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Amador’s Shenandoah Valley is known for its sleek wineries and rolling vineyards, but a hidden gem awaits in the hills just to the south. Go straight as you enter the valley, instead of veering left toward the wineries, and you’ll reach Fiddletown, a Gold Rush-era town whose quirky name reflected the way gold miners spent their off-season, when the creeks were too dry for panning.
On this particular summery Saturday, we’ve spent the afternoon wine tasting, sampling the valley’s barberas, zins and rosés. But on our way back, we detour, drawn to the town with the irresistible name, curious to see what’s there.
In its heyday, this was a boomtown with thousands of residents, three restaurants and 20 shops, plus bustling saloons, dance halls, a school, a church and a U.S. Post Office, and the largest Chinese population outside San Francisco. It wasn’t always called Fiddletown — postal officials agreed to rename the town Oleta in 1878, after an indignant town dignitary petitioned for the change, claiming Fiddletown was just too embarrassing. Fiddletonians reclaimed the name half a century later.
Today, this isn’t so much a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it town — population 235 — as a hidden treasure. And if you blink, you’ll miss all sorts of fun, from a fascinating Chinese museum to an English toffee shop, a cowboy campfire and more. A giant fiddle sits atop the community center, and the entire main drag is a historic landmark. The Fiddletown Preservation Society has spent decades working on these historic sites, but save for a special event at, say, the 1850s Chinese gambling hall or the schoolhouse built a decade later at the corner of American Flat and Suckertown Roads, it’s tough to get a peek inside any of them.
Unless, of course, serendipity is on your side.
Cue the squealing brakes. A “museum open” sign is perched on the dusty road just outside the Chew Kee Store and docent Elaine Zorbas peeks out the door, ready to show visitors around. Zorbas literally wrote the book on Fiddletown — two of them, actually, including “Banished and Embraced: The Chinese in Fiddletown and the Mother Lode” (Mythos Press, 2015).
Inside the cool, dark interior of the rammed-earth building, small wooden drawers hold an apothecary’s worth of spices and herbs. A 1905 calendar hangs on one wall, and an abacus and chops await in the office.
The place looks as if its occupants — first herb doctor Yee Fung Cheung, and later merchant and gambler Chew Kee and his son Jimmie Chow — would return any minute, ready to sell you medicinal herbs and teas, sundries, staples and lottery tickets. Chew had a stake in the gambling hall across the road. And nearly everything inside has been made by hand, from the wooden kitchen sink to the colorful perforated paper strips fluttering at the doorways for luck. It’s a fascinating glimpse of the past — and it’s free, although you’ll certainly want to tuck some cash in the donation jar.
In need of a post-museum pick-me-up, we head down the street to Brown’s English Toffee and Celtic Candies shop, where the fragrance of chocolate and buttery caramel fills the air. Marilyn and Carl McDanel have been making their Guittard chocolate-coated English toffee in Fiddletown for the last 30 years. Now they’re adding candies from the seven Celtic nations to the lineup, from Brittany’s salted caramels to Scotland’s tablet, that tastes like shortbread and crumbly fudge had a love child.
Cruising past what the town calls the world’s largest fiddle, which crowns the community center across the street, we return to the big question: Fiddling or fiddling around? There’s no record of what musical hijinks those 1849 denizens might have been up to. But music is a long and beloved tradition around here, whether you’re joining the annual Fiddlers’ Jam & Street Fair in mid-September, or looking for a little cowboy music on a summery Saturday night.
If you’re into old-school, campfire entertainment, head up to Red Mule Ranch, where Tom and Marie Scofield — who just celebrated their 66th wedding anniversary — open the ranch gates on select Saturday nights throughout the summer for Scofield’s Cowboy Campfire events.
One note: The long and winding Red Mule Road takes you past the vineyards of Le Mulet Rouge winery, but the winery’s tasting room is in Sutter Creek, so save that for another day. (And since we’ve detoured into wine: Fiddletown Cellars is indeed in the heart of Fiddletown, but its tasting room is at Plymouth’s Amador 360.)
The Scofields’ ranch sits on a hilltop, its brightly painted stables, livery and wheelwright buildings photo ops all on their own. On show nights, cars and tour buses pull up to the pasture to deposit guests for a chuckwagon dinner of tri-tip, garlic bread, salad and apple pie, followed by a few fun hours of cowboy poetry, homespun storytelling and tunes.
Tom opens each half of the show with a 20-minute set that ranges from “God Bless America” to “Home on the Range” and “Red River Valley,” before turning over the mic to pros, such as singer and guitarist Tex Weir, who sings of life on the open range — with a few very funny songs thrown in.
Let’s just say, we’ll never listen to “Rawhide” the same way again.
If You Go
Chew Kee Store Museum: The museum is open on Saturdays from 12 to 4 p.m. only, at 14200 Fiddletown Road, Fiddletown. Find historical information and special event details — several of Fiddletown’s historic buildings will be open for tours during the Fiddlers’ Jam on Sept. 15, and there’s a Preservation Society Schoolhouse Benefit Breakfast on Nov. 4 — at https://fps.wildapricot.org.
Brown’s English Toffee: This toffee shop, which is open from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. Thursday-Monday at 14385 Fiddletown Road, sells toffee, fudge salted caramels and other English and Celtic sweets by the pound ($20) and half-pound ($10). Or you can order sweets by the pound online at www.betoffee.com.
Fiddlers’ Jam & Street Fair: This music event and street fair runs from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. on Sept 15; fiddletownca.org.
Scofield’s Cowboy Campfire: The Riverbend Folk Band will perform at the next cowboy campfire, which runs from 6 to 10 p.m. on Aug. 25 at Red Mule Ranch. Tickets for this cowboy music show are $60 each and include a chuckwagon dinner. Make reservations and find more information at www.scofieldscowboycampfire.com.