructed downstream starting in 1952, with the reservoir beginning to fill in February 1955. Before that, a truck carrying fertilizer exceeding the 8-ton limit collapsed the bridge, and with the dam in the works, the bridge was never repaired.

The photograph above shows some kids playing in the tranquil waters of the north fork of the American River at a well-known swimming hole below the bridge. We are looking from the Placer County side to the El Dorado County side in the historic photograph. Before the upstream dams, the river waters would drop quite low, and become quite warm during the summertime, making for some sweet swimming holes.

This location is now under the waters of Folsom Lake most of the year. During the late summer or droughts, the water drops low enough that the old concrete supports for the bridge reappear.

Kentucky House, on the old Coloma-Folsom Road

The Austin T. Leachman "Kentucky House," located on the old Coloma-Folsom Road, was one of the first roadhouses one would encounter when traveling east from Sacramento County into El Dorado County. The Coloma-Folsom road is now known as Green Valley Road, and this roadhouse stood on the south side of the road at the junction with a path that led south to Clarksville in the present-day El Dorado Hills.

Leachman came to California by wagon train from Quincy, Illinois, in 1850 and 1859 married an Irish lady named Mary Sullivan, purchased the hotel and roadhouse then known as the "Red House," as well as 220 surrounding acres near present day's "Browns Ravine."

The Leachman House or "Kentucky House" called that as it was Leachman's birthplace, operated successfully as long as traffic in the form of stages and freighters came along the old Coloma-Folsom Road. The Kentuck House continued until 1869 when traffic started to slow along the old road.

Rattlesnake Bar Bridge site

Wanting to keep our trip closer to home this time, we took a quick ride to Folsom Lake. We wanted to see the old Rattlesnake Bar Bridge site, which once forded the north fork of The American River, long before Folsom Dam. When the lake is filling or filled, this area is flooded by at least 50 feet of water. The lake had left lines in the sides of the hills, and old signs of hydraulic mining along with tailings added to the weird but beautiful landscape.

Folsom Lake at low levels, Rattlesnake Bar.

We rounded a corner to see the pilings for the bridge fully exposed! We knew what they looked like from earlier photos taken during our last drought, but it's fun to see them in person. It reminds us that there were quite a few active communities located in the ravines and channels that would become Folsom Lake. Rattlesnake Bar was one such place, a town that grew because of gold, burned down, then built again just a little way up the hill. We had heard that Rattlesnake Bar was on the El Dorado County side, but this map from 1873 shows Rattlesnake Bar on the Placer County side. You can also see the bridge crossing the narrow north fork Channel and Wild Goose's old town site on The El Dorado County side. Another map from 1910, The American River Canal Map, also shows Rattlesnake Bar on the Placer County side.

1873 map of The Georgetown Divide

While gold was the main impetus for creating Rattlesnake Bar in the 1850s, the bridge facilitated the transportation of agricultural products and quicklime from the Alabaster Cave Quarry on the El Dorado County side. It was William Gwyn, discoverer of the famous Alabaster Caves, or at that time called Coral Caves, who built the first bridge in 1863. This cave was the result of a search for lime to use in the lime kiln nearby. Quicklime was created and then transported across this bridge. The Alabaster Cave soon became a tourist attraction, and the bridge helped interested people get there more quickly. You could take the train from Sacramento to Auburn, then a stage to the bridge, where you would cross to the El Dorado side and the extraordinary Alabaster Cave. We will talk about this then famous cave in a later post.

Sacramento Daily Union, Volume 25, Number 3835, 7 July 1863

The original wooden bridge, built-in 1862, was replaced with a wire suspension bridge that endured until it collapsed in 1954 under an overloaded truck's weight. Folsom Dam was under construction, and this area would soon be underwater, so the counties did not replace the bridge.

Rattlesnake Bar Bridge, 1860 or 1870’s. Notice the young child just to the left of the man standing.

The same spot today with the bridge pilings clearly visible.

Here is a short video concerning our trip to the bridge site.