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 […]
Random Photos: An October Trip Back in Time
My husband and I have taken many nice autumn vacations in September and October. Some of these autumn trips have been to Colorado, the Grand Canyon, Glacier National Park, San Francisco, and a Rhine River cruise. And, of course, we’ve also made trips to see family in Seattle, Washington, D.C., and Chicago. It’s a nice […]
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 […]
Gambling with Gold: Vice in San Francisco in 1849
As I continue to research and edit my work-in-progress about the early years of the California Gold Rush, I recently found some interesting first-person accounts in A Year of Mud and Gold: San Francisco in Letters and Diaries, 1849-1850, edited by William Benemann (1999). Some of the more fascinating information concerned the construction of gambling […]
How the Great Fires Shaped Early San Francisco
The last survivor of the 1906 San Francisco earthquake died earlier this month. William Del Monte was three months old when the earthquake struck and 109 when he died on January 11. Reading the news articles about his life and death brought to mind all the novels I’ve read about the earthquake and the fires […]
Western Heads Cool As Gold Fever Begins in the East
When autumn came to 1848, San Francisco was already a boom town and coping with the influx of gold. At the same time, rumors of the gold rush were just reaching Washington, D.C. By late September, more than 6000 men were mining in California. Wealth from the gold fields flooded into San Francisco soon after nuggets […]
Gold Fever: News of the Gold Rush Explodes
Although James Marshall found gold on the north fork of the American River in late January 1848, and the news reached San Francisco by mid-March, the gold fever didn’t really start in San Francisco until mid-May. Samuel Brannan was largely responsible for the delay in spreading the word of the gold find. Brannan owned The […]
Fact and Fiction: A “First Hand” Description of San Francisco in April 1848
Henry Vizetelly, an English publisher who was in San Francisco at the time of the 1848 gold discovery, wrote a novel entitled Four Months Among the Gold-Finders in Alta California: Being the Diary of an Expedition from San Francisco to the Gold Districts. He used the pseudonym J. Tyrwhitt Brooks. Fiction or not, the novel […]
Easter Vigil Mass: Katholische Kirche?
One of the Easter vacations my family took when my kids were young was a trip to San Francisco. My husband was a Naval Reserve officer, and he got us into the Marines Memorial Club near Union Square downtown. It was a great location—convenient to many city attractions and to buses and cable cars. I […]