Cheryl Anne Stapp
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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California's Olden Golden Days
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Cheryl Anne Stapp
- Jul 6, 2022
- 2 min
A History Museum's History
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...
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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
- 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
- May 11, 2022
- 2 min
Foiled Intrigue
Perhaps it’s only myth or legend (for sure, certain story elements are questionable), but nonetheless it’s a romantic tale, published as...
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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 12, 2022
- 2 min
The Pretty Girl Stage Driver
The stage arrived in Oroville right on time that morning in October 1893; yet at the first sight of it, the townsfolk were astounded....
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Cheryl Anne Stapp
- Jul 28, 2021
- 2 min
The Splendid California Stage Company
The California Gold Rush revitalized the stagecoach industry, which was waning in New England by the end of the 1840s, due to the rise of...
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Cheryl Anne Stapp
- Jun 2, 2021
- 2 min
Charley's Secret
So many legends surround the nineteenth century stage driver Charley Parkhurst that it’s difficult now to separate fact from fiction. In...
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Cheryl Anne Stapp
- May 26, 2021
- 3 min
Bayley's Grand Dream
The palatial hotel that A. J. Bayley built long ago in California’s gold country still stands, though it’s empty now, and encircled by a...
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Cheryl Anne Stapp
- Apr 21, 2021
- 4 min
The 1906 San Francisco Earthquake
One hundred fifteen years ago last Sunday, on April 18, 1906—a Wednesday—a devastating earthquake struck the northern coast of California...
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Cheryl Anne Stapp
- Mar 24, 2021
- 3 min
Dame Shirley's Gold Mine
Praised as the most delightful first-person account of California’s gold mines, The Shirley Letters is a collection of 23 letters written...
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Cheryl Anne Stapp
- Mar 17, 2021
- 3 min
Margaret Frink, Pioneer Housewife
In the spring of 1850—bedazzled by sensational reports coming back from the California gold fields—Margaret and Ledyard Frink excitedly...
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Cheryl Anne Stapp
- Feb 3, 2021
- 3 min
Riches to Rags
Theodor Cordua was the first European to establish a permanent settlement on the site of present-day Marysville, California. Ambitious,...
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Cheryl Anne Stapp
- Sep 30, 2020
- 2 min
Hall & Crandall's Stage Lines
Many New England stagemen, whose livelihoods there were being steadily squeezed by the railroads, followed thousands of bedazzled gold...
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Cheryl Anne Stapp
- Aug 26, 2020
- 3 min
Mail Carriers Hit Pay Dirt
The bedazzled gold-rushers who swarmed into California in 1849 soon complained of many things—inflated prices, low-quality foodstuffs,...
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Cheryl Anne Stapp
- Jul 29, 2020
- 2 min
First Great Gold Camp on the Feather
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....
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Cheryl Anne Stapp
- Jul 15, 2020
- 2 min
The Next Big Gold Strike
Several weeks elapsed after the January 1848 gold discovery before people started believing it was genuine…and then events started...
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