Gold Rush 3/4

California's Olden Golden Days

Cheryl Anne Stapp

Jun 2, 20212 min read

Charley's Secret

So many legends surround the nineteenth century stage driver Charley Parkhurst that it’s difficult now to separate fact from fiction. In...

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Cheryl Anne Stapp

May 26, 20213 min read

Bayley's Grand Dream

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...

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Cheryl Anne Stapp

Apr 14, 20212 min read

Bad Odds for Bachelors

Nineteenth century singles had limited ways in which to meet someone to marry, especially those singles who lived in rural areas. This...

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Cheryl Anne Stapp

Mar 31, 20213 min read

Virginia Reed Murphy

Virginia Reed was twelve when her parents and younger siblings set out for California from their Illinois home in April 1846, traveling...

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Cheryl Anne Stapp

Mar 24, 20213 min read

Dame Shirley's Gold Mine

Praised as the most delightful first-person account of California’s gold mines, The Shirley Letters is a collection of 23 letters written...

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Cheryl Anne Stapp

Mar 17, 20213 min read

Margaret Frink, Pioneer Housewife

In the spring of 1850—bedazzled by sensational reports coming back from the California gold fields—Margaret and Ledyard Frink excitedly...

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Cheryl Anne Stapp

Mar 3, 20213 min read

Reformer Eliza Farnham

In her own lifetime Eliza Farnham was nationally known as an author, and as an exceptional woman on the leading edge of several social...

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Cheryl Anne Stapp

Feb 10, 20212 min read

Gold Rush Valentines

Valentine’s Day was not completely unnoticed in gold-crazed California, although females—only 8 percent of the statewide population in...

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Cheryl Anne Stapp

Feb 3, 20213 min read

Riches to Rags

Theodor Cordua was the first European to establish a permanent settlement on the site of present-day Marysville, California. Ambitious,...

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Cheryl Anne Stapp

Jan 20, 20212 min read

Land of Geographic Extremes

California’s odd shape permits its northern port city of Eureka to be the most westward city in the continental United States—yet its...

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Cheryl Anne Stapp

Jan 5, 20213 min read

First Newspaper in San Francisco

Although it was the second newspaper published in California, the California Star was the first newspaper published in San Francisco. Its...

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Cheryl Anne Stapp

Dec 30, 20202 min read

New Year Celebrations of Old

During the early, chaotic days of the California Gold Rush, New Year’s Eve celebrations were mostly improvised: lonesome men in out-back...

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Cheryl Anne Stapp

Nov 4, 20202 min read

Chief Justice Hugh Murray

Hugh Campbell Murray was—and still is—the youngest chief justice of the California Supreme Court the state has ever had. He was...

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Cheryl Anne Stapp

Oct 21, 20203 min read

The Old Rancho del Paso

This Sacramento Valley ranch is long gone, but its colorful history is legend…and its fame still reverberates in the names of streets,...

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Cheryl Anne Stapp

Sep 30, 20202 min read

Hall & Crandall's Stage Lines

Many New England stagemen, whose livelihoods there were being steadily squeezed by the railroads, followed thousands of bedazzled gold...

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Cheryl Anne Stapp

Sep 23, 20202 min read

J. Birch & The California Stage Company

Before the 1848 gold discovery brought thousands of fortune-hunters swarming into a recently-acquired, raw American territory, ordinary...

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Cheryl Anne Stapp

Sep 9, 20201 min read

Surface Glitter

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

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Cheryl Anne Stapp

Sep 2, 20201 min read

The Oldest Precious Metal

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

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Cheryl Anne Stapp

Aug 26, 20203 min read

Mail Carriers Hit Pay Dirt

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

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Cheryl Anne Stapp

Aug 19, 20202 min read

A New Cocktail for Gold-rushers

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

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