I hate riding in the car for long periods of time, but to this one location, I have to suck it up because i know the reward is waiting for me at the end. Columbia California is a place where I spent some of my child hood. My grandfather and uncles live there and have resided there for many years. I enjoy the town because of it's sense of history. It's a town that has been frozen and preserved in time. The town first struck gold in 1850 and since then was a hot spot and start of the Gold Rush in California.

To walk through the small town, you will be taken back to a place that one could only imagine. The town is still thriving with a working Saloon (which is where one of my uncle works as a bartender) and people flock to it just like they would have 200 years ago. There's the old hotel, saw mill, park, school house and even bakery. When I set foot in town, I'm taken back to a time of duels and bar fights, women dressed in dresses that made their breasts look five times bigger than they were, children running through the streets playing tag and calling each other names and even horses calloping through the streets with cow boys atop their backs; this is the place I love and never want to leave.

Movies were filmed here; The Lone Ranger, Hop along Cassidy and nearly twenty others.

Columbia is nearly in the backyard of Yellowstone National Park (I can see part of it from my Grandfathers house.) The land is still to this day overflowing with gold mines and to those willing to go gold panning, you might still find some very pricy pieces of gold.

 The National Park is being threatened, please help to save it. This is one of the last historical places untouched by technology and tainted by development. Please visit the website and learn more about columbia. http://www.columbiagazette.com.

The photos shown were from the last family trip I took out there in 2008.

If you live close to California or even in Calfornia and have never been to Columbia, take a trip and visit! I promise you the town is beyond what you could fathom and the people and events are just hillbillies who love to mingle with outsiders. As about the Hanfords when you get into town, my family is well known and you might get some special treatment!