Cheryl Anne Stapp
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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California's Olden Golden Days
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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
Dec 16, 20202 min read
Forlorn Hope Re-enacted
On this day 174 years ago—December 16, 1846—seventeen poorly provisioned people set out across the snow-blanketed Sierra Nevada on...
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Cheryl Anne Stapp
Nov 18, 20202 min read
The Man Who Engineered Miracles
Theodore Dehone Judah was the brilliant engineer and visionary who convinced a group of Sacramento merchants, and the United States...
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Cheryl Anne Stapp
Oct 28, 20202 min read
Laundry Was Quite the Chore
When the only machines were a woman’s hands and arms, and washtubs were filled with hand-drawn buckets of well or creek water instead of...
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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 16, 20202 min read
Dressing the Stones
Today, commercial mills are complex, high-tech installations. Long ago, however, skilled artisans hand-carved granite millstones into...
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Cheryl Anne Stapp
May 20, 20202 min read
"Lucky" Phineas Banning
A self-made man from his early teens, Phineas Banning was one of the most colorful, charismatic characters in the history of Southern...
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Cheryl Anne Stapp
May 6, 20202 min read
RIP, James Marshall
James Wilson Marshall, the celebrated discoverer of California gold, never personally profited from his find though it made other men...
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Cheryl Anne Stapp
Apr 22, 20202 min read
Bruff's Gold Rush Hysteria
Joseph Goldsborough Bruff is a well-remembered participant in the California Gold Rush. A committed diarist and talented amateur artist,...
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Cheryl Anne Stapp
Apr 15, 20201 min read
Dressing for the Trail
For most of the way west in covered wagons, the weather was hot. Because wool breathed and afforded better protection against the sun...
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Cheryl Anne Stapp
Apr 1, 20202 min read
Pegleg's Lost Mine
Few things inflame men’s imaginations as the idea of a hidden fortune in gold— so the tale of Pegleg Smith and his lost gold mine has...
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Cheryl Anne Stapp
Mar 18, 20201 min read
Pioneer Activist Annie Bidwell
She was tiny—less than five feet tall—but determined and confident. In April 1868, she married tall John Bidwell, a prominent California...
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Cheryl Anne Stapp
Mar 11, 20201 min read
California's Child Star
Little Lotta Crabtree— a red-haired, merry-eyed child blessed with an irrepressible laugh— became a box office attraction in gold rush...
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Cheryl Anne Stapp
Mar 4, 20202 min read
Spirited Jessie Fremont
Privileged, headstrong, and in love with an “unsuitable” man, Jessie Benton—the daughter of powerful U.S. Senator Thomas Hart...
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Cheryl Anne Stapp
Feb 26, 20202 min read
Finding Hope in a Winter Nightmare
In the severe Sierra Nevada winter of 1846–1847, while adult members of the desperate, snow-trapped Donner Party clung to their sanity...
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Cheryl Anne Stapp
Feb 19, 20202 min read
Rescuing the Donner Party
It was February 18, 1847. The winter sun had already dropped behind the mountain peaks, and dusk was falling. A band of seven exhausted,...
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Cheryl Anne Stapp
Feb 12, 20201 min read
Mexican Pioneer Don Ignacio Martinez
Martinez, California, and the adjacent town of Pinole, date their names, indeed their very existence, back to the days of Mexican rule....
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Cheryl Anne Stapp
Jan 15, 20201 min read
The Will to Survive
On January 17, 1847, a living skeleton stumbled into the outskirts of Johnson’s Ranch on the Bear River. His name was William Eddy. He...
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Cheryl Anne Stapp
Dec 26, 20191 min read
The Forlorn Hope
Weary and low on supplies, the Donner Party arrived at the pass through the Sierra Nevada at the end of October 1846; but it was already...
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