“A Native American rejoinder to Richard White and Jesse Amble White’s California Exposures.”—Kirkus Reviews Rewriting the history of California as Indigenous. Before there was such a thing as “California,” there were the People and the Land. Manifest Destiny, the Gold Rush, and settler colonial society drew maps, displaced Indigenous People, and reshaped the land, but they did not make California. Rather, the lives and legacies of the people native to the land shaped the creation of California. We Are the Land is the first and most comprehensive text of its kind, centering the long history of California around the lives and legacies of the Indigenous people who shaped it. Beginning with the ethnogenesis of California Indians, We Are the Land recounts the centrality of the Native presence from before European colonization through statehood—paying particularly close attention to the persistence and activism of California Indians in the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries. The book deftly contextualizes the first encounters with Europeans, Spanish missions, Mexican secularization, the devastation of the Gold Rush and statehood, genocide, efforts to reclaim land, and the organization and activism for sovereignty that built today’s casino economy. A text designed to fill the glaring need for an accessible overview of California Indian history, We Are the Land will be a core resource in a variety of classroom settings, as well as for casual readers and policymakers interested in a history that centers the native experience.

This book tells the history of Nevada City, California, through the eyes of the men that built it. For its first 100 years, everything in Nevada City revolved around gold. But this is not another book about finding gold. To get gold, you needed water — to pan for it, to wash it in a sluice, to blast away a hillside with an immense water cannon, or to turn the water wheel of a quartz-ore stamp mill. This book instead asks: How did they get the water? It reveals the engineering marvels that brought water to Nevada City’s dry hills from tens of miles away. But what if all the water in every ravine, creek and valley around Nevada City was controlled by just three men? Well, for three decades, every miner, farmer or business could only buy water from the powerful South Yuba Canal Company. What would happen if you got into an argument with them? Or couldn’t afford to pay their water bill? Or even dared to compete with them? The book traces the ingenuity and hard work of the town’s miners and ditch builders, highlighting in detail the history and origins of various local neighborhoods, including Nevada City itself, Hirschman's Pond, Sugar Loaf Mountain, Deer Creek, Scotts Flat, Manzanita Diggings, Gold Flat and various mining camps along Washington Ridge. This vivid portrayal follows the area’s evolution from the chaos of thousands of miners scratching out a living in clusters of muddy tents to a genteel town with hotels, stores, banks, theaters and libraries. What began as a search to uncover a sprawling network of old ditches, turned into a collection of never-before-told stories of the gold miners, the ruthless and greedy ditch company, and the rivals that it crushed. The domineering ditch company later enabled the next generation of monopoly to provide electrical power. The story of PG&E also started in Nevada City. This, in turn, led to the now more forward-looking stewardship of the Nevada Irrigation District. The unique format of this book blends beautiful archival images with more than 35 in-depth biographies of key figures in Nevada City. This 884 page hardcover book includes over 600 photos and illustrations, including 200 historic photographs and 75 hand-crafted maps based on modern lidar technology that reveal the locations of the old mining ditches, flumes, mines and tunnels.

A travel guide to Las Vegas that also focusses on the neglection of its historic places.

Consists of chapters excerpted from Mark Twain's famous classic book 'Roughing it' with contemporary illustrations.

Witness to History, by Virginia City Curator Emeritus John D. Ellingsen, is a delightful and often moving book, unusual among writings on the Gold Rush era of Montana and the West. It is part history, part memoir, and part passionate essay about the importance of historic preservation. The book details the origins of Virginia City and Nevada City their rough beginnings and their glory days. It also offers a unique perspective on the restoration and saving of Virginia and Nevada Cities by a man who has dedicated his entire life to that cause. More than two dozen historical photographs help to tell one of the most significant stories of historic preservation in the western United States.