Welcome to the museum

The Gold Nugget Museum was incorperated in 1973. Our mission is to preserve and protect The Ridge heritage through our collection and artifacts and with community education programs. More...

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Our Sponsors
These are the people who help make the museum possible.

Information:

• About the museum
• Gold Nugget Days
• The Depot Museum

Sponsors:

These are the people who help make the museum possible:

• Les Schwab Tire Center
• Frank Maynard, CSA
• Paradise Recreation and Park District
• More of our sponsors...

Every year since 1994, fifty or more elementary grade classes from schools all over the North Valley come to the museum each year to recreate the settler experience. They come from March to early June, two classes at a time. Teachers begin signing up for the program by early fall, some as soon as they have completed the previous year's program.

The program was written and designed to fit into the state curricula for local, California and Westward Movement requirements. The experience is the culminating activity to work the students have been covering in their classrooms. The hands-on experience gives students and parents a better understanding of the past and an appreciation of living without modern conveniences. The museum provides the location, the activities, the materials, and a teacher's manual of background information and biographies of local pioneers. In addition, the Museum trains the parents who lead the activities on the day their child's class attends the program.

On arrival at Nuggetville, the replica Old West town at the museum, students and parents step back in time to the 1850s. Each child has taken on the persona of an area settler. They come dressed appropriately for the era and during their stay learn to make some of the necessities needed by the early settlers.

These experiences help them understand how difficult it was to live without utilities and stores down the street. They make candles, rope, corn husk dolls, build a loom and weave the wool they spin for yarn. Using tubs of water, wash boards and harsh soap they learn to wash the laundry and hang it on the line to dry.

It is great fun to watch the boys and girls shaving. They carefully brush on the lather and use dull knives to shave it off. The serious look on their faces as they work to remove every bit of soap is wonderful.

The highlight of the day is the mid-day meal of stew prepared by the students over a campfire. Cream is churned into butter to slather on the bread they slice. Parents often panic when they find out students will be using knives to prepare the vegetables and slice the bread, but we need very few Band-Aids. In the afternoon they prepare the dessert. We call the fried biscuits rolled in cinnamon and sugar Darn Goods because that's how they taste!

Just like the miners of the 1850s the students dip their pans in the cold water to search for elusive flakes of gold. No one gets rich but the gold bug does bite them as they see the real gold shine in the pan!

The museum's one room school house provides an authentic 1800s school experience. Before entering the classroom the teacher reads the 1850 student behavior rules. The students read authentic historic school books, write on slates and practice script writing with a nib pen and ink. It is interesting that so many students say this is the best part of the day; most seem to enjoy the tight structure--at least for one day!.

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