Cheryl Anne Stapp

For twenty years southern California had poured money, and millions of printed brochures, into a publicity campaign to attract settlers...

It is still called Bullion Bend. It is a stretch of curving old stage road that once continued on from Placerville, California to Carson...

A self-made man from his early teens, Phineas Banning was one of the most colorful, charismatic characters in the history of Southern...

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...

Best known for her work on the Hearst Castle in San Simeon, Julia Morgan designed more than 700 buildings after becoming, in 1904, the...

Privileged, headstrong, and in love with an “unsuitable” man, Jessie Benton—the daughter of powerful U.S. Senator Thomas Hart...

Perched on a sheltered cove in San Francisco Bay, the little hamlet known as Yerba Buena (good herb) had been so named by the Spanish...

California was admitted to the Union as the 31st state on September 9, 1850. That year 27 original counties were created, with Mariposa...

A mere 300 years ago, while colonies on America’s Eastern Seaboard were developing, California’s vast stretches of geographically...