Auburn Lake Trails Golf Course

Par 58 courses get dismissed by golfers who haven't played one, and that's fine — it keeps the tee sheets manageable. Auburn Lake Trails is a short course in the Sierra Nevada foothills community of Cool, California, a small, unincorporated El Dorado County town that sits along the old Highway 49 corridor — the same Gold Rush route that drew prospectors through this canyon country in the 1840s and 1850s. The surrounding terrain is classic foothill California: dry summers, oak woodland, rocky ridgelines, and the kind of elevation change that shows up in your legs before it shows up on a scorecard.

An all-par-3 or heavily par-3-weighted layout demands short game precision over power, and at altitude in the Sierra foothills, even modest distances can carry and roll differently than golfers expect coming from the valley floor.

Cool sits near the Auburn State Recreation Area and the American River Canyon, making this a genuine outdoor destination — a round here fits naturally into a day that might also involve hiking, rafting, or simply escaping Sacramento's summer heat.