Cheryl Anne Stapp
Creating Marysville
Early on in the California Gold Rush, one new “gold strike” after another sent fortune hunters scrambling farther afield from the...
top of page
California's Olden Golden Days
Search
Cheryl Anne Stapp
- Aug 14
- 2 min
Gordon's Ferry
Gold was discovered on the American River in January, 1848. By the end of that year, this original gold district had swollen to encompass...
3 views0 comments
Cheryl Anne Stapp
- Jul 31
- 3 min
Calistoga's Spas Origins
For centuries, the Upper Napa Valley was home to several villages of indigenous people, hunter-gatherers who recognized the beneficial...
2 views0 comments
Cheryl Anne Stapp
- Jul 17
- 3 min
Hunting a Killer
It was a murder most foul. Twenty-one-year-old wife and mother Millie Lyons was found brutally slain inside her farmhouse in Wooden...
0 views0 comments
Cheryl Anne Stapp
- Jul 3
- 1 min
Independence Day 2024
Adopted by the Second Continental Congress on July 4, 1776, the Declaration of Independence publicly announced to the world the decision...
2 views0 comments
Cheryl Anne Stapp
- Jun 26
- 3 min
First Transcontinental Railroad
Dropped into a pre-drilled hole and gently tapped into place, a 17.6-karat golden spike ceremoniously joined the Central Pacific Railroad...
0 views0 comments
Cheryl Anne Stapp
- Jun 12
- 3 min
Legend of the Lost Gunsight Mine
Legends of lost treasure are always intriguing, aren’t they? California history has several legends of “lost” mines of gold and other...
5 views0 comments
Cheryl Anne Stapp
- May 29
- 3 min
The Mystery of Peter Lebeck
No one really knows who Peter Lebeck was, but we do know that he died in the wilds of the Tehachapi Mountains, the victim of a grizzly...
5 views0 comments
Cheryl Anne Stapp
- May 15
- 3 min
The Camel Corps Experiment
It was May 1855, and U.S. Secretary of War Jefferson Davis had just realized a years-long goal, to establish an army “camel corps,” for...
0 views0 comments
Cheryl Anne Stapp
- May 8
- 3 min
Balboa Island
For eons, an ancient stream slowly carved a canyon through land that fronted on the Pacific Ocean, in the process steadily creating what...
0 views0 comments
Cheryl Anne Stapp
- May 1
- 4 min
San Francisco's 6th Great Fire
California’s Gold Rush-era mining camps and towns were all vulnerable to fire. The only light sources were candles and kerosene lamps,...
0 views0 comments
Cheryl Anne Stapp
- Apr 17
- 3 min
Alcatraz!
Its name is an Angelized version of an archaic Spanish word for “pelican,” although those birds no longer roost there. Since the mid-19th...
0 views0 comments
Cheryl Anne Stapp
- Apr 10
- 3 min
Bad Guy Charley
The newspapers reported his crimes and said his name was Charles Mortimer. He was, they said, the quintessential thief and murderer:...
0 views0 comments
Cheryl Anne Stapp
- Mar 27
- 3 min
Mary Pickford
In a career that spanned several decades, her various nicknames included “Goldielocks,” “The Girl with the Curls,” and most of all,...
107 views0 comments
Cheryl Anne Stapp
- Mar 20
- 2 min
Architect Lilian J. Rice
She died young but her influence endures, not least because several of her works are listed on the National Register of Historic Places....
16 views0 comments
Cheryl Anne Stapp
- Mar 13
- 3 min
Doña Francisca Vallejo
A dark-eyed beauty, Francisca Carrillo was born in San Diego when California was still a province of Imperial Spain, and raised in the...
30 views0 comments
Cheryl Anne Stapp
- Mar 6
- 3 min
Poet Laureate Ina Coolbrith
She was a poet, an editor, a teacher, a librarian, and a prominent figure in San Francisco’s literary community in the 19th and early...
9 views0 comments
Cheryl Anne Stapp
- Feb 28
- 2 min
Provisions Going West
The courageous folks who braved the overland trek to California in the 1840s knew they had to take enough food to last six months. After...
15 views0 comments
Cheryl Anne Stapp
- Feb 21
- 2 min
California: What's in a Name?
Many American states derived their names from native American Indian words, some from European monarchs; a few from early French or...
1 view0 comments
Cheryl Anne Stapp
- Feb 7
- 3 min
Pirate Invades Monterey
In 1818, while the future Republic of Mexico and other Spanish-owned regions in South America were fighting a war of independence against...
4 views0 comments
bottom of page