Foothill Lights

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By the Editors
Photography by Justin Bailie

El Dorado Hills has long been a town searching for an identity. The first indication was a few years ago when residents fought successfully to stay in the 916 area code instead of joining the rest of El Dorado County in 530.
     Polarization runs as deep through the region as the West Bear Mountains Fault, an earthquake fissure beneath El Dorado Hills Boulevard. The depth of the identity crisis became abundantly clear during a bitter local election last fall that saw an initiative to incorporate the town as a city fail. Competing candidates for a proposed city council coalesced into warring factions, dug up mountains of petty and picayune mud, slung it at each other, and ended up alienating so many voters that what had once seemed a slam dunk went down to ignominious defeat.
     It is easy to dismiss El Dorado Hills as a NorCal version of “The OC,” the TV show about a vacuous, overprivileged version of Orange County filled with shopping-obsessed teenagers and indulgent parents, set in a beautiful landscape, and featuring gossip and back stabbing as the mainstay of every day. While there is some of that in EDH, to be sure — the town is home to the stars of an episode of the reality TV show “Daddy’s Spoiled Little Girl,” Kelly and Karly Urata — something more is happening in the land of Serrano Country Club and multimillion dollar McMansions.
     This month in Places, we take a shot at capturing just exactly what is happening in them thar hills.
     First, as this page’s photo illustrates there is La Borgata, a modern-day version of a Tuscan village that represents the town’s striver core, and is the site of one of Sacramento’s more celebrated restaurants (and lively bar scenes), Masque Ristorante. Next, we find the heart and soul of the place via auditions at a thriving youth theater group and an investigation into what makes it so successful. And finally, there’s the dark side: an update on the asbestos-contamination scare a few years ago that threatened to derail the community’s real-estate prosperity.
     At prospermag.com you can check out our Guide to El Dorado Hills, with places to go and things to see in the area. And, in our newest online feature, Prosper Maps, we highlight our featured guide locations, as well as pinpoint where the California Department of Conservation has discovered asbestos in the area.

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