Cheryl Anne Stapp

Quilt making in the nineteenth century was more than just the home-crafted production of usable warm bedding: it was more often than not...

In August 1839, after several days of sailing upstream on the Sacramento River, a Swiss citizen named John Sutter arrived in the...

There is no doubt that Americans have a passion for cheese: in snacks, sandwiches and main dishes. Why, Crayola even named one of its...

Jared Sheldon, a carpenter by trade, officially received a Mexican land grant of 22,130 acres along the Cosumnes River in 1844—in payment...

Might you be planning a summer road trip, now that California’s Covid-19 restrictions have been lifted? If so, don’t miss stopping in at...

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...

Nineteenth century singles had limited ways in which to meet someone to marry, especially those singles who lived in rural areas. This...

Virginia Reed was twelve when her parents and younger siblings set out for California from their Illinois home in April 1846, traveling...

Praised as the most delightful first-person account of California’s gold mines, The Shirley Letters is a collection of 23 letters written...

In the spring of 1850—bedazzled by sensational reports coming back from the California gold fields—Margaret and Ledyard Frink excitedly...

Twenty-four–year-old Rachel Hobson Holmes boarded the trading vessel Newcastle out of Boston in September 1831. She was sailing for...

In her own lifetime Eliza Farnham was nationally known as an author, and as an exceptional woman on the leading edge of several social...

As hurried plans to rescue the snow-bound Donner Party took shape in early 1847, Johnson’s Ranch was designated as the base of...

The Donner Party was an emigrant company composed of several families who decided to leave the main caravan of westward-bound wagons in...

Theodor Cordua was the first European to establish a permanent settlement on the site of present-day Marysville, California. Ambitious,...

The Donner Party became trapped in the snow-bound Sierra Nevada in part because they opted to take the new Hastings Cutoff, instead of...

Although it was the second newspaper published in California, the California Star was the first newspaper published in San Francisco. Its...

During the early, chaotic days of the California Gold Rush, New Year’s Eve celebrations were mostly improvised: lonesome men in out-back...

On this day 174 years ago—December 16, 1846—seventeen poorly provisioned people set out across the snow-blanketed Sierra Nevada on...

Theodore Dehone Judah was the brilliant engineer and visionary who convinced a group of Sacramento merchants, and the United States...