Growth of the West Coast in the Mid-1800s and Beyond
Oregon City, now a suburb of Portland, Oregon, was one of the largest settlements in the West in the 1840s. Located at the Willamette Falls, which halted all boat traffic on the Willamette River, Oregon City was a natural stopping point for pioneers from the East. Starting with the Great Migration of 1843, Oregon City […]
Big Sur: Memories Good and Bad
I’ve written several posts about childhood trips to visit my grandparents in Pacific Grove, California. And, I’ve been back to the Monterey Peninsula many times as an adult. One of the spots we frequented during my adult visits is Big Sur. Big Sur is a rugged stretch of the Pacific Coastal region south of Carmel […]
A Driving Tour of California, 1967
I only recall one summer driving trip in my childhood to California. We made a Christmas driving trip in December 1965, right before my maternal grandfather died (though at the time I didn’t know he was so ill). And my brother and I flew to California—either with or without our mother—for summer visits with my […]
Black History in California
As Black History Month (February) winds to an end, I decided to post a bit of Californian history about African Americans and about my African American characters. I’ve posted before about African American history in the Oregon Territory. California was marginally more receptive to Blacks in that era, but not by much. The Tanner family […]
More on Slow Communications in the Frontier Days
As I work on my current novel, I am mired again in the vagaries of the mail system in 1850-51. I wrote a post on this topic when I was working on Now I’m Found, in which letters between the characters provided many of the plot’s turning points. In my current novel, two sisters write […]
More Beaches to Write About
As I’ve written before, any year is a good year when I get to walk on the beach. This summer, I’ve walked along two beaches and seen several others. The first beach was in California—on Balboa Island in Newport Beach. My husband and I took his mother to visit in June. She had vacationed on […]
Early Roads and Railroads in Oregon in the 1850s
As I write my fourth historical novel about the West, I’m finding more and more things I need to research. Researching travel along the Oregon Trail itself was easy by comparison—all I needed to do was to decide on a route, describe the landmarks and the difficulties of daily life, and let my characters react […]
How Did Emigrants in Oregon Celebrate Thanksgiving in the 1840s?
I wanted to write about Thanksgiving in Oregon in the 1840s, but didn’t find anything specifically on that topic. I did, however, find some interesting information about the development of the Thanksgiving holiday as we know it in the United States. See here, here, here, and here. From this history, I’ve extrapolated what I think […]
Relocation of Fort Kearny
In a post several years ago, I mentioned that Fort Kearny was relocated from near what is now Nebraska City, Nebraska, to a location further west along the Platte River. I described the surveying of the new fort site in Lead Me Home, and I’ve been revisiting that scene in my current work-in-progress. As migration […]
The Vagaries of Mail Service During the Early California Gold Rush
One of the issues I have dealt with in my novel about the California Gold Rush is long-distance communications in the West between 1848 and 1850. I have characters living in Oregon, others in California, and they have relatives in Missouri and Massachusetts. The only way people could communicate over distance was through letters, but […]