The spring gold rush to Daffodil Hill

Daffodil Hill

There is no place on Earth like Northern California in the spring. The sky is scrubbed clean by recent and frequent rains. The winter chill hangs low in the morning but midday brings a shirt-sleeves and shorts climate to the gold country.

California State Highway 49 was named for the historic Gold Rush of 1849. Unofficially yet famously called The Gold Rush Trail, it stretches along the Sierra Nevada foothills from southwest of Yosemite National Park to the northeasternmost corner of the state. It meanders through some 300 miles of the most beautiful and historic land in the West.

Less than an hour's drive from California's capitol, Highway 49 passes through an array of mining towns with names that spring from historical texts including Sutter Creek, named after the man whose nearby lumber mill was the gold discovery site in 1848. People still pan gold from the rivers and streams of the region but these days the main Gold Rush is the annual spring pilgrimage of tourists to nearby Daffodil Hill.

Daffodil Hill is in a beautiful alpine setting at an elevation of over 3,000 feet. With pine trees, an old barn, wagon wheels, rusting mining equipment and farming tools, the flowers are everywhere, some three-hundred thousand of them. Here, pea-fowl, chickens, pigeons and lambs make themselves at home because it is their home. Daffodil Hill is a working ranch still owned and operated by the McClaughlin family which planted the first bulbs into this ground in 1887.

Nature sets the schedule for public viewing. Daffodil Hill is a nonprofit and non-commercial tourist favorite which is neither formally promoted nor publicized. The grounds are opened to the public when twenty-five percent of the flowers are in bloom and closes when only twenty-five percent remain. 

300,000 daffodils

The time to visit Daffodil Hill is the spring, usually from the end of March through the first three weeks of April. It's the only time of year you can visit Daffodil Hill without a personal invitation from the McLaughlins.

As of March 10, 2011, the anticipated public opening of Daffodil Hill is Saturday, March 18th. Give it another week or two for maximum blooms.

For the most recently updated visitation schedule phone (209) 296-7048.