Nuggets of Nevada County History

by Juanita Kennedy Browne
Nevada County Historical Society, January 1, 1983
Paperback, 143 pages

Nuggets of Nevada County History first appeared in 1983. Her second book, Tales of Two Cities and a Train, was followed by Sketches of Yesterday and Today in Nevada County, in which she provided text to accompany a collection of vivid color illustrations of local landmarks by artist Marilyn Starkey. Shortly before her death, Juanita Browne completed her only fictional work, Thomasina and the Tommyknocker, a delightful book for children. (All her books are available from the Nevada County Historical Society.)

Nuggets of Nevada County History covers such exciting, humorous, controver-sial, and tragic historical events and personalities as

• Rough and Ready, Humbug, Little York, Red Dog, Walloupa, and You Bet and how they got their unusual names;
• Lola Montez, Lotta Crabtree, Emma Nevada, Felix Gillet, Lyman Gilmore, and other famous and infamous characters of the 19th century;
• Fascinating stories of the “Never Come, Never Go” narrow gauge railroad, and histories of the Empire and Malakoff gold mines;
• Butter, beer, ice, carnivals, and crime at wild and woolly Truckee; raising crops and critturs in the bucolic rural paradise at Chicago Park;
• The sad demise of the Nisenan Indians; the frantic origins of the Comstock silver rush, and the anticlimactic shutdown of hydraulic mining;

All these and more are illustrated by more than 50 historical photos, and described with compassion and humor by the inimitable Juanita Browne.

About the Author
Juanita Kennedy Browne grew up in Oklahoma, in the heart of a lead and zinc mining district. After World War II, her family moved to California, and she worked as a technical editor for Douglas Aircraft in Long Beach, and later for Aerojet-General in Sacramento. In 1973 Juanita and her husband, Pete Browne, and their two youngest sons, Juan and Dana, moved to their Christmas tree farm in Grass Valley. Fascinated by the similarity between the hard-rock mines of that area and those in her hometown, Juanita began mining the rich historical resources of the gold country. In addition to her books and magazine articles, between 1979 and her untimely death in 1993, she wrote a monthly newspaper column on 100-year-old events.