Hey, that's a powerful song, especially for us in the Sacramento area. The land still suffers from the ecological damage done by the gold miners. Hydraulic mining was the most destructive method, washing away mountains and silting out the land below.

The people across the street from me live on the bluffs of the American River in Fair Oaks, a suburb of Sacramento. Below me is a vast wasteland left by the gold dredges, huge mountains of gravel where nothing grows but rattlesnakes. There is an advantage, though - the area is rocky and unstable, so man can't use it for development and nature has taken over everything but the mountains of dredger tailings. We have coyotes, raccoons, beavers, river otters, possum, muskrats - and rattlesnakes as big around as your arm. Lots of birds and wildflowers, too - although a lot of the vegetation is exotic because the dredging destroyed the native vegetation. It's the same in the hydraulic mining areas - what's left behind is unfit for human use, but nature eventually takes it back.

Debby's ancestors founded the Sacramento Bee newspaper in the 1840's, and part of the family is still involved in the operation of the newspaper. Debby's father married a woman from Kentucky (or thereabouts), and Debby gew up in the foothills northeast of Sacramento. She says her passion is collecting songs about the California Gold Rush, and she's quite an expert on the topic.

-Joe Offer-