Cheryl Anne Stapp

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...

Today, commercial mills are complex, high-tech installations. Long ago, however, skilled artisans hand-carved granite millstones into...

“Placer” is the name given to gold (and certain other minerals) that are near the surface when found in alluvial deposits of sand and...

Gold is probably the oldest precious metal known to mankind, and over the course of history has been the cause of countless bitter...

The bedazzled gold-rushers who swarmed into California in 1849 soon complained of many things—inflated prices, low-quality foodstuffs,...

As legend has it, the martini was invented for hard-fisted California gold miners in 1849, only back then it was called a “Martinez.”...

The gold-fevered young men who swarmed into California expecting to get rich quick, soon discovered that finding their fortune wasn’t so...

The thousands of greenhorn gold rushers who invaded California in 1849 were quickly followed by those who came to “fleece” the miners of...

In July 1848, a young man named John Bidwell discovered gold on the Middle Fork of the Feather River. His discovery was not by chance....

Several weeks elapsed after the January 1848 gold discovery before people started believing it was genuine…and then events started...

Downieville sits in a magnificent, rugged, wooded natural amphitheater surrounded by lofty, pine-covered peaks. The town, founded in late...

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...

The wanna-be rich-quick gold prospectors who swarmed into California hoping— but failing— to find an easy fortune, boosted the folklore...

Horse thieves harassed Californians for well over 100 years. Horse stealing began in the late 18th century, when Spanish missionaries and...

New Yorker Billy Mulligan and his gang of young toughs came west with the California Gold Rush, arriving in San Francisco by ship in late...

In June 1907, when faster, cheaper railroad networks had long since replaced cross-continental stagecoach transportation, a gentleman...

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

Driving a stagecoach required superlative skills: a quick eye, a steady nerve, a skillful hand on the reins, and a thorough knowledge of...