PLACERVILLE – We were staring through the locked saloon doors at an empty room. Me, my friend Jack, and three people fresh off their motorcycles – we were all bummed.

What was missing was the bar, the stools, and pretty much everything else, particularly the man-size dummy, wearing a faded red flannel shirt and jeans, hanging outside from a post beside a second-story window.

This used to be Hangman's Tree Tavern on Placerville's Main Street, a small – if slightly altered – monument to the days when there was a gold rush in these here parts, and the foothills of California were wild.

Jack and I wanted to see the dummy. The biker trio – two men and a woman of mid-boomer age, all in jeans, boots and T-shirts – were looking for the bar.

"Is there somewhere else to get a coldbeer?" one of the biker guys asked. He was tall, thin and surprisingly agreeable. He said "coldbeer" as one word, as if beer is served no other way. There's another bar just a block away, we told them.

They said a happy thanks and headed down the street. "You know," the coldbeer guy said as he walked away, "I heard this place is haunted. The stump of the hangin' tree is still in the basement."

He's right, about the tree at least (see box). Not sure about the ghosts. But a sign told us that the Hangman's Tree Tavern moved last month out to Smith Flat Road, a short ways north of Highway 50 and Main Street. Who says things don't change in Placerville?

The truth is, however, this really is a throwback town, back in some real ways to the Gold Rush era, but more powerfully, back about a half-century to the days when life revolved around main streets in big cities and small towns like Placerville.

For lots of people from Sacramento and the Bay Area, Placerville is the equivalent of a fly-over state, a drive-by city on the way to or from the Sierra. All they know are the what-are-these-doing-here traffic lights on Highway 50 and the gas stations and chain coffee shops at the bottom of town.

What they miss is a real town with a Main Street that's more than just a stretch of tourist charm. It's got the energy of real life, of small restaurants and drug stores, of banks and cleaners and an Army-Navy store.

"It's a bunch of moms and pops trying their best," said Jack. He's Jack Sirard, the retired financial editor and columnist for The Bee, and he's been living nearby for eight years. I met him for breakfast a couple of weeks ago at Sweetie Pie's, a bright, airy Victorian with hearty food, and he showed me around his adopted hometown.

Standing at the top of the hill by the "new" county courthouse – built in 1912 to replace the one that burned down in 1910 – and looking down on the bulk of Main, you see both 1860 and 1960.

You can feel the foothills close around the town, the steep hillsides with exposed rock and the rolling hills farther off that are a reminder this was a mining center.

The streets have expensive cars from the courthouse, trucks from the locals and big choppers from the motorcycle crowd, which seems to be the only group of travelers who know enough to stop here.

Main Street is crowded with wood awnings, and at the bottom of the hill there's the bell tower that was the town's fire alarm starting in 1865, back when a fire alarm meant something.

There are also living stores, not just antique shops and galleries. And while the businesses are more than only "moms and pops" – the Starbucks is right next to the Mr. Pickles – the feel of the town, the energy and mood, come from the smaller spots, the restaurants and bars and shops that seemingly have been there forever.

Placerville Hardware really has been there close to forever. It's the oldest continuously operating hardware store west of the Mississippi, dating from 1852, though the site started as a hotel in 1850. (There was also a fire involved, as with much of the formerly wood buildings in town.)

Out front, right off there's something you don't see everyday in these modern times. Tables of goods – gloves, candles, tools – just sitting unattended.