Cheryl Anne Stapp

On a chilly winter day 174 years ago this month, a construction site foreman named James Marshall picked up a few small flakes of gold...

The stage arrived in Oroville right on time that morning in October 1893; yet at the first sight of it, the townsfolk were astounded....

The proverb “Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned” is from the 17th century play The Mourning Bride, and means that no one is angrier...

In bygone days Californians celebrated the coming of a new year much like we do today, with parties, games, spectator sports, and...

The Americans who trekked to California in covered wagons made that arduous journey because they wanted to find a better life for...

Whether they came to California overland or by sea in 1849, hordes of predominately young men were joyfully exuberant, for they were...

Genuine settlers might have been the minority of the California Gold Rush-era population, but in the years before the gold discovery...

The press treated the accident as a sensation—and why not? All the elements were there: women of ill-repute, stampeding horses, and a...

Tomorrow we celebrate Thanksgiving Day with friends, family, and a table loaded with the traditional fare: roast turkey with all the...

The old mining town in Nevada County is gone now, but Red Dog had its heyday in the 1860s, when the place had nearly two thousand...

During the centuries it belonged to Spain, and the few decades it was a province of Mexico, California had no homestead laws that gave...

California’s north-south cultural split began as early as 1821, the year Mexico won its independence from Spain and acquired the province...

Is the “atmospheric river” that deluged California last week a precursor of what is to come? Back in the day, they called such phenomena...

Quilt making in the nineteenth century was more than just the home-crafted production of usable warm bedding: it was more often than not...

What a wondrous, stunning sight the crew must have seen as the Russian ship Rurik dropped anchor in a sequestered cove of San Francisco...

Born to respectable, hard-working parents who had come to California as gold-rushers in 1849, Robert L. McFarlane quit the family farm in...

Thanks to abundant product and clever ad campaigns from the 1890s forward, Death Valley, California, is arguably the world’s most famous...

Oftentimes, stagecoach accidents resulted in lawsuits for injuries received. This one, Sprague vs. Dillon, went to trial in San...

In the aftermath of the Mexican-American War, California existed in a state of political limbo. The peace treaty, signed in February 1848...

Traveling medicine shows that peddled miracle cures were common in 19th century America, especially in the western states. Part...