If you drove past the gray building at 4462 Highway 4 this summer expecting to smell garlic and slow-cooked pork from the parking lot, you found a quiet storefront instead. Rossetti's at the 19th Hole has closed. The space is now listed as a turnkey restaurant opportunity, fully equipped kitchen, twelve beer taps, stone fireplace, and a transferable beer and wine license included, waiting for whoever wants to try again.
For a stretch of road with a population you can count in the hundreds, that closure is real news. But it is not the first time this exact building has changed hands, and understanding why tells you more about how Avery actually works than any single restaurant ever could.
The Building That Keeps Changing Its Name
Before it was Rossetti's, the building was Noreen and Smitty's 19th Hole, run by Noreen Dobson and her husband Smith "Smitty" Dobson. Noreen was born a Rossetti, daughter of a family that ran an 85-year Italian restaurant in Wallace before that original spot sold in 2006 and closed for good. Her son, Ron Sellick, spent over ten years renovating the Avery building with his partner, Vickie Doll-Skidmore, before reopening it as Rossetti's at the 19th Hole in December 2022, carrying the family name back into business.
That is two full restaurant identities in one building inside a couple of decades, plus a decade of renovation in between. The current listing markets the space as "revitalized" and "move-in ready," which is real estate language for: someone already did the hard part, and the building is ready for whoever's next.
None of that is a verdict on Avery. It is a pattern. Restaurants in this building have never been the fixture. They are the tenant.
There's a line from the 1999 Avery-Hathaway Pines Community Plan that locals still quote when this kind of thing comes up:
"Those who live here would like to see a small village in Avery, not a string of strip malls, a community that takes the natural environment into consideration when change or growth is proposed."
A quarter century later, that's more or less what happened. Not a strip mall. Not a chain. Just one building, cycling through the same handful of local families trying to make a restaurant work on a two-lane highway with a few hundred year-round neighbors.
What Never Actually Left
While the restaurant slot rotates, four things on this same short stretch have not budged.
The Historic Avery Hotel started as a four-room family home built by Joseph and Sarah Goodell in 1851, became a hotel in 1853, and has been running since, making it the oldest continuously operating hotel in Calaveras County. George Avery bought it from the Goodells in 1869 and expanded it twice. The Gotelli family renovated it in 1992. Today it handles overnight guests and events up to 150 people, still booking weddings and rehearsal dinners out of the same pavilion.
Howard's Mystic Saloon, a few doors down at 4529 CA-4, has been running its skull-chandelier, shuffleboard-and-jukebox operation year-round under Curt and Tana Howard. It's drinks only, no food, and it doesn't pretend to be anything else. On the Fourth of July this year, it hosted a free, 21-and-up punk show with BITE and Creepy Crawlies from the Bay Area and Calaveras County, plus Them Party Dolls from Columbia. That's not a seasonal gimmick. It's the same low-overhead model the bar runs on every week.
Day-O Espresso, the drive-thru at 68 Avery Hotel Road, has quietly become the corridor's actual morning ritual, known less for the espresso than for its cinnamon toast on thick bread.
JC Power Equipment, run by Jim and Nancy Conway since January 2019, fixes the weed eaters, generators, and chainsaws for the whole corridor, plus sells Honda generators and ethanol-free fuel. It has no glamour and no reason to close. Everyone up and down Highway 4 eventually needs a small engine fixed.
What these four have in common is that none of them depend on a dinner crowd showing up on a Tuesday in February. A hotel books rooms and events. A bar sells drinks with minimal kitchen overhead. A coffee stand serves a five-minute transaction. A repair shop fixes what people already own. A full-service restaurant needs both steady local traffic and enough pass-through diners to fill tables on a highway that most people are only using to get somewhere else. That's a harder business to run here than it looks from the road.
The Real Draw Isn't a Menu
If you want proof that Avery's actual community backbone runs through something other than restaurants, look at what happened at the Ebbetts Pass Community Center a couple weeks ago.
EPCC occupies a building that started life in 1941 as a one-room elementary school. It was rededicated in 1964 as Hazel Fischer Elementary, honoring a teacher and principal who reportedly never missed a day of school in nearly 25 years there. When a new school was built carrying her name, the original building became Independence Hall under the Ebbetts Pass Wonderland Association, ahead of the nation's bicentennial. The nonprofit that runs it now, Ebbetts Pass Community Center Inc., was formally established in 1974 and still serves as a hub for the Highway 4 corridor communities.
Every early August since the 1970s, EPCC has held a two-day flea market as its biggest fundraiser. This year, despite the heat, roughly a thousand locals and visitors turned out, and organizers estimated more than 2,000 volunteer hours went into pulling it off. Saturday's line started forming at least an hour and a half before doors opened at 8 a.m.
A thousand people showing up for a flea market run by volunteers, in a place where the year-round population is measured in the hundreds, says something the restaurant turnover doesn't. The corridor's actual gathering instinct isn't built around where to eat. It's built around institutions that have been showing up in the same spot for decades, whether that's a hotel that's operated since 1853 or a flea market that's operated since the Nixon administration.
What's Actually Open Right Now
If you're trying to plan an evening or send visiting family somewhere specific, here's the current state of the Avery stretch as of this summer:
- Historic Avery Hotel for a stay, a meal, or booking an event space that seats up to 150. Call ahead rather than emailing.
- Howard's Mystic Saloon for a drink and the goth-bar atmosphere, no food, live music some nights, watch their schedule for the next show.
- Day-O Espresso for the morning coffee run, and don't skip the cinnamon toast.
- JC Power Equipment for anything with a small engine that's stopped working, from a chainsaw to a generator.
- The old Rossetti's building sitting available for its next chapter, kitchen and taps intact, waiting on someone with the same patience Ron Sellick and Vickie Doll-Skidmore had.
That last one might not stay empty long. This building has a habit of finding someone willing to put in the years.
Living along this stretch of Highway 4 means watching the restaurant slot turn over every so often while the older, less glamorous businesses just keep going. That's not a knock on anyone who's tried to run a kitchen here. It's just how a town this small tends to sort itself out over time.
If you're weighing what a property on this corridor is actually worth, whether that's a weekend cabin, a full-time home, or something with rental potential once the season shifts, Kip Machado & Team know this stretch of Highway 4 the way locals do, not the way a listing sheet does. Schedule a consultation when you're ready to talk specifics.
