Gold Country Museum

The Gold Country Museum is a history museum in Auburn that displays artifacts from California's Gold Rush era. The collection includes mining equipment, historical photographs, personal possessions from that period, and a recreated assayer's workshop along with a mine shaft tunnel.

The building was constructed in 1855 and initially served as Placer County's first hospital before being converted to a museum. This transformation connects two important aspects of the region's past, preserving both its medical and mining heritage.

The museum reveals how mining shaped daily life and settlement patterns during the Gold Rush, showing the tools and methods miners actually used. Visitors observe the working conditions and ambitions of those who came seeking fortune in these hills.

The museum offers visitors multiple ways to explore, including gold panning demonstrations and opportunities to handle historical objects directly. Plan enough time to move through all exhibits at a comfortable pace and participate in the hands-on activities.

The museum houses an extensive collection of 19th-century medical instruments that reveal how doctors and caregivers worked during the Gold Rush. These tools tell stories of healthcare practiced under difficult conditions in a frontier setting.