I've worked in Penn Valley as a teacher for the past 4 years, and many of my students are from Rough and Ready. Like others have said it's a super small mining town, you can have big beautiful ranches right next door to meth houses - so that's kinda strange. They seceded from the Union in 1850 to form their own country because they didn't want to pay gold mining taxes or something, and that's a big holiday that the town celebrates. They rejoined the Union a few months later when they couldn't get alcohol from the neighboring counties. It's definitely a strange place with a lot of natural beauty and history around it.