Cheryl Anne Stapp

The gold-fevered young men who swarmed into California expecting to get rich quick, soon discovered that finding their fortune wasn’t so...

The thousands of greenhorn gold rushers who invaded California in 1849 were quickly followed by those who came to “fleece” the miners of...

In July 1848, a young man named John Bidwell discovered gold on the Middle Fork of the Feather River. His discovery was not by chance....

Several weeks elapsed after the January 1848 gold discovery before people started believing it was genuine…and then events started...

Downieville sits in a magnificent, rugged, wooded natural amphitheater surrounded by lofty, pine-covered peaks. The town, founded in late...

The wanna-be rich-quick gold prospectors who swarmed into California hoping— but failing— to find an easy fortune, boosted the folklore...

New Yorker Billy Mulligan and his gang of young toughs came west with the California Gold Rush, arriving in San Francisco by ship in late...

In June 1907, when faster, cheaper railroad networks had long since replaced cross-continental stagecoach transportation, a gentleman...

James Wilson Marshall, the celebrated discoverer of California gold, never personally profited from his find though it made other men...

Every town or village was vulnerable to fire during the early Gold Rush years, and few escaped its ravages. Thousands of prospectors in...

Joseph Goldsborough Bruff is a well-remembered participant in the California Gold Rush. A committed diarist and talented amateur artist,...

Sacramento’s Water Works Building was the city’s answer to its need for a reliable water supply system that could prevent a small fire...

Few things inflame men’s imaginations as the idea of a hidden fortune in gold— so the tale of Pegleg Smith and his lost gold mine has...

Martinez, California, and the adjacent town of Pinole, date their names, indeed their very existence, back to the days of Mexican rule....

The first major gold rush in the United States occurred in northern Georgia, predating the California Gold Rush by nearly twenty years. A...

Friday January 24, 2020, will be the 172nd anniversary of the gold discovery in California. On a crisp winter day in 1848, a carpenter...

President Abraham Lincoln decreed Thanksgiving as a national holiday in September 1863. Prior to that, the observance was sporadically...