Lawson Brainerd Centennial

My great-grandfather Lawson Brainerd was a forest ranger in the Tahoe and Inyo National Forests in the 1920s. Over the course of the 2020s, I hope to visit many of the wild places described in his memoirs, on (or around) the hundredth anniversary of when he was there. This site is a forum to share our adventures.

  • Sierraville Shenanigans: May 2024

    Most of Lawson’s time in the Tahoe National Forest centered around the ranger station in the small town of Sierraville, though he covered quite a lot of ground, from Gold Lake in the north, Mount Rose in the west, down to Tahoe City toward the south and to Downieville to the west.  All of this was…

  • Lawson & Helen’s Honeymoon, Cold Stream Meadow: August 2023

    In 1923, Lawson Brainerd was a ranger in the Tahoe National Forest, dispatched from the Sierraville Ranger Station.  The work consisted mostly of putting out forest fires, building telephone lines, and policing a number of logging operations who had minimal regard for government rules and regulations.  All of this was done on horseback, mostly traversing the mountains…

  • An Introduction

    My great-grandaddy Lawson Brainerd seems to have lived a life of adventure from start to finish. He was born in a tiny old gold-mining town in the Sierras in 1901, lied about his age to enlist in the Navy in World War I, then went on to join the forest service. He served as a…