Cheryl Anne Stapp

Many centuries before European explorers found California—for at least 10,000 and possibly as many as 20,000 years—an indigenous people...

The upstart new style in ladies’ fashions was quite unconventional. Yet it was seen everywhere across America throughout the 1850s...

There’s something about the coming of a new year that inspires us to symbolically shed the ups and downs of the past twelve months and...

Merry Christmas, everyone! May your holiday be a joyous one with family and friends. What are you having for Christmas dinner? A big...

In July 1849, as hordes of gold-rushing men were swarming into California, a French hairdresser arrived in San Francisco and immediately...

President Abraham Lincoln decreed Thanksgiving as an official national holiday in 1863. Before then, New England and other regions...

Its official name was The Central Overland California and Pike’s Peak Express Company, but that was too unwieldy, so everyone just called...

His namesakes are Stanislaus County, and the Stanislaus River. He was Chief Estanislao, famous for leading bands of armed Native...

All Hallows Eve is next Sunday, when centuries-old pagan beliefs insist that ghosts and goblins haunt old graveyards at the Midnight...

Does a life filled with adventure and diverse occupations beget a physically vigorous, mentally alert old age? That was certainly true of...

In October we start thinking about trick-or-treaters, and making plans to deck our porches with jack-o-lanterns and other Halloween...

Women were scarce in Gold Rush-era California, a mere 8% of the state-wide population in 1850, and only 30% ten years later, in 1860....

Thousands of people poured into California during the 1850s: gold miners, merchants, farmers, families, professionals and tradesmen of...

Once an intriguing fable captures the collective human mind, it is very hard to dismiss it—especially if the stark truth is less...

It’s a hotel, restaurant and special events facility permanently moored at the Old Sacramento Riverfront now, but ninety-odd years ago...

Dueling was outlawed in California at its pre-statehood Constitutional Convention in the fall of 1849. However, the penalty imposed for...

Today’s Sacramento History Museum, which opened to the public in 1985, is housed in a replica of the city’s 1854 City Hall and Waterworks...

Hollywood! To movie fans all over the world, the name is synonymous with glamour, stardom, and cinematic dreams; a place also known—by...

In mid-nineteenth century California, rich men tended to own racehorses, or perhaps sponsor a horse or two owned by someone else; or at...

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...