What a great way to start my day!
Just heard a shout-out on National Review’s Radio Free California podcast today. Hosts Will Swaim and David Bahnsen mentioned me – ME! – and my book series, California Historic Landmarks – North, Central, and South!
How AWESOME is that?
HUGE thanks to Will, David, and the whole crew behind one of the BEST shows about all things California (and USC Football … for some reason).
Make sure you listen to this and EVERY episode (it’s a weekly): Radio Free California
Oh — and BUY MY BOOKS! They’re famous now!
Truckee feels like a town that learned to keep its winter boots close to a warm hearth. Born as Gray’s Station in 1863, around Joseph Gray’s roadhouse, then briefly known as Coburn’s Station for blacksmith Samuel Coburn, the place settled on the name Truckee when the Central Pacific christened its depot in 1867. The name itself was lifted from a Paiute chief—Tru-ki-zo—whose shouted “Tro-kay!” (“Everything is all right”) was misheard as a name by early travelers. 
Auburn sits where the western flank of the Sierra begins to steepen into real country — a Gold Rush town that never quite stopped being one. You still feel the geology of gold in the streets: the story of Claude Chana finding paydirt in the Auburn Ravine on May 16, 1848, is the spark that turned a cluster of camps called North Fork or Woods Dry Diggings into a named place by the fall of 1849, borrowed from miners who came from Auburn, New York. Placer claims were rich here; the Central Pacific Railroad reached town in 1865, and by 1851, Auburn was already the center stage, the county seat of Placer County.