Cheryl Anne Stapp
Rise & Decline of Sutterville
It was supposed to be the realization of a dream: a dynamic new town laid out on a low bluff overlooking the Sacramento River, where a...
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California's Olden Golden Days
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Cheryl Anne Stapp
- May 17
- 2 min
Auspicious Beginnings
Within a few months, the 1848 gold discovery turned pastoral California into a hotbed of mining and commercial activity. Seemingly...
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Cheryl Anne Stapp
- May 3
- 2 min
Civilizing Influences
In 1849, California’s Gold Rush population, statewide, was 92% male. As reported in the Eastern press, the state of affairs in that...
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Cheryl Anne Stapp
- Apr 5
- 2 min
Reality Check
California suffered its first painful economic readjustment in the mid-1850s, although the many reasons for it were not readily apparent...
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Cheryl Anne Stapp
- Feb 22
- 2 min
A Wicked Woman
They say that there were more women of ill repute than there were decent ladies, in California, during the early years of the Gold Rush....
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Cheryl Anne Stapp
- Feb 8
- 2 min
Fatal Contest
Haste was the imperative to bedazzled gold-rushers, men near-frantic to get to the gold fields and stake their claim on a promising slice...
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Cheryl Anne Stapp
- Dec 7, 2022
- 2 min
Her Crowning Glory
In July 1849, as hordes of gold-rushing men were swarming into California, a French hairdresser arrived in San Francisco and immediately...
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Cheryl Anne Stapp
- Oct 5, 2022
- 2 min
The Feminine Advantage
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....
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Cheryl Anne Stapp
- Sep 28, 2022
- 3 min
Hucksters and Scalawags
Families who trundled overland in covered wagons during the 1840s, hoping to build a better life in the West, didn’t always know to be...
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Cheryl Anne Stapp
- Aug 3, 2022
- 2 min
The Finest Wines in the World
Wine is big business in California. In 4,763 wineries large and small throughout the state, California vintners produce 87% of America’s...
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Cheryl Anne Stapp
- Jul 20, 2022
- 2 min
A Spectacular Gateway
Famed explorer John Charles Frémont, the leader of several U.S. Army Topographical Corps mapping expeditions across the West, gave the...
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Cheryl Anne Stapp
- Jun 29, 2022
- 3 min
The Gem
In its heyday, Columbia was known as the “Gem of the Southern Mines” for its prodigious output of gold, averaging $100,000 or more per...
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Cheryl Anne Stapp
- Jun 22, 2022
- 3 min
Boom & Bust in Bodie
Once it was a good-sized mining settlement—a rip-roaring, wild-west boomtown. Today Bodie is a wind-swept ghost town, a tourist...
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Cheryl Anne Stapp
- Jun 8, 2022
- 3 min
The Sacramento: River of Gold
At 447 miles in length the Sacramento River is the longest river that flows through California, with a watershed that encompasses more...
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Cheryl Anne Stapp
- May 18, 2022
- 1 min
Dog Town Diggings
More than one gold rush mining camp was dubbed “dog town” by its inhabitants—miner’s slang for coarse, thrown-together encampments of...
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Cheryl Anne Stapp
- Mar 9, 2022
- 3 min
An Ordinary Woman
Teenaged Eliza Marshall emigrated with her family from England to the United States in 1839. They settled in Pawtucket, in the section of...
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Cheryl Anne Stapp
- Feb 2, 2022
- 3 min
Striking Gold in Angels Camp
Mark Twain said he based his short story “The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County” on what he thought, at the time, was a...
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Cheryl Anne Stapp
- Jan 26, 2022
- 3 min
Golden Island
Not long after Marshall’s January 24th gold discovery at Coloma, three men stumbled upon a second gold find downriver—which became one of...
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Cheryl Anne Stapp
- Jan 19, 2022
- 2 min
The Luckless Gold Discoverer
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...
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Cheryl Anne Stapp
- Dec 15, 2021
- 2 min
Christmas in the Gold Mines, 1849
Whether they came to California overland or by sea in 1849, hordes of predominately young men were joyfully exuberant, for they were...
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