Bernie Zimmerman notes the Nevada County Historical Landmarks Commission's 50th anniversary in 1969 and its plan to commemorate it by interviewing people connected to local history. The feature centers on David Comstock, a leading local historian and publisher of the Nevada County Chronicles, whose motivation to study the area grew from a lifelong engagement with art. He describes moving to Grass Valley, painting and exploring Nevada County's decaying places, and becoming a historian as he perceived a rich but fading history that peaked in a 1930s revival before the Depression. Comstock recalls painting scenes of creeks, barns, and schools—such as the French Corral Schoolhouse—while noting locals' resistance to such imagery and the losses of places like the Brillo House and Tivoli Hotel, underscoring the urgency to document vanishing sites.

Full Transcript of the Video:

Hi, I'm Bernie Zimmerman, Chair of the Nevada County Historical Landmarks Commission.

The commission was created in 1969 by the Board of Supervisors to help preserve and
promote Nevada County history.

This is our 50th anniversary, and to help commemorate it, we're conducting interviews
of people who are closely connected with Nevada County history.

Today I have the honor of talking with Dave Comstock, whom I consider the preeminent local
historian.

In addition to writing a three-volume history of the gold rush called the Nevada County Chronicles,
Dave has written many other articles about local history and operates Comstock Bonanza
Press, which has published over 50 books about local and California history.

Dave, welcome.

Thanks for joining us.

You started your career with a variety of jobs, such as advertising and publishing.

What prompted you to begin to focus on Nevada County history?
One thing led to another in my life, and the only thing that's been consistent all the
time is it's always had something to do with creating art.

Anyway, at a certain point in my life, I was looking for a place where I could go on weekends.

I was living in Walnut Creek, or near Walnut Creek, and I wanted some place that I could
get to in a reasonable time and have a little cab and paint pictures, and wound up coming
to Grass Valley for a bunch of reasons that are unimportant here, but I ended up on Rattlesnake
Road with a shack, and it was a miserable shack.

I started painting pictures, and it was a wonderful place to paint pictures.

I traveled all around the county, where all these tumble down houses and tumble down things.

Nevada County had a lively history, but I was coming in at the tail end of it after I
started having a great revival in the 1930s, all of a sudden, it had its own depression,
and so the buildings got boarded up and what have you.

Most places, most people don't like to see an old beat up building or a broken down barn,
but if you're a painter, you love them, and so I started painting pictures.

Pretty soon I began to find out what it was I was tape making pictures of, and I became
a historian.

Any particular scenes that you painted stand out in your mind?
Well, I started out, first of all, doing creeks and things, then I started to go to barns.

Pretty soon I was doing schoolhouses.

Unfortunately, I did the French Corral Schoolhouse before it was completely destroyed, and it
made a good looking painting, but it was not what people in their neighborhood wanted to
look at.

The Brillo House out there in Chicago Park, where my wife used to take her piano lessons
when she was a young girl.

Beautiful house, owned by the beer wagons, and the next thing you know, they straightened
out the highway along there and took out the building and it was gone.

I painted a picture of what was the Tivoli Hotel on Sacramento Street in Nevada City,
and it had been vacant for a long time, shut down, and they finally sold it to somebody
who was in Israel.

I painted it, and the next day burned out of the ground.

No hours in charges, Father.

No hours in charges.

But I began to see, I had better hurry up.