Cheryl Anne Stapp

More than one gold rush mining camp was dubbed “dog town” by its inhabitants—miner’s slang for coarse, thrown-together encampments of...

Perhaps it’s only myth or legend (for sure, certain story elements are questionable), but nonetheless it’s a romantic tale, published as...

They thought the American River was just a lovely stream of fresh water flowing through the valley from somewhere high in the unexplored...

Gregarious, quick of mind and firm of hand on the reins, stage driver Hank Monk was a legend in his own lifetime—revered across the West...

In the Age of Sail, not everyone who entered California’s harbors came to settle. In the early 1820s, the ships of many nations began...

By April 1861, California had been a state of the Union for only ten and a half years. As yet, no telegraph lines connected it with the...

It’s called the Russian River because there were Russian settlements on the river itself and at other nearby sites from 1812 to 1841....

She was a woman of remarkable qualities; a woman who rose from being an uneducated young bride going west in a covered wagon in 1844, to...

Her real name was Meriam but everyone called her Mary. She was a Donner Party survivor, fifteen when she was rescued from a...

Elizabeth Thorn Scott Flood was the capable, determined 19th century woman who paved the way for desegregated education for children of...

Teenaged Eliza Marshall emigrated with her family from England to the United States in 1839. They settled in Pawtucket, in the section of...

In her later years Mary Frances Hopkins was publicly castigated as a rich, vain, willful woman; her conduct judged foolish and scandalous...

San Francisco’s First Unitarian Church congregation gaped at its new pastor with a mix of curiosity and consternation. Could this small,...

Gunplay was so common during the chaotic, early days of the California Gold Rush that many incidents, though duly reported, drew little...

By 1884 California was leading the nation in educational innovations with its system of pre-grammar-school schools, based on ideas...

Mark Twain said he based his short story “The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County” on what he thought, at the time, was a...

Not long after Marshall’s January 24th gold discovery at Coloma, three men stumbled upon a second gold find downriver—which became one of...

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...