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Mill Street, Grass Valley

The world from the threshold of Bennetts Bootery

By William Wetherall

First posted 18 December 2015
Last updated 26 March 2025

Companion article
The Heymans and Yasuis of Grass Valley and Hood River: American descendants of Prussian and Japanese immigrants cross paths

Passing through Before me • Before GV 1941-1955 • GV as home 1955-1961 • GV as hometown 1961-2017 • After GV • After me San Francisco Street cars • Sand dunes • Ocean Beach • Golden Gate Park • Mount Sutro • The Thing • Parkview Pharmacy Grass Valley Grandview Terrace • Union Hill • Empire Mine • First date • Early jobs • The Narrows • Television • Jones Hospital • Trestle crawling Bennetts Bootery 140 Mill • Pay and perks • Landlords and tenants • Windows • Profit margins • Showing the flag • Brown paper bags • Hot toddies Downtown denizens Bennetts • Breuer • Frederick • Ingram • Lobecker • Nellie • Sirago • Tinloy • Williams Mill and Main Streets • Businesses • Proprietors • Buildings Numbering Major fires 13 September 1855 • 27 July 1875 1891, 1898, and 1912 fire insurance maps Tahoe National Forest Surveying • Fire fighting • Gold panning • Ore cars, mercury flasks, square nails • Opium pipes, rice bowls • Arrowheads, mortar holes Peopling the Americas Indians and others • Overland trails • Sea routes • Getting up to Grass Valley from down below Road travel Toll roads and public roads • Planked and macadamized roads • Buggies, wagons, stages • Railroads • Cars, trucks, busses
Notable people People whose stories appear on companion page The Heymans and Yasuis of Grass Valley and Hood River
Mary Florence Denton (1857-1947) Lotta Crabtree (1847-1924) Lyman Gilmore (1874-1951) Jacob Heyman (1837-1904)	Theodore Mathieson (1913-1995) Lola Montez (1821-1861) Joseph Newman (1840-1906)	John Oakie (1910-1962) Josiah Royce (1855-1916) Clint Walker (1927-2018)	Jacob Weissbein (1856-1942) Joseph Weissbein (1854-1915) Chuck Yeager (1923-2020)
Photographs and postcards Grass Valley • Nevada City • Mines

Sources Topical B Biography E Ethnography F Fiction H History HF Historical fiction M Mining Geographical P Pacific (West Coast states) C California R Region (Sierra counties) N Nevada County L Locality (town) GV Grass Valley NC Nevada City General See Notable people for the sources of their stories
Brady 2001, 2002, 2006 • You Bet, California Gold Fever B L Bronson 2002 • Nevada City NC Brower 2005 • Nevada City NC Brower 2006 • Gold Rush Towns C Brower 2015 • Rough and Ready Secession B L Brower 2017 • Ranches and Agriculture C Chalmers 2006 • Grass Valley GV Chapple 2010 • Law and Society Across the Pacific Clewlow et al 1978 • Grass Valley, State of Nevada C Comstock 1982 • Gold Diggers & Camp Followers HF N Comstock 1987 • Brides of the Gold Rush HF N Comstock 1995 • Greenbacks and Copperheads HF N Comstock 2000 • 1895 History of Nevada County H N Comstock 2004-2024 • News & Advertising in Early Nevada County C Comstock 2012-2024 • Lives of Nevada County Pioneers B N	Comstock Esther J. 1985 • Feliciana's California Miracle B HF Costello et al 2007-06 • Mining Sites M Caltrans 2008 • Mining Sites M Delano 1854 • (2016) Life on the Plains B Delano 1856 (1947) • Old Block's Sketch Book C Doolittle 1993 • The Herritage That Prospered GV Empire Mine 2008-07 • Historic context report M Farkas 1998 • Bury My Bones In America E Freeman 1998 • Christine Freeman Directory B N Gardner 2007 • Jennie Carter B Grass Valley 1912 • Charter / Code of Ordinances GV Grass Valley 2010 • Historic context statement GV Hagaman 2001 • Chinese Temples of NC and GV E Jackson 1949 • Gold Rush Album H	Janicot 1994 • Nevada County Post Offices N Johnson 2018 • History of Us E Lapp 1977 • Blacks in Gold Rush California E Lardner et al 1924 • Placer and Nevada Counties R Lindars 2023 • The Ditches of Nevada City NC Mann 1972 • The Decade after the Gold Rush GV Mann 1982 • After the Gold Rush: Society in GV and NC GV McKinney 2016 • MacBoyle's Gold B McKinney 2020 • Life of gold miner George Starr B McQuiston 1986 • Gold: The Empire Mine M Meals 2022 • A Landscape Overthrown: Mining as a Geologic Event M Morley & Foley 1965 • Gold Cities: Grass Valley and Nevada City GV NC NCHS 2000, 2010 • Maidu or Nisenan? E N	Prisk et al 1895 • See Comstock 2000 N Rawls et al 1999 • California gold rush mining and economics C Risdal 2009 • Dreamin' of Grass Valley F GV Thorne 2000 • The Campoodie of Nevada City E NC Thorne 2013 • Indian Gaming in California E R Thorne 2021 • Henry B. Brown: Nisenan Country E N Thorne 2022 • Nevada City Nisenan E NC The Union 2000 • Nevada County Historic Photo Album N The Union 2000 • Nevada County Memories N The Union (Bob Wyckoff) 2007 • The Way It Was N Wells 1880 • History of Nevada County N Wyckoff 1979 • Walking Grass Valley GV Zimmerman 2024 • Jewish Presence in Nevada County E GV
Directories
1856 Brown & Dallison • Nevada, Grass Valley, Rough & Ready N 1861 Thompson • City of Nevada and Grass Valley N 1862, 1863, 1864 Knight • Pacific States Almanac P 1865 Byrne • Directory of Grass Valley Township GV 1867 Langley • Pacific Coast Business Directory P 1867 Bean • Bean's History and Directory of Nevada County N	1871-1872 McKenney • Nevada County Directory N 1876-1878 Langley • Pacific Coast Business Directory P 1877 McKenney • Business Directory of San Francisco R 1878 McKenney • Directory of Northern California R 1883-1884 McKenney • Pacific Coast Directory P 1886-1887 McKenney • Pacific Coast Directory P	1893 Polk • California State Gazateer C 1895 Poingdestre • Nevada County Mining & Business Directory N 1896 Gilmore & Longton • Leading Business Firms R 1897 PT&T • California Telephone Directory C 1910-1911 City Directory Co. • Grass Valley and Nevada City GV NC	1965 • Grass Valley City Directory GV 1968 • Grass Valley City Directory GV 1973 • Grass Valley City Directory GV
Maps
1851-1854 Grass Valley village map GV	1869 and 1932 Nevada City township maps NC	1872 Grass Valley township map GV	Nevada County Sanborn maps C

Passing through History as an event horizon History is not about the past. It is about how people now living want to envision the past, to impute meanings to their present conditions and future hopes. History is thus a lump of clay for the living to play with -- a cornucopia of documents, artifacts, and imperfect memories -- to satisfy the need of the living to explain where they came from and where they are going. However concocted, and however told, all histories turn out to be stories cut from the same cloth as tales, yarns, and novels. They are stitched together from facts, hearsay, opinions, beliefs, myths, fables, and imagination. In other words, histories are mixtures of truth, fiction, and ideology. And the best histories are those that induce people to consume, digest, assimilate, and believe every word, true or false. Why else write them? Nevada County Nevada County's history begins from the moment the county was created on 25 April 1851 from a rib of Yuba County. But as a politically defined territory -- nested within a Russian doll of other politically constructed and imagined territories, including California, the United States, North America, and the New World or Western Hemisphere -- Nevada County has a prehistory, which embraces all that is discoverable, knowable, and believable about the succession of human life that has passed through or inhabited its hills, mountains, valleys, and canyons "from time immemorial" -- to put a poetic gloss on everything that has transpired within the county's 4-dimensional "event horizon". Continued on webpage when posted.

Passing through

History as an event horizon

History is not about the past. It is about how people now living want to envision the past, to impute meanings to their present conditions and future hopes.

History is thus a lump of clay for the living to play with -- a cornucopia of documents, artifacts, and imperfect memories -- to satisfy the need of the living to explain where they came from and where they are going.

However concocted, and however told, all histories turn out to be stories cut from the same cloth as tales, yarns, and novels. They are stitched together from facts, hearsay, opinions, beliefs, myths, fables, and imagination.

In other words, histories are mixtures of truth, fiction, and ideology. And the best histories are those that induce people to consume, digest, assimilate, and believe every word, true or false.

Why else write them?

Nevada County

Nevada County's history begins from the moment the county was created on 25 April 1851 from a rib of Yuba County. But as a politically defined territory -- nested within a Russian doll of other politically constructed and imagined territories, including California, the United States, North America, and the New World or Western Hemisphere -- Nevada County has a prehistory, which embraces all that is discoverable, knowable, and believable about the succession of human life that has passed through or inhabited its hills, mountains, valleys, and canyons "from time immemorial" -- to put a poetic gloss on everything that has transpired within the county's 4-dimensional "event horizon".

Continued on webpage when posted.

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