El Dorado by "Helldorado", a satirical nickname given to Tombstone, Arizona (United States) in the 1880s by a disgruntled miner who complained that many of his profession had traveled far to find El Dorado, only to wind up washing dishes in restaurants. The South African city Johannesburg is commonly interpreted as a modern-day El Dorado, due to the extremely large gold deposit found along the Witwatersrand on which it is situated. Spanish conquistadores had noticed the native people's fine artifacts of gold and silver long before any legend of "golden men" or "lost cities" had appeared. The prevalence of such valuable artifacts,
El Dorado County, California through El Dorado County until its replacement with the telegraph service in 1861; U.S. Highway 50 follows the Pony Express route today. The "Placerville Mountain Democrat", California's oldest surviving newspaper, serves El Dorado County. The El Dorado County Sheriff provides court protection, county jail administration, and coroner service for all of the county and provides patrol and detective services for the unincorporated areas of the county. Placerville, population 11,000, has a municipal police department, as does South Lake Tahoe, population 22,000. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, the county has a total area of , of which is land and