Arrowtown is a historic mining town about 8 miles from Queenstown, and it is cute and charming. The well-preserved buildings were used by Chinese and European immigrants. There are strict building codes so that all downtown structures conform to the look and feel of the original old town. Gold was discovered here in 1862 by William Fox, and the town’s original name was Fox’s. But the Arrow River gave it is current name. The photos were taken on one of two main streets, which were pretty crowded…we counted 11 buses in the parking lot!
The man in the picture with the kids panning for gold was very funny. We were commenting that the chance of anyone finding gold was near zero percent, and he whispered conspiratorially to us, “Do you want to know a secret? A small flake of gold was planted in all of their pans. It’s so much fun when they discover it and start yelling and dancing around!”
