The tourism heart of Calaveras County is Murphys, a former mining town that recently has morphed into a place so hip that some are calling it the "Carmel of the Mother Lode."

But don't pay a special visit to your hairstylist or pull out your resort-casual cashmere just yet. Murphys is rustic hip, and jeans and a T-shirt will work just fine for visiting wineries, venturing into a cave, zip-lining or what have you.

Just walking around (free history tours depart from the Old Timers Museum) to soak up the atmosphere is revealing in itself, turning up such gems as the "Wall of Comparative Ovations," the Black Bart Playhouse, the Murphys "pokey," a burro named Clarissa and a park with an old-fashioned swimming hole. It's easy to get distracted in Murphys because there's so much to do – especially in summer, when outdoor theater, musical events and festivals compete with wineries and a vast array of recreational opportunities for visitors' time.

Whenever you come, be sure to stick your head inside the Murphys Historic Hotel, in business since 1856 and considered one of the oldest operating hotels in the state. Unlike other hotels in Gold Country, this one wasn't built for mining bigwigs or other money- baggers of the day. It was constructed to house tourists visiting the nearby Calaveras Big Trees, whose giant sequoias – at the time more accessible than those in Yosemite and farther south – were considered among the world's wonders.

Many movers and shakers of the era – including Mark Twain, Ulysses S. Grant, John Jacob Astor, J.P. Morgan, William Randolph Hearst, Daniel Webster and Horatio Alger – stayed at the hotel in the late 1870s. Their names are painted on the doors of the upstairs room where they lodged, and visitors who get permission at the front desk are free to peek inside the "presidential suite," which has been glassed off to accommodate the looky-loos.

Behind the landmark hotel is an unmarked, heavily eroded limestone area bearing testimony to the frenzied activities of miners who used hydraulic monitors and dynamite to blast out gold-bearing sediment. It was, for a while, an exceedingly profitable enterprise.

"They took five and a half million dollars worth of gold off of this hotel property – at $16.40 an ounce," says the hotel's current owner, Dorian Faught. "It was said that a man would get three ounces out of every pan."

One of the largest suspension flumes in the world spanned half a mile between hills just outside the town proper. So much water poured into it that it threatened to flood the town. The trench built to drain it still can be seen – if you know where to look.

More elusive are the ghosts said to haunt a building that Californiahaunts.org declared the second-most-haunted place in the state, after the Woodland Opera House.

"I'm a skeptic, although I've seen a door open and close by itself," says Faught. The ghostbusters will be back at Halloween

Ghosts and gold aside, most people come to Murphys for outdoor recreation and wine. It's the only place in California where one can, quite literally, do a tasting tour of 12 – or is it 14 by now? – wineries without getting into a motor vehicle.

Each Main Street venue, from Twisted Oak to Frog's Tooth to Newsome-Harlow and Milliarie, has an ambience as singular as its wines, which run to big reds and blends of Rhone, Iberian and Italian varietals. For tasting closer to where the grapes grow, it's just a short jaunt to vineyard-ringed establishments such as Stevenot, Chathom, Irish and Vina Moda.

Eighteen varietals are grown at Stevenot alone, including pinot noir, a grape "almost unheard of in the Sierra foothills," says winemaker Kate MacDonald, "It proves we can do just about anything. We have great variety in terroir."

The best-known Calaveras County winery, perhaps, is Ironstone Vineyards, about two miles out of town in the community of Vallecito.

What started out as a family ranch given over to a modest grape-growing operation has grown into a destination winery with attractions on par with anything to be found in the Napa Valley.