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 […]
Story of a Plain Girl: A Q&A with Memoir Author Marian Beaman
Looking for a little Memoir inspiration? Well, author Marian Beaman has not just one inspiring memoir in print, but two. Her first book, Mennonite Daughter: The Story of a Plain Girl, debuted in 2019. And her second, My Checkered Life: A Marriage Memoir, followed in 2023. Marian’s intriguing first book shares stories of growing up […]
A Lifetime of Service: Dr. Eliza Cook
Was Eliza Cook really Nevada’s first woman doctor? Despite what you may have heard, the answer seems to be no. None other than legendary Nevada historian Guy Rocha debunked that common myth, pointing out that other female physicians were already in practice more than a decade before Eliza received her medical degree in 1884. […]
Marketing Your Memoir
The Best Marketing Tip I Ever Heard: Not every memoir writer truly cares how many books they’ll sell. Sometimes, a memoir is just something the author needed to write! It’s therapy. It’s self-affirmation. It’s memorializing a life. It fills an inner need. But if you hope to eventually sell your memoir, you’ll need to think about marketing. […]