Cheryl Anne Stapp

California does have its share of ghosts, perhaps because of its turbulent, sometimes violent, gold rush era. All of the ghosts listed here,

Its detractors said it was fraudulent; said it was some sort of diabolical magic. Said it was witchcraft. Nevertheless,...

Frontiersman Christopher “Kit” Carson—a legend in his own lifetime— was in California several times during its Mexican period, as a...

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

Early on in the California Gold Rush, one new “gold strike” after another sent fortune hunters scrambling farther afield from the...

Gold was discovered on the American River in January, 1848. By the end of that year, this original gold district had swollen to encompass...

For centuries, the Upper Napa Valley was home to several villages of indigenous people, hunter-gatherers who recognized the beneficial...

It was a murder most foul. Twenty-one-year-old wife and mother Millie Lyons was found brutally slain inside her farmhouse in Wooden...

Adopted by the Second Continental Congress on July 4, 1776, the Declaration of Independence publicly announced to the world the decision...

Dropped into a pre-drilled hole and gently tapped into place, a 17.6-karat golden spike ceremoniously joined the Central Pacific Railroad...

Legends of lost treasure are always intriguing, aren’t they? California history has several legends of “lost” mines of gold and other...

No one really knows who Peter Lebeck was, but we do know that he died in the wilds of the Tehachapi Mountains, the victim of a grizzly...

It was May 1855, and U.S. Secretary of War Jefferson Davis had just realized a years-long goal, to establish an army “camel corps,” for...

For eons, an ancient stream slowly carved a canyon through land that fronted on the Pacific Ocean, in the process steadily creating what...

California’s Gold Rush-era mining camps and towns were all vulnerable to fire. The only light sources were candles and kerosene lamps,...

Its name is an Angelized version of an archaic Spanish word for “pelican,” although those birds no longer roost there. Since the mid-19th...

The newspapers reported his crimes and said his name was Charles Mortimer. He was, they said, the quintessential thief and murderer:...

In a career that spanned several decades, her various nicknames included “Goldielocks,” “The Girl with the Curls,” and most of all,...

She died young but her influence endures, not least because several of her works are listed on the National Register of Historic Places....

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