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California's Olden Golden Days
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Cheryl Anne Stapp
Nov 132 min read
A Day of Thanks
Two weeks from tomorrow, we celebrate our national Thanksgiving Day.
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Cheryl Anne Stapp
Oct 304 min read
Gold Rush Ghosts
California does have its share of ghosts, perhaps because of its turbulent, sometimes violent, gold rush era. All of the ghosts listed here,
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Cheryl Anne Stapp
Oct 163 min read
Spiritualism in the 19th Century
Its detractors said it was fraudulent; said it was some sort of diabolical magic. Said it was witchcraft. Nevertheless,...
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Cheryl Anne Stapp
Oct 25 min read
Kit Carson in California
Frontiersman Christopher “Kit” Carson—a legend in his own lifetime— was in California several times during its Mexican period, as a...
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Cheryl Anne Stapp
Sep 183 min read
California's Forgotten Founder
His name was José de Gálvez, and his title visitador-general —which outranked Spain’s resident viceroy in Mexico City—was conferred by...
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Cheryl Anne Stapp
Sep 44 min read
Creating Marysville
Early on in the California Gold Rush, one new “gold strike” after another sent fortune hunters scrambling farther afield from the...
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Cheryl Anne Stapp
Aug 142 min read
Gordon's Ferry
Gold was discovered on the American River in January, 1848. By the end of that year, this original gold district had swollen to encompass...
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Cheryl Anne Stapp
Jul 313 min read
Calistoga's Spas Origins
For centuries, the Upper Napa Valley was home to several villages of indigenous people, hunter-gatherers who recognized the beneficial...
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Cheryl Anne Stapp
Jul 173 min read
Hunting a Killer
It was a murder most foul. Twenty-one-year-old wife and mother Millie Lyons was found brutally slain inside her farmhouse in Wooden...
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Cheryl Anne Stapp
Jul 31 min read
Independence Day 2024
Adopted by the Second Continental Congress on July 4, 1776, the Declaration of Independence publicly announced to the world the decision...
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Cheryl Anne Stapp
Jun 263 min read
First Transcontinental Railroad
Dropped into a pre-drilled hole and gently tapped into place, a 17.6-karat golden spike ceremoniously joined the Central Pacific Railroad...
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Cheryl Anne Stapp
Jun 123 min read
Legend of the Lost Gunsight Mine
Legends of lost treasure are always intriguing, aren’t they? California history has several legends of “lost” mines of gold and other...
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Cheryl Anne Stapp
May 293 min read
The Mystery of Peter Lebeck
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...
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Cheryl Anne Stapp
May 153 min read
The Camel Corps Experiment
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...
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Cheryl Anne Stapp
May 83 min read
Balboa Island
For eons, an ancient stream slowly carved a canyon through land that fronted on the Pacific Ocean, in the process steadily creating what...
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Cheryl Anne Stapp
May 14 min read
San Francisco's 6th Great Fire
California’s Gold Rush-era mining camps and towns were all vulnerable to fire. The only light sources were candles and kerosene lamps,...
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Cheryl Anne Stapp
Apr 173 min read
Alcatraz!
Its name is an Angelized version of an archaic Spanish word for “pelican,” although those birds no longer roost there. Since the mid-19th...
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Cheryl Anne Stapp
Apr 103 min read
Bad Guy Charley
The newspapers reported his crimes and said his name was Charles Mortimer. He was, they said, the quintessential thief and murderer:...
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Cheryl Anne Stapp
Mar 273 min read
Mary Pickford
In a career that spanned several decades, her various nicknames included “Goldielocks,” “The Girl with the Curls,” and most of all,...
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