$8.00
All books in the Nevada County Historical Society store are brand new.
by Orval Bronson
Paperback, 95 pages
Nevada County Historical Society, January 1, 2002
Ever since white men gave it a name in the spring of 1850, this mountain village that calls itself a city has been the source of boastful claims and unbelievable promises that sometimes come true—or nearly so.
More than 150 years after its founding Nevada City is scarcely larger in size (and may even contain fewer persons) than when it began; yet it continues to attract visitors, settlers, entrepreneurs and self-taught wizards at the same high rate as during the California Gold Rush.
Never a ghost town, Nevada City has provided shelter for talented gentlemen and resourceful ladies, flimflam artists and hardworking mechanics, imaginative inventors, eccentric philosophers, scandalous libertines, steamboat-racing bankers, minstrels, poets, malcontents and storytellers. And each year brings a new flock of dedicated genealogists to this antiquarian paradise to locate adventurous forebears who wandered the wood-planked streets of Nevada City.
Like the minuscule metropolis it celebrates, the book is snugly filled with historical evidence of unusual families who managed to keep the place alive and kicking for a century and a half.
A local time line, brief biographies of 40 pioneers, bibliography and index, 3 maps, and 54 historic photographs and lithographic plates complete the package.