This was a unique 1953 publication put together by Harold Gilliam, and most of material originally appeared in This World segment of the San Francisco Chronicle. Gilliam later became one of the earliest environmental journalist and had a lengthy career with the San Francisco Chronicle.
Gilliam’s prose and unique perpspective differs from a lot of promotional material. From time to time excerpts will be featured. The following are the opening paragraphs:
“Susanville comes as a surprise. You drive for hours through the Northern Sierra—up deep gorges, along roaring streams, through high mountain forests, beneath jagged peaks sheathed in ice this time of year—and suddenly there below you at the head of a wide valley is an attractive city, with homes, businesses, railroads and factories.
“This mountain city is the capital of the region that is legally part of California but in most ways is as different from the rest of the State as was James Hilton’s mythical Valley of the Blue Moon from the region which surrounded it.
“Here in this isolated valley men once fought a frontier war to maintain their independence from California. Here in 1952, serenely indifferent to threats of civilization’s atomic destruction, men work confidently on a project which will have no practical results for 150 years.”
I find it interesting that in 1952 most of the men who fought in the frontier war had several grandchildren still living, and probably a few children. I wonder if any of them asked their granddads about the sagebrush war.