From Goldrush to Grapes

Crystal Vista Reserve is a 28-acre vineyard property centrally located in the heart of the Sierra Foothills.

Midway between Sacramento and South Lake Tahoe, Camino is steeped in history. For nearly a century, the town’s trees fueled the Michigan-California and Sierra Pacific lumber companies, whose colorful mill houses still decorate Carson Road in downtown Camino.

Along this same route, parallel to today’s U.S. Highway 50, stagecoaches and wagon trains once brought hopeful prospectors and pioneers to the gold rush towns along the Highway 49 corridor. In the 1860s, the fast horses and riders of the Pony carried overland mail between St. Joseph, Missouri, and Sacramento, California, passing through Camino in both directions. Tourists, farmers, and ranchers stayed in the Camino Hotel during their journey along the Lincoln Highway, the first transcontinental road for automobiles in the United States.

Easily accessible from Highway 50, Carson Road, and the El Dorado Trail, CVR lies in the American River watershed and is contiguous to forested lands and active wildlife corridors on three sides. The vineyard land is being donated by a private owner with the goal of building a community recreation and education space where trees, plants, and wildlife have been restored to their native ecology.