Sam's Town

Cameron Park, California, located on Highway 50 about thirty minutes above Sacramento on the way to Lake Tahoe, has no true downtown, no Main Street, but from 1968 to 2001 it had a road side stop that put that particular highway exit on the map.  Sam Gordon was known as the Sacramento Hof Brau King, having established a chain of twelve “Sam’s Hof Brau” restaurants in the Sacramento area.  Sam was a great collector of early American memorabilia and wanted a showcase for it all, so after selling his hof brau chain to Denny’s restaurants, he bought the original old Red Coach Inn, just off the Highway in Cameron Park, expanded the building a bit and obviously taking a cue from Disneyland, built a fanciful 1890s Western town center and called it Sam’s Town.

Driving up from the Bay Area you would see a series of signs featuring the company mascot, “Sam,” with his handlebar mustache, holding a foaming beer and counting down the time left before arriving at Sam’s Town.  The place was clearly seen from the highway, all lit up at night with hundreds of light bulbs.  The place looked like a strip of an old time Main Street from another era.  It was brightly painted and inviting and like Disneyland’s Main Street, it was a little bit better than a real Main Street of the 1890s ever was.  With nothing more than miles of pastures and trees between Fair Oaks and Placerville, Sam’s Town stood out as quite a sight and was a fantastic hook to lure drivers off the highway for a look.

Once parked, patrons could see the cage used in the original “Planet of the Apes” film by the entrance.  Once through the door, there was a panorama of frontier mining scenes painted by George Mathis, the artist who had painted Ronald Reagan’s portrait hanging in the State Capital.  From there, a series of large open rooms separated by portals contained a myriad of little wonders.  There was a candy shop, with barrels of salt water taffy and many other colorful treats.  There was a museum, which I can barely remember and probably rarely looked at the many times I was there, but it contained the bulk of Sam Gordon’s treasures.  I do remember very well the authentic Wells Fargo stage coach and horse drawn fire engine.  There were wax figures, including one of Abraham Lincoln, baseball memorabilia and antique bicycles.

The rooms were named things like Diamond Jim Room, Honky Tonk Room and there was a fine dining room (some would drop the word “fine”) called the Lillian Russell Room.  There was a great Arcade with an historical span of Arcade amusements. I loved the hand cranked movie machines that gave me my first look at Charlie Chaplin and always got my fortune told by the automated fortune tellers trapped in glass boxes, reading cards and then spitting out a card with my fortune outlined.  What a useless spending of a quarter!  And yet, I loved watching that dressed up dummy’s finger gliding over the cards and then taking away that fortune.  Air hockey was a favorite as well as the more modern electronic games that came in later on, but by the time Pac Man was all the rage, I was in Sam’s Town infrequently.  During my grammar school days it seemed like I was in there all the time.  The place was a wonderful spot for birthday parties and for taking our Bay Area family friends visiting with kids.

You didn’t have to eat dinner in the Lillian Russell Room, for there was an easy fast food counter and you could sit in a bar area, decorated with over 100 antique guns and often with live entertainment on weekends, and have a hamburger.  Patrons sitting at the bar for those famous foaming beers were served peanuts and encouraged to drop the shells on the floor, so there was this effect of sawdust all over the place.  My parents and the other adults of our party would hang out at the tables visiting while we kids ran around the arcade, museum and candy store with a pocket full of quarters having a grand time.  By the time I was in high school that experience was pretty much over and I am surprised the place made it to the new millennium.  So many themed road side stops, which were littered over the roads of California, have disappeared.  Sam’s Town was actually a hold out.  I think my family felt that as kids we had outgrown Sam’s Town and that there were better places to eat after all.  However, if you had a gaggle of ten year old boys for a birthday party, you could let them loose in Sam’s Town and all had a wonderful time.

A commercial development next to Sam’s Town tried to expand on the idea of the Old West Town and only half successfully created a few mini blocks of Western streets to house shops and eateries.  The shopping area was surrounded by a small train to give the place atmosphere, but the buildings looked prefabricated and cheap.  For a long time it was mostly empty, though businesses have filled in over the years and this shopping area has survived where as Sam’s Town has been leveled.  In the place of Sam’s Town is a new modern shopping area, still named for the old road stop, called Sam’s Town Marketplace.  Of course it has nothing to do with the old Sam’s Town and has none of the magical allure of Sam’s Town, but that kind of place, much like the old Nut Tree in Vacaville down the road, were part of an era that is long gone.  Somehow, down in Sacramento at the corner of Watt and El Camino, the original Sam’s survives.  The cartoon Sam is still holding his mug of beer and smiling and bright lights still spell out the mantra: “Families Welcome.”