Grandparent Stories That Shaped Your Life: We lived nearly 1,500 miles from my only remaining grandmother while I was a child. So I only met her five, maybe six times. I remember her as a tiny, almost fragile woman, with a sweet, quiet disposition. But there was clearly another side! Photos […]
The Slough House Cemetery: From Walking the Plank to Finding Gold
It started with a near-murder. . . The Slough House Pioneer cemetery is a tiny gem in Cosumnes Valley, just over an acre and a half in size. Dating back to 1850, it’s one of the oldest pioneer cemeteries in Northern California. So how did this little cemetery come to be? […]
Gardening Memories
Gardening Memories Around here, brilliantly-colored seed catalogs begin filling our mailbox in early December. Their annual appearance is as much a familiar hallmark of this time of year as holiday cards and twinkling outdoor lights. Seed catalogs remind us that winter’s snow and cold is transitory – and soon we’ll have our fingers buried […]
Grit, Gumption, and a Darn Good Heart
Grit, Gumption & A Darn Good Heart: If you’ve never heard of Laura Naileigh Ellis Dettenrieder, you’re not alone. I confess I hadn’t, until a historian-friend kindly shared her story. As a young woman, Laura came west with the Gold Rush, then bravely left an abusive marriage – a step few women […]
Happy Food Memories – plus a few to forget
Some of our best memories revolve around holiday food. That special Thanksgiving cornbread stuffing? Fabulous. Christmas cookies drizzled with icing? Yum! Somehow or other, I wound up with Box #2 of our old family recipes – Box #1 resides with another sibling, I think. My own […]
Stampede to Bodie
STAMPEDE to BODIE It was 1876 when fabulous gold strikes were reported at Bodie. And as you can imagine, word of the bonanza spread fast in nearby mining circles. Alpine County’s Silver Mountain City had enjoyed its own mining boom a decade earlier, hard on the heels of […]
Monitor Canyon’s Early Mines: The Advance, the Tarshish, & the Zaca
Today, few people know about the Tarshish and the Advance, adjoining mining claims in Monitor Canyon. But once they were famous — two of the earliest and most productive mining claims in Alpine County. The Advance is the westermost of the pair, perched slightly lower in the canyon. Just to its east and uphill sits the Tarshish, likely […]
A World War I Diary – Part 3
The War Comes To An End Nate Arnot, a 26-year-old American stationed in France during World War I, describes his long wait to go home once the war was finally over. For Parts 1 and 2 of this never-before-published diary, click here and here. ____________ Nov 27, 1918 – Wed. Packing up preparatory to going […]
A World War I Diary – Part 2
A Diary from World War I This is the Part 2 of the diary of Nate Arnot, a 26-year-old American stationed in France with the Meteorological Section of the Signal Corps for the American Expeditionary Forces. To read Part 1 of the diary, click here. Sept 25, 1918 Wed. Considerable artillery action all last night. […]
What Stories Are You Telling Yourself As You Write?
What Stories Are You Telling Yourself? I ran across this amazing photo on Facebook. Taken in 1948 by noted photographer Leonard McCombe, it depicts a 91-year-old Navajo story-teller, thrilling his young audience with tales of heroes and monsters. Folk stories that had probably been handed down for generations, which might pass […]
Diary of a Markleeville Native in World War I France
Nate Arnot was one of eight children of Alpine County Superior Court judge N.D. Arnot. Born in Markleeville in 1892, Nate moved to Placerville at the age of twelve with his parents, after his father became an El Dorado County judge. World War I broke out in Europe in 1914, but it was 1917 before […]
A Forgotten Part of Carson Valley History
The Hunsaker Family. . . It was July 17, 1856, when Abraham Hunsaker and his family settled on their Carson Valley ranch. If you’ve never heard the Hunsaker name, well, you’re in good company; hardly anyone here today remembers the story. But it’s a fascinating one! That summer, the extended […]