Tag: Nevada County history

Chinese Family Stories: From Exclusion to Pillars of the Community

This is 54 minute film about hard work, teamwork, love, compassion, and strong relationships.

In 2025, seven Nevada County (California) Chinese families shared stories about what it was like to grow up in Grass Valley’s Chinatown, be part of a big family, work in a family-owned business, their first jobs, and exploring the Empire Mine grounds between the time the mine closed and when California State Parks acquired it.

The Families: Fore, Chan, Yun, Tinloy, Heung, Oyung, and Wood

Gary Noy, Sierra College history teacher, explains the impacts of over 100 years of effects from the Chinese Exclusion Act.

The film was produced by Lisa Redfern and Rose Murphy on behalf of the Nevada County Historical Society.

Link to Grass Valley and Nevada City Walking Tours

Make a donation to support the continued expansion of the Nevada County Historical Archive here

Gold Rush Stories Book Review & Video Series

Gold Rush Stories; 49 Tales of Seekers, Scoundrels, Loss and luck by Gary Noy

“History, warts and all,” is the essence of what Gary Noy delivers. Noy’s meticulous research, ferreting through dusty archive boxes for photos and first-person accounts, makes his gritty, sometimes enormously disturbing, and often entertaining Gold Rush story vignettes radiate with life.

In the lawless immigrant melting pot of California dreams, “accidents, disease, murder, natural disasters, [and] mob violence, … took a heavy toll during the era. Some estimates indicate 20 percent of all forty-niners died within six months of reaching California,” Noy writes.

I had the pleasure of attending a lecture Noy delivered at a writer’s conference.

An introduction after the conference led to the creation of a series of videos featuring several stories from this book – https://followingdeercreek.wordpress.com/interviews/

From the extinction of California’s Grizzly Bear, environmental destruction, and racist atrocities to situations engendering multi-cultural cooperation, Noy links California’s haunting past to contemporary issues still playing out today.