Cheryl Anne Stapp

As busy as they were at establishing 21 missions, the Franciscan priests sent to California in 1769 by a Spanish king, still found time to teach the native Indians to play the lute, violin, trumpet, metal triangle, and to sing Christmas carols in Spanish. At Mission San Jose and possibly other missions as well, Indian neophytes enacted a church play at Christmastime. Under Mexican rule, secularization of those missions—which began in 1834—disrupted ordinary customs that had b

View of hiking trail & Griffith Observatory, downtown Los Angeles in the distance. Photo by Brian Schmidt Sprawled over 4,310 acres, for...

Baptism at Aguaje de la Piedra The year was 1769, and Imperial Spain had been a world power for a little more than three centuries. But...

Seeking safe harbor to recondition his ship, English explorer Francis Drake landed in a sheltered cove in what is now Marin County,...

His name was José de Gálvez, and his title visitador-general —which outranked Spain’s resident viceroy in Mexico City—was conferred by...

A dark-eyed beauty, Francisca Carrillo was born in San Diego when California was still a province of Imperial Spain, and raised in the...

Many American states derived their names from native American Indian words, some from European monarchs; a few from early French or...

In 1818, while the future Republic of Mexico and other Spanish-owned regions in South America were fighting a war of independence against...

Many centuries before European explorers found California—for at least 10,000 and possibly as many as 20,000 years—an indigenous people...

In centuries past, and as global knowledge expanded in the Age of Sail, any attractive land that was scantily occupied and poorly...

A number of modern structures in California’s southland bear the name of a family who settled there in the long-ago days when the Spanish...

Once an intriguing fable captures the collective human mind, it is very hard to dismiss it—especially if the stark truth is less...

Wine is big business in California. In 4,763 wineries large and small throughout the state, California vintners produce 87% of America’s...

During the centuries it belonged to Spain, and the few decades it was a province of Mexico, California had no homestead laws that gave...

In 1818, California was still an outlying province of Imperial Spain, even as New Spain (later, the Republic of Mexico) and other...

Two hundred and fifty years after Hernán Cortés claimed Mexico and the vast lands north of it for Spain, it came to the attention of the...

Over the centuries many flags have flown over California soil: the flags of nations, explorers, military units, trading companies…even a...

California’s odd shape permits its northern port city of Eureka to be the most westward city in the continental United States—yet its...

Shortly after the close of the American Revolution, Boston whalers began navigating in California waters, hunting the prized sea otter....

During the three hundred-plus years Spain claimed ownership of California by right of conquest, Spain’s official religion took a part in...