Cheryl Anne Stapp
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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California's Olden Golden Days
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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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