New Book - Now Available
“Once upon a time, there was a world-class racetrack there. And later a lake in the pines. There was an island in that lake and a dance pavilion on that island. On a summer’s night Japanese lanterns shone on a wooden bridge that led to the pavilion where moonlight dancing called in three-quarter time to the town nearby.”
Paradise Lost
“Lake Olympia and Glenbrook Park” is the story of recreation in the Glenbrook Basin over a hundred year period from 1851 to 1958.
8.5” X 11” landscape format
all color160 pages,
211 photos
21 maps
Available in both soft and hard cover
Purchase at Harmony Books, Nevada City; Bookseller, Grass Valley.
Or Direct from authors: Vince Seck seckvince@gmail.com & Tanis Thorne tcthorne@uci.edu
Photo curtesy of Searls Historical Library
Meet the Authors Book Launch
Thursday, Sept. 5; 6-9 pm, Seaman’s Lodge, Pioneer Park, 423 Nimrod St., Nevada City,
Sunday, Sept. 15, 12-5 pm, 988 Plaza Drive, Grass Valley (former site of Margarita’s Restaurant and historic Ismert’s Grove), slideshow presentations 1 and 3 pm
Thursday, Sept. 26 at 7 pm, Seaman’s Lodge for kayakers
Thursday, Nov. 21, Nevada County Historical Society Speaker's Night, The Sierra Presbyterian Church located at 175 Ridge Road, Nevada City
Books can be purchased at book launch events!
Tanis Thorne and Vince Seck
Nevada City Nisenan
Historians, past and present, assumed that the Nisenan Indians of the northern Sierra foothills—living at the epicenter of the California gold rush—had been exterminated. Not so.
Why—and how— the Nevada City Indian community survived into the twentieth century is noteworthy…
28 pages, 33 illustrations
15 maps and over 100 rare photos, woodcuts, and drawings—including a number by gold rush artist Henry B. Brown.,•
A chapter by outdoorsman and authority on local lore, Hank Meals, on gold mining in Nevada City: “A Landscape Overthrown.”
Primarily aimed at a general, regional audience, this book will also be useful for teachers and academics.
“Thorne shows how the development of industrial mining dispossessed Indians and limited their ability to survive in a landscape that had become hostile to them. Written for a general audience, this book will also be useful for seasoned scholars. A little book that taught me a lot.”
- Albert L. Hurtado, historian
“This copiously illustrated and meticulously documented book is a major contribution to California ethnohistory and an impressive piece of historical reconstruction. Tanis Thorne sheds new light on a Native community —largely forgotten by history— nearly destroyed by the cataclysmic events that characterized the Gold Rush. This richly detailed story of Nisenan survival in the face of overwhelming odds brings a specific time, place, and group of people to vivid life.”
- Thomas Blackburn, anthropologist
Tanis C. Thorne
Tanis taught in the interdisciplinary Native Studies program at the University of California, Irvine, for 25 years. Her main research and publishing specialization is California Indians.
