Cheryl Anne Stapp

At 447 miles in length the Sacramento River is the longest river that flows through California, with a watershed that encompasses more...

In May 1905, the public was thrilled when newspapers announced that a new enterprise was to build a railroad on a scenic route between...

Perhaps it’s only myth or legend (for sure, certain story elements are questionable), but nonetheless it’s a romantic tale, published as...

Gregarious, quick of mind and firm of hand on the reins, stage driver Hank Monk was a legend in his own lifetime—revered across the West...

In the Age of Sail, not everyone who entered California’s harbors came to settle. In the early 1820s, the ships of many nations began...

The stage arrived in Oroville right on time that morning in October 1893; yet at the first sight of it, the townsfolk were astounded....

The press treated the accident as a sensation—and why not? All the elements were there: women of ill-repute, stampeding horses, and a...

The old mining town in Nevada County is gone now, but Red Dog had its heyday in the 1860s, when the place had nearly two thousand...

Thanks to abundant product and clever ad campaigns from the 1890s forward, Death Valley, California, is arguably the world’s most famous...

Oftentimes, stagecoach accidents resulted in lawsuits for injuries received. This one, Sprague vs. Dillon, went to trial in San...

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...

During the California Gold Rush, a number of steam-powered ships chugged up and down between San Francisco Bay and the major northern...

In the 1850s the Mountaineer House was a well-known tavern and busy stage stop where multiple stagecoach lines rolled in daily to change...

So many legends surround the nineteenth century stage driver Charley Parkhurst that it’s difficult now to separate fact from fiction. In...

In 1865, the overloaded passenger steamer Brother Jonathan suddenly encountered severe winds and rough seas after leaving San Francisco...

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

Many New England stagemen, whose livelihoods there were being steadily squeezed by the railroads, followed thousands of bedazzled gold...

Before the 1848 gold discovery brought thousands of fortune-hunters swarming into a recently-acquired, raw American territory, ordinary...

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...