Holly Walton-Buchanan (b. 1942 in Salt Lake City, UT) moved to Nevada at a young age and grew up loving Western History. After teaching history and Spanish for many years, she wrote her first book based on her doctoral dissertation, Education for Nevada: The History of the College of Education at the University of Nevada, Reno (2004). Her second book, Historic Houses and Buildings of Reno (2007), is very popular with Reno's old timers as well as newcomers. In 2008 the University of Nevada hired her to tell the story of the famous Mackay School of Mines, in honor of its 100th anniversary (Mackay Memories, 2008). She lives with her geologist husband in Reno and travels frequently to Italy and South America. In 2010 Holly started working on her fourth book, about the early ranches in Western Nevada. She started with the iconic Damonte Ranch in Reno, which has a fascinating history of its own, but then she delved further back into the story about other ranches, discovering more about how the first ranches were important to the survival of the mining operations on the Comstock Lode. This led to the story of Carson Valley, the site of Nevada's first permanent settlments (by Mormons from Utah), and the dominance of the valley by Northern Europeans, especially Scandinavians and Germans. As the green valleys at the base of the Eastern Sierra Nevada were flourishing, Nevada became a state (1864) and was soon home to a population boom -- mostly miners and railroad workers -- that soon went bust around 1900. As the population declined, Italian immigrants arrived and took over the old ranches and farms, transforming the Truckee Meadows and other nearby areas into centers of agriculture. The last chapter of Holly's book (Land of the Buckaroo: Historic Ranches of Western Nevada, 2013, Jack Bacon & Company), says it all: Italians to the Rescue. Holly worked with several descendants in Reno and Carson Valley to craft this historic tale, many of whom furnished photographs and stories about their hardworking ancestors.