Cheryl Anne Stapp
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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California's Olden Golden Days
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Cheryl Anne Stapp
Nov 15, 20232 min read
Murphys
Most of them are still there, lining tree-shadowed Main Street, and still in operation: the now-historic structures that were built in...
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Cheryl Anne Stapp
May 17, 20232 min read
Auspicious Beginnings
Within a few months, the 1848 gold discovery turned pastoral California into a hotbed of mining and commercial activity. Seemingly...
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Cheryl Anne Stapp
Jul 6, 20222 min read
A History Museum's History
Today’s Sacramento History Museum, which opened to the public in 1985, is housed in a replica of the city’s 1854 City Hall and Waterworks...
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Cheryl Anne Stapp
Jun 29, 20223 min read
The Gem
In its heyday, Columbia was known as the “Gem of the Southern Mines” for its prodigious output of gold, averaging $100,000 or more per...
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Cheryl Anne Stapp
Jun 22, 20223 min read
Boom & Bust in Bodie
Once it was a good-sized mining settlement—a rip-roaring, wild-west boomtown. Today Bodie is a wind-swept ghost town, a tourist...
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Cheryl Anne Stapp
May 18, 20221 min read
Dog Town Diggings
More than one gold rush mining camp was dubbed “dog town” by its inhabitants—miner’s slang for coarse, thrown-together encampments of...
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Cheryl Anne Stapp
May 11, 20222 min read
Foiled Intrigue
Perhaps it’s only myth or legend (for sure, certain story elements are questionable), but nonetheless it’s a romantic tale, published as...
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Cheryl Anne Stapp
Feb 2, 20223 min read
Striking Gold in Angels Camp
Mark Twain said he based his short story “The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County” on what he thought, at the time, was a...
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Cheryl Anne Stapp
Jan 26, 20223 min read
Golden Island
Not long after Marshall’s January 24th gold discovery at Coloma, three men stumbled upon a second gold find downriver—which became one of...
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Cheryl Anne Stapp
Jan 12, 20222 min read
The Pretty Girl Stage Driver
The stage arrived in Oroville right on time that morning in October 1893; yet at the first sight of it, the townsfolk were astounded....
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Cheryl Anne Stapp
Jul 28, 20212 min read
The Splendid California Stage Company
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...
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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 21, 20214 min read
The 1906 San Francisco Earthquake
One hundred fifteen years ago last Sunday, on April 18, 1906—a Wednesday—a devastating earthquake struck the northern coast of California...
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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
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
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
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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