Author: Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 28
Book Description
Description of the Mammoth Tree from California, now erected at the Crystal Palace, Sydenham
Author: Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 28
Book Description
British Comment on the United States
Author: Ada NisbetPublisher: Univ of California Press
ISBN: 9780520915824
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 556
Book Description
This bibliography of more than three thousand entries, often extensively annotated, lists books and pamphlets that illuminate evolving British views on the United States during a period of great change on both sides of the Atlantic. Subjects addressed in various decades include slavery and abolitionism, women's rights, the Civil War, organized labor, economic, cultural, and social behavior, political and religious movements, and the "American" character in general.
Trees in Paradise: A California History
Author: Jared FarmerPublisher: W. W. Norton & Company
ISBN: 0393241270
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 624
Book Description
From roots to canopy, a lush, verdant history of the making of California. California now has more trees than at any time since the late Pleistocene. This green landscape, however, is not the work of nature. It’s the work of history. In the years after the Gold Rush, American settlers remade the California landscape, harnessing nature to their vision of the good life. Horticulturists, boosters, and civic reformers began to "improve" the bare, brown countryside, planting millions of trees to create groves, wooded suburbs, and landscaped cities. They imported the blue-green eucalypts whose tangy fragrance was thought to cure malaria. They built the lucrative "Orange Empire" on the sweet juice and thick skin of the Washington navel, an industrial fruit. They lined their streets with graceful palms to announce that they were not in the Midwest anymore. To the north the majestic coastal redwoods inspired awe and invited exploitation. A resource in the state, the durable heartwood of these timeless giants became infrastructure, transformed by the saw teeth of American enterprise. By 1900 timber firms owned the entire redwood forest; by 1950 they had clear-cut almost all of the old-growth trees. In time California’s new landscape proved to be no paradise: the eucalypts in the Berkeley hills exploded in fire; the orange groves near Riverside froze on cold nights; Los Angeles’s palms harbored rats and dropped heavy fronds on the streets below. Disease, infestation, and development all spelled decline for these nonnative evergreens. In the north, however, a new forest of second-growth redwood took root, nurtured by protective laws and sustainable harvesting. Today there are more California redwoods than there were a century ago. Rich in character and story, Trees in Paradise is a dazzling narrative that offers an insightful, new perspective on the history of the Golden State and the American West.
History of the Sierra Nevada
Author: Publisher: Univ of California Press
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 284
Book Description
History of the Sierra Nevada
Author: Francis Peloubet FarquharPublisher: Univ of California Press
ISBN: 9780520015517
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 284
Book Description
Panorama of human experiences in California's "great snowy range", including the Yosemite, Mt. Whitney, and Lake Tahoe areas, from its sighting by Spaniards to the present.
Calaveras Big Trees
Author: Carol KramerPublisher: Arcadia Publishing
ISBN: 1439625220
Category : Photography
Languages : en
Pages : 132
Book Description
Augustus T. Dowd could scarcely believe his eyes when he stumbled upon one of natures majestic wonders in 1852. Hunting down a wounded bear in the hills above the mining camp of Murphys, Dowd instead found a tree of mammoth proportions. After initial skepticism about the size of these trees, news of Dowds discovery quickly spread. Local businessmen soon acquired the grove of 100 mammoth trees, or giant sequoia, and built accommodations for travelers. Thus began one of Californias earliest tourist attractions in 1853. Dedicated as a California State Park in 1931, Calaveras Big Trees State Park hosts 250,000 annual visitors who come from around the world to marvel at these wondrous giants in their magnificent natural surroundings.
Far West and Gateway Literature, Rare California Broadsides, Western Laws and History, Rare Books on Mormonism, California Acquisition, Overland Railroad and Travel, Western Bandits, Pioneers and Adventures, Etc. Etc. to be Sold by Auction Monday, Tuesday Afternoons, February Fifth, Sixth at Two-thirty
Author: Anderson Galleries, IncPublisher:
ISBN:
Category : California
Languages : en
Pages : 124
Book Description
The Finest Building in America
Author: Edwin G. BurrowsPublisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0190681225
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 265
Book Description
When first opened to the public in 1853, New York's Crystal Palace created a sensation. Those who had seen London's Crystal Palace, the structure it was openly intended to emulate, argued that America's copy far surpassed it. Built in what is today Bryant Park, a four-acre site between 40th and 42nd Streets, the colossus of glass and steel indeed seemed poised to displace the British original in worldwide fame. Walt Whitman pronounced it "unsurpassed anywhere for beauty." Young Samuel Clemens--not yet Mark Twain--called it a "perfect fairy palace." Many perceived it as putting America, still in the thrall of European culture, on the map. "To us on this side of the water," wrote newspaperman Horace Greely, who had also visited London's Crystal Palace, "it was original." Pulitzer Prize-winning historian Edwin G. Burrows offers the tale of what was proclaimed the country's "finest building." Centerpiece of the 1853 World's Fair, the New York Crystal Palace, like its London counterpart, was intended to display the country's latest technological achievements--as well as a few dubious cultural artifacts. But its primary function was simply to be seen and admired by the crowds that thronged to it; its very existence caused patriotic breasts to swell. And then suddenly it was gone. On October 5, 1858, merely five years after its construction, the Crystal Palace caught fire. Despite frantic attempts to save it, the magnificent dome was engulfed and within thirty minutes the entire structure reduced to a heap of smoldering debris, through which for days afterward bereft New Yorkers picked for mementos. With sumptuous images and lively storytelling The Finest Building in America brings back to life an extraordinary monument, one that briefly but wholeheartedly captured the imagination of a country, giving form to its dreams and ambitions, and then vanishing from view.
History of the Sierra Nevada
Author: Francis P. FarquharPublisher: Univ of California Press
ISBN: 9780520253957
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 288
Book Description
From the time it was sighted by Spanish explorers in the eighteenth century through the creation of the John Muir trail, the building of the Hetch Hetchy Dam, and the founding of the Sierra Club, the great snowy range of California has provided fulfillment to generations of trappers, immigrants, engineers, naturalists, and tourists. Now a mountaineering classic, this pioneering book was the first to synthesize into a single, riveting narrative all of the varied aspects of human endeavor related to the history of the Sierra Nevada. Thoroughly illustrated with photographs, drawings, and maps, the book continues to be indispensable for any lover of the high country.
Yosemite, The Big Trees, and the High Sierra
Author: Francis P. FarquharPublisher: Univ of California Press
ISBN: 0520346637
Category : Nature
Languages : en
Pages : 144
Book Description
