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If you go by the Rescue Fire department you can get these nifty license plate frames that say, “Where the hell is Rescue, CA?“. It’s funny because, as anyone who lives in Rescue will tell you, you get a lot of “Where there hell is…” when you say you live there. Now that’s cool and all, but what I’d like is, “Where the hell is Skinners, CA?“.

See, the US Postal service says I live in Rescue, CA. Anyone driving by would say I live in Cameron Park, CA because while Rescue is mostly rural I live in a slice of suburbia that borders Cameron Park and is pretty much indistinguishable from it. Turns out they’re both wrong, I live in Skinners, CA.

Never heard of Skinners, CA? Don’t worry, neither had I until first Google and then Yahoo maps enlightened me.

So what’s this about Skinners? Welp, near as I can figure, in 1860 (James?) Skinner set up a vineyard about a mile up the trail from the then brand new Pleasant Grove House Pony Express stop. Today, vestiges of the old Skinner winery are still visible at the nursery at Cameron Park Drive and Green Valley Road, which also happens to be the centerpoint of Skinners, CA on the online maps. Go figure.

In the 1950s roughly 5000 acres was sold to Larry Cameron and later slowly sold off to developers (and I assume something about a Park was also involved ;)). Now somehow ol’ Larry retained top billing rights and James got relegated to cartographer minutia.

It wasn’t until I started messing with the online map engines a while back that I discovered this “Skinners” guy and looked up the history.

Now it’s a lot of fun to put in “Skinners, CA” in various online services knowing that most people — even people who know where Rescue, CA is — will look at it and go, “Where the hell?!?” but most computers will be able to pinpoint it within a few feet of the nursery up the road.

A great example of this is Flickr’s new places feature. When you put in “Skinners, CA” what do you get?

So now you know where the hell Skinners, CA is.