COLUMBIA KATE'S TEAHOUSE

Many folks have reported that walking into Kate's Teahouse is like taking a deep breath in an aromatherapy manufacturing center. There are so many aromas and essences swirling around, You will feel both relaxed and invigorated at the same time.

Tea and history go together like, well, tea leaves and hot water. The 1850's mining town, Columbia, is literally steeped with essences of treasure, adventure and stories.

Columbia Kate's spin on the age-old drink tells its own story while offering antiques, specialized gifts and even antique buttons which are notorious story tellers themselves.

Seated at tables named after real mining claims of Columbia's heyday, a guest may learn why women of early California had entrepreneurial opportunities like no other state at that time.

Over a cup of tea, stories fly thru the air like dimes from the old barn's reputed ghost of a murdered French woman. She is said to have worked in a bakery on the same site before there was a barn.

Why she likes dimes, no one knows.

Recalling roots earlier than even British tea, Kate's shares tea lore as liberally as the gold miners squandered their gold on water, wagering, whiskey and women.