Green Valley Road History Tour, Part 2

We continue our Green Valley Road history tour, Part 2. We are now on Malcolm-Dixon Road, which was the old route before the re-alignment of Green Valley Road. Just after turning onto Malcolm-Dixon Road, we come to the site of an old roadhouse named "New York." The New York House, located on the south side of the road near New York Creek, has quite the history.

The information for the New York House comes from Doug Noble's Green Valley Road history. The New York House, owned by Constantine Hicks, a carpenter from Vermont, had quite a reputation having been involved in a scandal concerning election fraud, as well as trying to claim "squatters rights" on 640 acres of surrounding land. He was defeated in part by the Central Pacific Railroad, which owned land intended for the transcontinental railroad, which eventually passed through Placer County to the north.

The story of Constantine Hicks gets brutal after this when his daughter eloped with a "hired hand." Hicks and friends overtook the man at the Rolling Hills house down the hill, horsewhipped him to death, then took the body back to the New York house and buried him on a hill across the road.

Live Oak School.

Continuing our journey, we come to the Live Oak School, which is still standing! The photograph at the top of the page shows the 1895-96 class with the teacher, Miss Donovan. L-R front row: Pete Leik, Annie Hughes(later Mrs. Louis Mettie), John Hughes, Frank Koffman, ___ Courtamarsh, &___Courtamarsh. 2nd row: Luke Avery, Maggie Hughes, Annie Leik, Lizzy Ricker, Lilly Orr, Cora Avery, Kitty Ricker, MamieGrace, and the teacher Miss Donavon.

The area around the schoolhouse has been approved for development by the county, with 2.2 acres around the school, as well as the building being preserved for history, while the rest will be developed.

The Green Valley Road History Tour

We now head up the old road where it will eventually lead us back to Green Valley Road, where we will turn left and head up the hill and the site of the Green Spring House, located on the south side (right side as your driving) of Green Valley Road, on a old alignment of the road. The Green Springs House was built by Rufus Hitchcock, who would run the place until 1851 when he died of smallpox. William Dormody ran it until he died in 1876 when his widow Sarah F. Dormody took it over. According to history, it was a favorite place to hold weddings.

Take Green-Valley Road towards Rescue, and our next stop on our tour, Deer Valley Road. We will discuss that in part 3 of our Green Valley Road history tour.

Tour map found here.

The Green Valley Road History Tour!

Join us as we begin a new project, The Green Valley Road History Tour. This tour will take place at our new digital Google-powered map, located here. This tour will be the first of several trips that you will be able to make following our chart. You can use your cellular device so you can take it with you in the automobile or while walking. It's the same map you use when following directions you have entered, except our route will have historical points of interest along the way. The map can be found on our webpage, here.

We thought the first tour would be our Green Valley Road tour, which will start on Green Valley Road at the border with Sacramento County. Green Valley Road was a famous road starting back in the 1850s, bringing people up to El Dorado County from Folsom. Green Valley Road was the most popular path to take as it passed through many towns and past many roadhouses on its way to Placerville, the final destination.

The tour uses a red line to indicate the route you can drive. A green line indicates the old roadbed, often not passable in an automobile. The old road route gives us an idea of how much the path has changed. Being able to see the old rout path also helps in finding some of the historical features we will be discussing as we travel along.

We will post on each feature moving up from the county line. When you see the orange Adventures in California History icons, click one to have more info on that site come up. Sometimes nothing is remaining; other times, foundations or ruins are visible. As we travel the road path will be continued so that eventually a complete history tour map will be available for you to use. Place the map link on your computer or cell device with a shortcut, and you'll always be able to access it when you want to know more about something you see.

We had talked in the past weeks about two roadhouses along Green Valley Road, the Kentucky House, and the Rolling Hills Hotel. You will see both marked with the orange icon, which, when clicked, brings up more info, along with a link to even more info. Eventually, we will add videos to the mix.

There are two additional icons we added, showing the site of the old Mormon Island school, and the El Dorado County re-location cemetery, which houses the graves relocated due to construction of the Folsom Dam and reservoir. All the little towns that once occupied the river banks before the dam had cemeteries. Remains from Mormon Island, Salmon Falls, Condemned Bar, Carrollton Bar, McDowell's Hill, Natural Dam, and Doton's Bar cemeteries were relocated to the new Mormon Island Cemetery. The re-location also included five individual graves.

Using the map, after visiting the cemetery, we head back out on Green Valley Road and past the sites of the two roadhouses we discussed earlier, the Kentuck House and Rollin Hills Hotel. The locations shown are estimates based on historical maps and written information. If anyone had a more exact location for any item of historical interest, let us know so we can more the icon to better shows that new information.

This part of our tour will follow the old route, which means we will be turning left on Salmon Falls Road, and right on Malcolm-Dixon Road, which was the former Green Valley Road. Bet you didn't know that! We will continue to our next destination along that road next week.

The Rolling Hills Hotel

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.

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.