Placerville will keep ‘Hangtown’ nickname after removing the noose from its logo

Lila Seidman

Two weeks after Placerville opted to nix a noose depicted on its city logo, officials affirmed that the area’s Gold Rush-era name, “Hangtown,” won’t be going anywhere.

City council members voted unanimously to recognize that “Old Hangtown” and “Old Dry Diggins,” another moniker tied to the majority-white town’s mining past, are historically significant.

The decision arrives amid continuing acrimony over how to present the area’s Wild West origins. Three nooses were recently found hanging in the city, including two that weren’t removed because they were on private property and did not rise to the level of a crime, according to police.

Mayor Dennis Thomas said he and Councilman Michael Saragosa brought the item forward this week in light of confusion after the unanimous vote on April 13 to scrub the noose from the town’s logo, the result of a debate that took off in the wake of protests following the police killing of George Floyd.

Between the two votes by the council, former Minneapolis Police Officer Derek Chauvin was convicted of murdering Floyd.

Discussion emerged suggesting it was “the beginning of a slippery slope, that it’s part of this whole grand scheme of taking down everything historical in the city,” Thomas said.

Saragosa said the name — words written down in historical documents and newspapers — are distinct from the symbol of the noose, which was probably incorporated in the city logos in the 1970s and is widely considered a hate symbol.