One night in the 1860s, Mark Twain was relaxing in the bar of Angels Camp Hotel Angels, when he heard the miners’ tale about jumping frogs which inspired his short story, The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County, which later became the title of his first published collection.

How much truth there is in this tale – or indeed in Twain’s story of a jumping frog competition – is open to debate, but since 1928 Angels Camp has had few qualms about cashing in on its literary links by staging (each May) a Jumping Frogs Jamboree, in which frogs compete over three measured hops for a $1,000 prize in front of hundreds of spectators.

While frog-related motifs are now found all over the town, Angels Camp was once a highly productive mining center, yielding 19 million dollars’ worth of gold between 1886 and 1910. The fine points of local history are detailed in the Angels Camp Museum (http://www.angelscamp.gov/index.php/angels-camp-museum), 753 Main Street.

Detour – Murphy’s and Mercer Caverns

Nine miles east of Angels Camp on Hwy-4, the mining village of Murphy’s was named after the two Irish brothers who founded it in 1848. Murphys’s Main (and more or less only) Street held the Murphys Hotel, which opened in 1856 and early on hosted luminaries such as writer Bret Harte, financier J.P. Morgan and future U.S. president, Ulysses S. Grant. Make sure to poke your head around the tiny town’s Oldtimer’s Museum (http://murphysoldtimersmuseum.com).

With time to spare, make a three-mile detour from Murphys along Sheep Ranch Road for the nature-sculpted crystalline formations deep within Mercer Caverns (http://www.mercercaverns.com), revealed on guided tours.