My Great Great Grandfather came to the Wild West to work as a blacksmith.
From the East Coast side,,,
As far as we can tell he never went geology-ignorant "looking for gold".
His family was from Holland, Gouda a beautiful canal city, for over 250 years.
And before that Belgium.
And before that,,,?
His son started a General Store in North Sacramento and my retired Dad found the original foundation!
His son, since many had spent their entire life savings on a sure thing and had no money to go home and were starving living off the very rich land(not nevada), started a peach orchard, eating peaches, North of Marysville, not hard picked under-ripe canning peaches, but Melrose, the best eating peach there ever was.
Big as a softball freestone juicy colorful delicious, yet the State and UCDavis have no record at all of this once valuable and highly desirable crop!
His son was super gifted with manual dexterity and design sense, becoming a Master Craftsman, one of the first Navy Seals before, way before they were called Frogmen in their green skin diving drysuits in WW2, and a college professor for 40 years.
His son became a Yosemite tour bus driver in the Golden Age 1970s and 80s after the Curry Family left, and then a stretch limousine driver hauling lots of frisky bachellorette party's runs, usually young beautiful women getting drunk and getting very naked in back in full view, so we don't talk about him.
Oh, and we are calling the SF Bay Bridge the "Emperor Norton Bay Bridge" ,if you want to be withit.
Not the eastern Oakland Bay Bridge, that's the "$6B+ Folly Faulty Oakland-Jerry Brown Bay Bridge".
