Cheryl Anne Stapp

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...

James Wilson Marshall, the celebrated discoverer of California gold, never personally profited from his find though it made other men...

Every town or village was vulnerable to fire during the early Gold Rush years, and few escaped its ravages. Thousands of prospectors in...

Joseph Goldsborough Bruff is a well-remembered participant in the California Gold Rush. A committed diarist and talented amateur artist,...

For most of the way west in covered wagons, the weather was hot. Because wool breathed and afforded better protection against the sun...

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...

Few things inflame men’s imaginations as the idea of a hidden fortune in gold— so the tale of Pegleg Smith and his lost gold mine has...

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

She was tiny—less than five feet tall—but determined and confident. In April 1868, she married tall John Bidwell, a prominent California...

Little Lotta Crabtree— a red-haired, merry-eyed child blessed with an irrepressible laugh— became a box office attraction in gold rush...

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