Apple Hill jams Placerville each fall. Here's the other 10 months

On a fall weekend day in 2018, officials counted about 65,000 vehicles rolling through Placerville on Highway 50. Somewhere between 5,000 and 7,000 of them were headed up the hill to Camino for apple pie, cider doughnuts and a box of apples, South Tahoe Now reported.

That is Apple Hill in October. For the people who live in Placerville, Camino and Pollock Pines, it is a couple of months of crowded weekends. The other ten months are a quiet foothill town about 45 miles up Highway 50 from downtown Sacramento, where the typical home sold for $506,665 in August 2026, according to Redfin. That is about $370,000 less than in El Dorado Hills, the master-planned suburb down the same freeway, where every one of the 22 neighborhoods Houseberry scores rates 3.9 or better out of 5 for schools.

Who comes up the hill, and when

Apple Hill started as a rescue. A pear blight hit the orchards around Camino in the early 1960s, growers switched to apples, and in 1964 16 ranches formed the Apple Hill Growers Association to sell the crop to people who would drive up for it, according to the association's own history and Wikipedia's account. It now represents more than 50 farms, from orchards and bakeries to wineries, Christmas tree lots and a cidery trail that runs this year from September 12 to November 1.

The crowds follow the calendar. October weekends are the peak. The growers themselves tell visitors to come in September, in November or on an October weekday, CBS Sacramento reported when they reworked the traffic plan in 2019.

For a resident, that plan is the part that matters. Under the 2019 version, the eastbound left-turn lanes on Highway 50 in the Camino stretch close in October, drivers are pushed to the exits at 48, 49A, 54 and 57, and the CHP works the traffic on site. Caltrans also built a 3-mile concrete median barrier on Highway 50 from Still Meadows Road to upper Carson Road, a $53.6 million safety project that ended left turns across the freeway. After residents complained about the long way around, Caltrans allowed weekday left turns at Camino Heights Drive and kept the weekend restriction, according to a 2021 Caltrans update.

So the cost of living next to Apple Hill is real but narrow. Plan the Costco run for a Tuesday.

What the other ten months cost

The price gap is the reason people look at Placerville at all.

Read Placerville's 19 percent jump with care. Thirty-two sales is a small month, and a handful of larger homes can swing a median that much. Even so, El Dorado Hills sold this summer at about 1.7 times Placerville's price.

That $2,025 a month is the whole case. Over a year it is about $24,300, which pays for a lot of gas on Highway 50.

The trade is distance and data. El Dorado Hills is close to Folsom's jobs and the 50 corridor, and it scores well on our measures. Its top four neighborhoods, Fairchild Village, Green Valley Hills, Promontory and St Andrews Village, tie at 4.0 out of 5 overall on Houseberry's ranking. Every one of its 22 scored neighborhoods rates at least 3.9 for schools on Houseberry's school ranking. Down the road in Folsom, 14 of 17 neighborhoods on Houseberry's Folsom ranking score 4.0 or better for schools (Houseberry analysis, October 2026).

Placerville has no Houseberry scores yet, and we will not guess at them. What we can say from the public record is plainer. El Dorado Transit runs a Sac Commuter bus into Sacramento and Folsom on weekdays, which beats driving the 50 every day. And this is fire country. The 2021 Caldor Fire pushed evacuations into Pollock Pines, a few miles east of the orchards, before Apple Hill reopened for Labor Day weekend that year, CBS Sacramento reported. Anyone buying up here should price homeowners insurance before writing an offer.

If the job is in Folsom or Rancho Cordova and the budget tops out near $550,000, we would look first at Placerville proper, inside city limits and on the west side of town, where the drive down Highway 50 is shortest and the Apple Hill weekends are a detour you take for pie, not a jam you sit in. Camino puts you in the orchards. That is lovely in May and harder in October.

El Dorado Hills is still the safer bet on the numbers we track, and it costs about $24,000 a year more to live there. Before you decide which side of that line you want, see how all 22 neighborhoods compare on Houseberry's El Dorado Hills ranking, and where El Dorado County's ranked towns sit next to it.

Sources

• Redfin: Placerville housing market
• Redfin: El Dorado Hills housing market
• Freddie Mac weekly rate history via Mortgage News Daily
• Apple Hill Growers Association
• Caltrans: US 50 Camino Safety Project update, 2021
• South Tahoe Now: Apple Hill traffic plan, 2018