Cheryl Anne Stapp

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...

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

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...

In the Late Pleistocene Epoch, a member of the cat family roamed prehistoric California. Scientifically known as Smilodon, this...

As Civil War hostilities rapidly escalated in July 1861—and United States Army personnel stationed in California left for eastern...

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...

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...

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

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...

The California quail, also known as the valley quail, topknot quail, and California partridge, is a prized game bird known for its...

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...

One hundred fifteen years ago last Sunday, on April 18, 1906—a Wednesday—a devastating earthquake struck the northern coast of California...

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

When explorer John Charles Frémont and his exhausted company of U. S. Topographical Corpsmen reached the Sacramento Valley trading post...

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...