Cheryl Anne Stapp
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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California's Olden Golden Days
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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
Apr 7, 20212 min read
Mapping the West
When explorer John Charles Frémont and his exhausted company of U. S. Topographical Corpsmen reached the Sacramento Valley trading post...
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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 10, 20213 min read
Rachel Larkin, Diplomat's Wife
Twenty-four–year-old Rachel Hobson Holmes boarded the trading vessel Newcastle out of Boston in September 1831. She was sailing for...
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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 24, 20213 min read
About Johnson's Ranch
As hurried plans to rescue the snow-bound Donner Party took shape in early 1847, Johnson’s Ranch was designated as the base of...
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Cheryl Anne Stapp
Feb 17, 20213 min read
Timeline of a Winter Deliverance
The Donner Party was an emigrant company composed of several families who decided to leave the main caravan of westward-bound wagons in...
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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 27, 20213 min read
The Hastings Cutoff - Risky Business
The Donner Party became trapped in the snow-bound Sierra Nevada in part because they opted to take the new Hastings Cutoff, instead of...
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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 13, 20213 min read
A Man of Violence
If political discord is bad today, it was even worse in the mid-19th century. In that era, heated disputes often led to stabbings,...
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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
Dec 23, 20203 min read
O Christmas Tree...
Christmas was not widely celebrated in our Thirteen Colonies before the 1775-1783 American Revolution, and afterward the holiday fell...
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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
Dec 9, 20201 min read
The Dragon Rocks Lighthouse
In 1865, the overloaded passenger steamer Brother Jonathan suddenly encountered severe winds and rough seas after leaving San Francisco...
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