Adventures in California History

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The Rolling Hills Hotel

Photo from: Placer County Museums

Here we see Oscar Fleming driving a wagon past the old Rolling Hills Hotel on the Coloma-Folsom Road. Now known as Green Valley Road, the road was heavily traveled with miners and others using it to reach the goldfields from the Sacramento Valley. Along the way were "Roadhouses," which were the motels of their times. Horses, and people needed to eat, sleep and get supplies as they traveled, and the roadhouses often supplied these.

The first roadhouse one would have reached after crossing the county line into El Dorado County was The Kentucky House, which we talked about here. Just past the Kentucky House, was the Rolling Hills Hotel, owned by Charles Post, pictured above. The Hotel, built in the 1850s, was about halfway up the hill that rises from Folsom to El Dorado Hills, just before Francisco Drive. The Hotel was a large two-story frame building, which by 1912, as seen in the above photo, was already falling apart.