How Nevada City became an LGBTQ+ haven for travelers and transplants

Yahoo

3 days ago

When the first settlers came to the Sierra Nevada foothills in the late 1840s, they came for gold. Decades after the California Gold Rush ended in 1855, a different crop of settlers—including artists, musicians, and LGBTQ+ people—came looking for something other than precious metal.
History runs deep in Nevada City, a hilly, pine-scented community of barely 3,000, which boomed in 1849 upon the arrival of early settlers like Captain John Pennington and William McCaig. During its heyday, miners came and went, chasing the ebb and flow of eureka. Even President Herbert Hoover lived here in the late 1890s, earning $2 a day pushing ore carts, and staying at the National Hotel—a mining camp, built in 1856, that's still in operation as The National Exchange.
Today, downtown Nevada City is a national historic landmark, preserving a community rooted in its gilded past. That authenticity is the appeal that continues to draw a variety of tourists, especially LGBTQ+ people, where the opportunities in Nevada City—with its pristine nature, and its devil-may-care sense of expression—are worth more than gold.
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Located between Sacramento and Reno, at the edge of Tahoe National Forest and barely two hours from the San Francisco Bay Area, Nevada City emerged as a stopover for folks seeking a retreat from urban confines. During the AIDS crisis, the town was a breath of literal fresh air, marked by soaring trees, rolling hills, and swimming holes along the Yuba River. For travelers, the city remains a breath of fresh air—teeming with parks, festivals, restaurants, shops, and hotels set against a bucolic backdrop steeped in history.
The city's shift came after a miners' strike in 1956 shuttered the Empire Mine, a once-prosperous wellspring responsible for nearly 6 million ounces of gold. The Empire Mine became Empire Mine State Historic Park, with 14 miles of hiking, biking, and horseback trails. The Yuba River boasts swimming holes and white-water rafting, while the 850,000-acre Tahoe National Forest offers everything from climbing and caving to fishing and camping.
In town, folks flock to main drags like Broad Street and Commercial Street for shopping and dining, from worldly wares at Asylum Down clothing store to grain bowls at Heartwood Eatery and Hot Toddies with live jazz at Golden Era, a cocktail bar in a historic saloon space dating to the Gold Rush. Quaint inns and handsome suites, meanwhile, provide lodging that transports guests back in time—albeit with modern-day amenities—at places like the brick-clad 1856 Speakeasy Suites and the six-room Broad Street Inn.
It's Nevada City's nature—coupled with its accessible location and preserved-in-time aesthetic—that helped transform the community into an enduring haven beyond its mining boom. From time immemorial, LGBTQ+ people have existed everywhere, even in mines.
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'Because Nevada City was becoming this huge boom for the Gold Rush, there were so many men coming here, and so much money,' explains Anthony Jones, general manager of the The National Exchange, which finished an extensive renovation in 2021, and hosts events like drag bingo and belly dances.
Entertainment emerged in the form of the Nevada Theatre, an 1865 venue that still operates as an LGBTQ+ cornerstone and hosts screenings with Nevada County Pride. 'The theater was such a big thing historically, and contemporarily,' Jones adds. 'That's where so much of the lore came from, that this was an environment that attracted more people associated with LGBTQ+ cultures.'
Jones cites migration, especially from cities where LGBTQ+ people could blend in, the 'hippie movement' in the 1960s, and the AIDS crises as catalysts for Nevada City becoming a queer sanctuary. 'That's why you have that cultural tie to bohemian culture,' says Jones. 'There are lots of communes up here, many with different gender identities and vibes, and after the pandemic, even more people moved here, mainly from the Bay.'
Local hotels, like The National Exchange and Grass Valley's Holbrooke Hotel, became bastions. 'These hotels that had more of an inclusive environment,' Jones explains, citing historic photos of cross-dressing men at The National Exchange, and a speakeasy at the Holbrooke where a door led directly to the mines, providing discrete passage for queer people. 'Because they had entrances that were not public, and there wasn't a lot of light inside, they could hide their behavior.'
He describes Nevada County as having a diverse culture of coexistence. 'Regardless of the view that they're expressing, or their lifestyle, people have chosen to live up here for a reason—the 'leave me alone' reason,' says Jones.
(Related: How destinations are helping LGBTQ+ visitors travel with pride.)
As Nevada City's diverse community continued to grow, more LGBTQ+-owned and allied businesses popped up such as Take a Look Books, Thorn&Alchemy Art, Three Forks Bakery & Brewing Co., Fudenjüce vegetarian restaurant, and Lost & Found Vintage, as well as a longstanding theater, dance, and burlesque culture. One restaurant that celebrates that, Lola is named after the larger-than-life dancer, Lola Montez, who performed during the Gold Rush and lived in Grass Valley. Today, diners can enjoy steak frites and porterhouse pork chops in a stately dining room bedecked with historic imagery of the risqué performer, while the adjoining bar keeps her spirit alive with monthly drag bingo. Along with expressive events, including queer book clubs, potlucks, and picnics put on by Nevada County Pride, the city keeps people coming back, and planting roots.
Nevada County Pride Board Chair, Rick Partridge relocated to Nevada City from the Bay Area with his husband. 'We were overwhelmed by how much everybody gets along,' he recalls.
Lorraine Gervais, a jazz and R&B singer who has been in the area for 50 years, performs at Pride functions and same-sex weddings. 'Back in the '70s, cool people started coming here and they started transforming the culture,' she describes, pointing to artists David Osborn and Charles Woods, who arrived in the 1960s from San Francisco, as early pioneers in Nevada City's cultural shift. 'They had a graphic design firm, and they loved Nevada City, and a few of their friends came, and things started rolling.'
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Nevada County Pride began 40 years ago as a social club for gay white men, according to Rick Partridge. Over time, it shifted into a non-profit with a board comprised mostly of women. 'We moved the needle significantly,' he says, highlighting an uptick in allied volunteers who want to support their trans kids or non-binary siblings. 'We ended last year with maybe 50 volunteers, and now we've more than doubled.'
In addition to Nevada County Pride programming, which runs the gamut from queer film series to youth gatherings, the organization works to be as inclusive as possible, providing alternatives for sober people, the trans community, and beyond.
Formed in Nevada County in 2002, Pat Rose became the treasurer of PFLAG and coordinated fundraisers with Nevada County Pride. 'We started doing more events that would involve both groups,' she notes, like running booths at the Nevada County Fair and marching in the Nevada City Constitution Day Parade. 'The first year was hard, as there were a lot of negative people who yelled at us, but as the years passed, we saw a slow change to people cheering us as we rode on our float down Broad Street.'
That change is baked into Nevada City's DNA, from its first settlement as a Gold Rush town, to its entertainment scene its cross-dressing miners, and its LGBTQ+ influx.
'We didn't design it this way,' Jones stresses, of both The National's refurbishment and the town's evolution. 'We didn't come in here and say, 'We want drag.' They were here. The things that exist today seemed to have happened then. I would never want to be the one changing the culture; I want to see the culture show itself a bit more.'
(Related: World's best destinations for LGBT Pride celebrations.)
Matt Kirouac is an award-winning writer based in Oklahoma City, and the co-founder of The Gay Lane, a travel site 'celebrating queer culture in unexpected places."