Cheryl Anne Stapp

Is the “atmospheric river” that deluged California last week a precursor of what is to come? Back in the day, they called such phenomena...

Quilt making in the nineteenth century was more than just the home-crafted production of usable warm bedding: it was more often than not...

What a wondrous, stunning sight the crew must have seen as the Russian ship Rurik dropped anchor in a sequestered cove of San Francisco...

Born to respectable, hard-working parents who had come to California as gold-rushers in 1849, Robert L. McFarlane quit the family farm in...

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...

In the aftermath of the Mexican-American War, California existed in a state of political limbo. The peace treaty, signed in February 1848...

Traveling medicine shows that peddled miracle cures were common in 19th century America, especially in the western states. Part...

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...