El Dorado Hills roughly translates to “The Golden Hills.” Though our town was named for its influx of miners during the Gold Rush since we are so close to Coloma, the only gold here is the dirt hills that run the entire length of it. The hills are so massive, that even during the rainy season, they remain dry and yellow. They’re not even grass; just dirt, and weeds. I swear, one summer, the whole town is going to burst into flames.
I’ve lived in EDH almost my entire life. It is pretty much all I have known. While I think EDH is a great place to raise kids, for several reasons, I really couldn’t wait to leave it. The town is old and lies roughly 40 minutes east of Sacramento. It runs no more than three miles in length and barely two miles in width.
Eldo is a great place to raise kids. The bulk of the population is families and retired people who have lived there their entire lives. It’s not the kind of place for single adults. There’s no nightlife or really any social aspect outside of your kids. You meet people through your child’s school and their extracurricular events. We have no community activities or festivals or anything to put EDH on the map. There’s also a lot of ‘new’ money put into our town. Intel is only 3 miles away, so the majority of parents work there. As a result, there’s a lot of money being put into our public school district. Since the schools are so good, the family population is huge. Therefore, there are more students than we have room for. Almost 10 elementary schools and 4 middle schools in EDH alone, but only one high school.
Even though it really is a great suburb to grow up in, I hated it. It is very sheltered. Living in Eldo is like living in a bubble, it’s not reality. The entire outside world is hidden from the kids. Everyone has their money, their Mercedes, and their boats. Most moms are stay-at-home, while the dads ignore their kids. You would think with the way our society progresses, it wouldn’t be that way. It’s like the rest of the world moves around the town. I hated how locked away we were. Most of our population was white, privileged, and conservative. I never fit, being none of those things. My mom is a single mom and we lived in the lowest-income part of the town. I felt bad for my mother my whole life because I knew everyone else looked down on us. Like it wasn’t as good as theirs, so everyone felt bad for us. But that’s not real life. The majority of the country struggles and single-parents are actually common. Just not in Eldo.
I think the overall drawback of EDH is the people. Everyone is fake, pretending we all have money, and mansions on the hill, and shiny cars. We all know everyone is in debt. Yet maintaining appearances were everything to these people. I never saw the point of it. It’s not like we were Beverly Hills. No one even knows where we are. I always felt like I never fit in. None of my beliefs matched up with the town’s ideals. It made making friends difficult.
Now that I’ve moved away, I can finally see what a bubble EDH was. I hate to think that I had been raised with people who refused to acknowledge the rest of the world. People who never turned on the news, read a book, went to church, or watched anything on television other than reality shows. What kind of car you drive should not matter at all or if you play for the most expensive soccer club (I didn’t). Things that these people put above good solid morals have absolutely no meaning in the real world.
Camping in Northern California 