The greatest California mountain man of them all was Grizzly Adams. He was also one of the most mysterious men in the history of the American West. In this colorful biography, historian Richard Dillon chronicles the life of the man from a dull New England town who cultivated a society of bears in the wilderness of the West and went on to be one of the greatest showmen. Grizzly Adams' real name was John Adams (despite various aliases he used) and he left Medway, Massachusetts for California in 1849 at the age of 37. Adams traveled widely in the West racking up exploit after exploit. After trying mining in the Gold Country, hunting game to sell to the miners, and trading, Adams finally settled on ranching near Stockton, California. Creditors took his ranch in 1852 and he decided to head to the hills to get away from it all. With the help of the local Miwok Indians, Adams built a cabin and spent the winter alone in the Sierra. During a later hunting and trapping expedition 1,200 miles from his California basecamp, in what is today western Montana, Adams caught a yearling grizzly he named Lady Washington. He tamed her and trained her to follow him. Before long he had her carrying a pack and pulling a loaded sled. In due course, she allowed him to ride her. Lady Washington was the first grizzly Adams captured and tamed, but not the last. As he traveled, John set up impromptu shows of his bears and other animals he had collected. Thinking he was onto something, he then opened the Mountaineer Museum in a basement on Clay Street in San Francisco. In 1855, Adams had been attacked by a mother grizzly in the Sierra. Ben Franklin, one of two grizzly cubs he'd made into pets a year earlier, save his life. In the melee, Adams had his scalp dislodged and came away with a permanent depression in his forehead the size of a silver dollar. Adams often wrestled with the bears during his shows and during one such event, his old wound was cracked open like an eggshell. Knowing he was in poor health and having been away from his wife and family for 10 years, on January 7, 1860, Adams and his menagerie departed from San Francisco on the clipper ship the Golden Fleece. It was a three and one-half month voyage around Cape Horn. When he got to New York he went to work with famed circus owner P.T. Barnum for six weeks. His health having failed him, he sold his menagerie to Barnum and retired to Massachusetts where he died, five days after arriving at the home of his wife and children. Adams was 48.

The Legend of Grizzly Adams

Richard H. Dillon

Univ of Nevada Pr

Growing Up in a Company Town: A Family in the Copper Camp of McGill, Nevada

Elliott, Russell

A Book of the Basques

History

Gallop, Rodney

World

Foreign Policy of Col. McCormicks Tribune 1929-1941

Edwards, Jerome E.

Reference

146p hardback with dustjacket, excellent fresh and clean copy

In a Hundred Graves: A Basque Portrait

Laxalt, Robert

Biographies & Memoirs

146p hardback with dustjacket, excellent fresh and clean copy, as new

Basque Nationalism

Politics & Social Sciences

Payne, Stanley G.

Politics & Government

Nunn Ballew, father, farmer, moonshiner, and hunter dreams of life beyond the Appalachian hills but becomes obsessed with the pursuit of King Devil, a legendary predatory fox

Amerikanuak: Basques in the New World

William A. Douglass

Jon Bilbao

Social Sciences

Completed only a few months before her death in 1967, Anita Kunkler's book provides an unadorned view of a young woman's childhood experiences in the mountains of northern California. Hardscrabble is the story of a family and a region which long continued to mirror many of the earlier frontier practices of the West. In discussing her youth, Kunkler senses the richness, wildness, and warmth of the hill country and its people. Her memoir reflects the heroic geography of northern California, with its lushness of nature, and reveals the crude isolation, the harsh physical conditions, and the failures of life. Kunkler does not try to reach beyond herself; she does not try to create a fable. Rather, her story is genuine and candid. It is a story of community dances with local moonshine, bear hunts and a first train ride, cattle drive and itinerant sheep camps, and, finally, the collapse of a youthful paradise. Originally published by the University of Nevada Press in 1975, Hardscrabble is an ageless tale of a young person's yearnings - anxious to leave the home but wedded to the land and the people she knows and loves.

Hardscrabble: A Narrative of the California Hill Country

Kunkler, Anita

Traces the history of the mustangs in Nevada down to the Taylor Grazing Act of 1934, including photographs of the wild horses and the men who captured them

Mustang: Life and Legends of Nevada's Wild Horses

Amaral, Anthony A.

Americas

His Own Counsel: The Life and Times of Lyman Trumball

Roske, Ralph

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