Placerville, CA in 1913

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Bill Crowell

Bill Crowell

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Placerville was making the transition from horse and buggy to the automobile.

Notice the Dodge Brothers dealer's sign on the upper right. The DB was a very popular car around here because it was more dependable than its competition, especially because the area has lots of climbs and descents, and the roads were bad to non-existent.

[Edit] Hey, wait a minute! The postcard must be wrong. I don't think John and Horace Dodge turned out their first car until late 1914, right? So it must be 1914 at the earliest.

[Edit again] The U.S. didn't enter WWI until April of 1917, yet the ice cream parlor in the picture is calling it "Liberty" ice cream, like they called everything during the war. So maybe the picture is from even later. Or were they calling everything "Liberty" even before WWI?

Main St Placerville 1913.jpg
 
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A few years later, the Dodge-Plymouth dealer had moved across the street and down the block aways:
Dodge 3a.jpg


Then a few years later:

Dodge 4a.jpg


People still drove horses and buggies into town as late as the '30's. The garage pictured here sold Nash, Star, Studebaker, Durant and Overland at various times.

Nashstarstudedruantsm.jpg
 
And if you were to post a picture of Placerville today it wouldn't (doesn't) look a lot different!
 
That older than '13 for sure, look at the electric headlamps on that Dodge. Maybe 1918 from that posted LIBERTY callout.
 
The only radiator medallion in the picture that I can read is on the car across the street from the dealership, and it looks like it might be a Chebby to me. Definitely not the round DB logo.

logo.jpg
 
So you like 'em old, 340doc? Well, are these old enough?:

Volunteers for the Union Army during the Civil War marching down the same street in Placerville to the stagecoach station:
Dodge 1.jpg


The round sign on the building toward the upper left of the picture was the Studebaker wagon and blacksmith shop. The same emblem was retained for Studebaker cars after John Studebaker returned to Indiana and used the money he had saved in Placerville from making wagons and wheelbarrows to expand the family wagon business into car manufacturing. A Starbucks coffee store is now at this location.

Here's the first daguerreotype known to have been taken in Placerville, showing the covered wagons coming into town:

immigrants_near_strawberry.jpg
 
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wagons cruising the strip already, look at those ladies oggling.... :)

maybe we got a match 1915-1922? cant nail down the date....Chevy 490 touring..but has to be >= 1916 as this was introduced as a '16 model.
maxresdefault.jpg
 
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I like these history pics. Some small villages survived through the times and some didnt. We have Grape Michigan nearby and it is just a party store with 5 houses around it. I love the old store it is old enough it retains the worn wood floors with tin patches on the knot holes.
 
barbee6043 said:
Very cool pics!!!! So which side did they fight on ?????
Click to expand...

The guys in the picture were all volunteering for the Union army, fighting for the North, because the miners were afraid that if the Confederacy won it would make California a slave state and import their slaves to mine for gold. They didn't want to compete with slaves who work for nothing. The entire mother lode gold rush area was predominantly pro-Union. There were enclaves of Confederate sympathizers here and there, but the pro-Union people pretty much kept them in check.
 
Main Street and Broadway in Placerville are the old Highway 50, the main road that used to connect Sacramento with South Lake Tahoe. Until the '40s they closed Hwy. 50 in Placerville 4 days a year: one day in the Spring for the cattle men to drive their herds from the valley to their government grazing leases in the high country; a separate day in the Spring for the sheep ranchers to drive their flocks to their summer grazing; and then 2 days in the Fall for the cattle and the sheep to return to the valley.
 
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