Nevada Books

Zanjani brings the vanished world of the goldrush to life with a masterful blend of vivid details concerning key lives and scenes together with a sophisticated understanding of the demography and geology of the mining camp. Wonderful!

Edited by Angus R. Quinlan, Ph.D. (deputy director of the Nevada Rock Art Foundation), Great Basin Rock Art: Archaeological Perspectives is an anthology of essays by learned authors concerning some of the most ancient cultural and artistic relics known to humankind. Topics include petroglyph dating, native and anthropological interpretations of cultural identity, a gender-inclusive view of the social context of rock art, and much more. A handful of black-and-white photographs and diagrams illustrate this scholarly, in-depth scrutiny and hypothesis of what rock art has to tell us of prehistoric culture.

I read these books, and they are full of informaton and are easy to read and accurate. I highly recomend these to anyone serious about learning God's will!

The intended audience for this book is historians rather than general readers. At the same time, a reader with knowledge of this period would probably find the recollections of Grant Sawyer fairly entertaining.

You might call Sawyer the last "wild west" governor of Nevada. He describes the animus and snobbery Easterners often expressed toward Nevadans in the 50's and 60's, when they looked down their noses at us as Godless heathens. Of course, today Nevada is just one other sunbelt boomlet.

During Sawyer's administration the gambling industry was regulated, cleaned up and otherwise transformed into a modern industry. The most famous flash point in this process was the revocation of Frank Sinatra's gambling license, and the book sheds some anecdotal light on that moment.

Interestingly enough, JFK tried to intervene on his buddy Frank's behalf in the months just before his assassination, but Sawyer rebuffed Kennedy. (Maybe JFK was afraid Frank's mobster friend Sam Giancana would cut off his supply of loose women?)

Sawyer credits his Administration with two key accomplishments. Against the cow county opposition of the Nevada Legislature, the Governor championed the cause of civil rights, and used the powers available to him to try to end discrimination against blacks. He also was one of the few Americans of his era to denounce the tyranny of J.Edgar Hoover and his enabling co-dependent, Robert Kennedy.

(Few were the politicians willing to accuse Hoover of "Nazi tactics" in public. Grant Sawyer did.)

Sawyer has nice things to say about most Nevada politicians of his era with the noted exceptions of James Santini and Paul Laxalt. The former he considered a self-serving opportunist; the latter, an opportunist blabbermouth. But then Grant Sawyer is not the first prominent Nevadan to note that Laxalt was constitutionally unable to keep a confidence. (My high school English teacher said the same thing.)

The only minor lunacy I encountered in the book was Sawyer's anger that Columbia River water was being "wasted" by allowing it to flow into the ocean. I guess he thought it should dry up somewhere around Kelso and thus wasn't very salmon-friendly.

Must have been a lot of these books purchased as gifts because you can pick a used one up on amazon for a pittance, and the history-minded out there should do just that!

The writer is very honest in her portrayal of frontier life. Told in the first person using common language of the times. The reader gets a first hand account of the fierce independence of early settlers. The book is also humorous as the author looks at the unsophisticated life led by her and her neighbors. I would recommend this book to anyone interested in history with a light, human touch.

The heroine of "Helping Hands, Helping Hearts", the little girl with Down syndrome whose parents were instrumental in starting the organization that finally became Opportunity Village, was my sister Claudia Mae.

As I read Jack Harpster's book I reflected back on those days in the 1950s when I was going to "Fifth Street Grammar School" in Las Vegas and sometimes helping out with little errands and such that my folks would ask me to do. I didn't know, and neither did they, that something great was going to come of their hard work.

This is an excellent book.

I really liked this book. It is well written and a real page turner. Good story line and plot. A real entertaining read.

Imagine the thrill that touches a person at the first Springtime sighting of wild poppies in bloom. If the blossoms are gold, then it's a distinctively California experience, evoking a strong sense of place and of natural wonder. I felt something of the same qualities of delight and surprise when I read Shirley Ewart's Highly Respectable Families: The Cornish of Grass Valley California 1854 - 1954, newly released by Comstock Bonanza Press. In her words the Cornish migration and assimilation into Nevada County, California, assumes the energy of a natural force.

At the center of this ramble through local social history is a tuft of eight family stories - actually a whole meadow - that exemplify the values of the immigrants from the southwestern-most corner of the United Kingdom who came to America to find opportunity for themselves and their children. Here is a vivid and highly readable account of 100 years of nearly constant emigration from Cornwall to California. In telling the stories Shirley enumerates the values that made these families both respected and successful - self-reliance, devotion to family and church, ethnic identity, faith in self-improvement, scorn of liquor, impassive acceptance of hard work and danger, love of music. She explains how these families, who were the arms and hands of industry in the mine, and the voices and faces of faith in the church, earned the respect of the wider community. In a new land they brought an old world culture to full flower.

The vitality of the book comes from the stories themselves, accounts of representative families, such as the Henwoods, the Bennallacks, the Tremenwans and others, all of which turn on intimate moments of decision and self-revelation. The book tells the story of the George family and of Harold J. George, who was offered a cornet if he would learn to play it and who went on to conduct the fabled Grass Valley Cornish Carol Choir for half a century and to bring music to children in the Grass Valley schools. It relates the love story of Jim and Alberta Rowe (grandfather of our Cornish Cousin Winnifred Rowe Cannon) who reportedly never exchanged a cross word in sixty years of marriage, and who were determined that their son would never be "a mucker in a mine." It tells of Mary Anne Mitchell, a young widow and mother scraping by in Cornwall, who had a proposal of marriage from a Cornishmen in America she knew primarily through his letters. She considered the offer and prayed and in the end it was thinking of the future of her two children that turned the balance. In recounting these stories Shirley had the help of Harold T. George, whose name also appears on the book.

Shirley, who spent much of her childhood in St. Ives, Cornwall, and knows first-hand the hardship of immigration and the miseries of homesickness, brought a rare understanding to this work. She was never turned down for an interview, which says as much about her empathy as it does about the generosity of the families she met. She collected these stories over two decades and relates them with sympathy and skill. All of us who are part of the Cornish community owe her a debt of gratitude for preserving and relating these intimate accounts and we are indebted to her publisher for presenting them in such an appealing volume.

I'm planning a trip out to the park this fall for some hiking and climbing, and I'm glad I got my hands on this guide. The route descriptions are mostly hikes or easy scrambles up to the peaks and through the bristlecone groves. The book's got a good deal background info and history on the park, detailed route descriptions with variations, gear recommendations, amenities and park regulations all packed into a convenient and light book. The maps are simple but useful for getting a good overview of the terrain, basically drawings showing the lines of the ridges, trails, roads, bristlecone groves and glaciers. For good maps stick with the USGS 7.5 minute quads. Most route descriptions also include black and white pictures of the route from a good vantage point.

A couple words of warning: distances and elevations are all metric, and some of the info, particularly on amentities, may be somewhat outdated, having been printed in 1988.

UPDATE: Yes, my trip went very well and I had a great time out at Great Basin. If you use this guidebook be forewarned: The authors' descriptions include many extremely rugged and scary off trail routes described as easy or moderate, but which are moderate only for people in excellent physical shape and having a good amount of real-world wilderness routefinding experience.

When I first saw this book I had to wonder if we really needed another guide to hiking in the Sierras. These are some of the most popular mountains in the United States. During a recent backpack trip along the Rae Lakes Loop in Kings Canyon National Park, I spent the night with some 60 people at Woods Creek Crossing. Later, at the junction between the John Muir Trail, Kersage Pass Trail, and the cutoff to Charlotte Lake I met about a dozen people; one person there suggested the Park Service install a traffic light. Still, Barry Parr's guide is a worthy addition to the numerous guidebooks covering the region, in part because by following his routes you can get to highly scenic but little known destinations all over the range.

Barry Parr divides the Sierras into ten distinct regions. Two of these, the north and south Gold Country (foothill regions) have received little coverage in other guides. Because of this, and the foothill hikes he mentions in Sequoia and Kings Canyon National Parks, this guide to Sierras includes more off-season hiking than most guidebooks. But even in regions that do receive a lot of coverage, notably Yosemite and trailheads in and around the Owens Valley, Parr manages to find some wonderful hikes where one can avoid the crowds.

In all, the book describes 140 walks. 106 of the trails receive extended coverage, with nice topographical maps and detailed directions. The remaining 36 are shorter hikes with easy to find trailheads. He includes these as "honorable mentions." Most of the trails described are dayhikes. Some are short enough for families with small children, but most are fairly extensive and moderately strenuous. At least 1/2 the hikes in this guide will require you to be in good physical condition. Parr also throws in a few backpack trips so that hikers can explore some of the fabulous backcountry in this region. Some "classic" hikes (often found elsewhere) are included: the climb of Mt. Tallac in Tahoe and the Yosemite Falls trail come to mind. But for the most part, the routes described here are not that common and you will not face the crowds. The Rockefeller Grove of Sugar Pines in Yosemite, for example, is an easy to get to but a relatively isolated destination, even on crowded summer weekends. The Deadman Canyon backpack trip in the backcountry of Sequoia and Kings Canyon is also wonderful with far fewer crowds than other backcountry destinations. Finally, it should be noted that Parr includes a few cross country rambles through rough terrain. Isolation abounds on routes like these, but you will need to be an experienced hiker to attempt them.

On the whole, this is an excellent book, and Parr is to be commended for his good work. The diversity of hikes means people of all abilities, interests, and fitness levels will be able to find one or more walks in each region suited to them. Full of natural and local history, listing the major long distance trail routes in the Sierra, and describing lesser known trailheads, this book is a gem. Hikers who want to explore the truly wild side of the Sierras should be sure to get this book.