Cheryl Anne Stapp

Dropped into a pre-drilled hole and gently tapped into place, a 17.6-karat golden spike ceremoniously joined the Central Pacific Railroad...

Legends of lost treasure are always intriguing, aren’t they? California history has several legends of “lost” mines of gold and other...

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...

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...

For eons, an ancient stream slowly carved a canyon through land that fronted on the Pacific Ocean, in the process steadily creating what...

California’s Gold Rush-era mining camps and towns were all vulnerable to fire. The only light sources were candles and kerosene lamps,...

Its name is an Angelized version of an archaic Spanish word for “pelican,” although those birds no longer roost there. Since the mid-19th...

The newspapers reported his crimes and said his name was Charles Mortimer. He was, they said, the quintessential thief and murderer:...

In a career that spanned several decades, her various nicknames included “Goldielocks,” “The Girl with the Curls,” and most of all,...

She died young but her influence endures, not least because several of her works are listed on the National Register of Historic Places....

A dark-eyed beauty, Francisca Carrillo was born in San Diego when California was still a province of Imperial Spain, and raised in the...

She was a poet, an editor, a teacher, a librarian, and a prominent figure in San Francisco’s literary community in the 19th and early...

The courageous folks who braved the overland trek to California in the 1840s knew they had to take enough food to last six months. After...

Many American states derived their names from native American Indian words, some from European monarchs; a few from early French or...

In 1818, while the future Republic of Mexico and other Spanish-owned regions in South America were fighting a war of independence against...

In the bygone days of the 19th century, Californians celebrated the coming of a new year much like we do today, with parties, games,...

Today, January 24, 2024, is the anniversary of the California gold discovery, an event that changed the known world 176 years ago. On a...

It remains one of the lesser-known neighborhoods in the huge San Fernando Valley— a sprawling vale that contains both city and county...

For the frenzied gold rushers who traveled to the California gold mines by sea, the voyage itself was truly a great adventure … just not...

NEXT SUNDAY NIGHT WE BID FAREWELL TO 2023 AND WELCOME THE NEW YEAR 2024 IN FAMILIAR, TIME-HONORED WAYS: WITH FRIENDS AND FAMILY, WE TOAST...