Diamond Springs, CA

Highway 49 and Missouri Flat Road are the two roads that locate Diamond Springs, a foothill community just south of Placerville that stretches over a good deal of country for a town its size. It began as a mining camp in 1848 and took its name from the clear springs there, and State Parks lists it as California Historical Landmark 487. The center is a short strip of Pleasant Valley Road, with a few older buildings. Missouri Flat Road is the other side of town, a commercial corridor that climbs toward US 50 and holds the supermarkets, chain restaurants and coffee drive-throughs. People from the surrounding hills come in for that, so the town serves a much larger area than its own streets. Out past both, the land opens into oak woodland and rural parcels. Railroad history runs through the area too. The El Dorado Western Railroad offers slow excursions in restored inspector's cars along the old Placerville Branch, and the Diamond and Caldor lumber railroad once hauled timber out of mills here. For a sit-down meal, Allez on Fowler Lane does French food, with crepes, coq au vin and beef bourguignon. Soriano's Restaurant on Pleasant Valley Road serves birria tacos and pupusas, and Colina De Oro does enchiladas and chimichangas. Dutch Bros, on Missouri Flat Road, is where the drive-through crowd gets its coffee. A car handles nearly all of it. US 50 reaches Sacramento to the west, while Placerville, Coloma and the Apple Hill farms are all a short drive away in other directions. Diamond Springs has no single center of gravity. The stores sit in one place and the historic blocks in another, and moving between them is always a drive. What the town offers is easy access to the foothills at an unhurried pace, with a gold-mining name and a working-town feel.