Fountain & Tallman Museum

Circa 1852

The Fountain & Tallman building is a treasured historic museum in Placerville, El Dorado County, California, and is listed on the National Register of Historic Places.

It is the site of John Fountain & Benjamin Tallman's Soda Works, which provided clean drinking water and refreshments to early Placerville and El Dorado County pioneers. Today, it is a museum and the home of the El Dorado County Historical Society.

The museum building style is called rock rubble construction and is a prime example of the first permanent buildings that transitioned Placerville from a mining camp into a proper town. The stone walls of the building are more than 2 feet (0.61 m) thick; sufficient to keep ice and soda supplies cool.

After the close of the soda water factory, the building served many different purposes for many different owners. At one time it was the town jail, the Pacific Gas & Electric Company office (1927-1961), and has had other associated uses and owners. When the building was donated to the El Dorado County Historical Society in 1981 by Fay Ripley Cannon, it became a museum upon the contingency that it be preserved for public benefit as a historical landmark, which was an earlier stipulation originating with the PG&E sale. When the building was renovated, lifting up the stone floor revealed a bowie knife (handle long since rotted away), flakes of gold, and pieces of broken glass soda bottles with the original building owner's mark intact. These items are still on display in the museum.

The building was converted into a museum by the generosity of many donors including using funds from the estate of Placerville native, Stella Tracy. Originally called the Placerville Historical Museum, it contains some of Tracy's turn-of-the-century furniture and photos as well as other exhibits of 19th- and 20th-century memorabilia.