For decades, nobody questions that Artie Samish runs Sacramento. Starting as a lobbyist in the early 1920s, Samish gradually amasses unrivaled power and influence as…
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Stories about the lives and landscapes of California
Assembly member Blanca Rubio agrees to meet me at Chicory, a coffee shop in Sacramento frequented by members of the Legislature. We’ve never met. I’m…
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On a summer day in the San Joaquin Valley, 101 in the shade, I merge onto Highway 99 past downtown Fresno and steer through the…
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After California’s male voters decisively defeat a women’s voting rights ballot measure in 1896, suffragists display plenty of public bravado. But it’s all for show. …
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Erstwhile school teacher Rebecca Merritt Austin and husband James move to Plumas County from Kansas in 1865, setting up their household in the Black Hawk…
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Joltin’ Joe DiMaggio is born in Martinez, California on November 25, 1914 to a fisherman father who sails the family cross the bay when Joe…
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In the view of many sportswriters and historians of the game, the University of San Francisco’s 1951 team is the greatest college football team ever. …
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Lt. Gov. Goodwin Jesse Knight, a genial, moderate Republican, is sworn in on October 5, 1953, as California’s 31st governor after the resignation of Earl…
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Between 1864 and 1869, thousands of Chinese migrants toil at a grueling pace and in perilous working conditions to help construct America’s first transcontinental railroad.…
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For nearly 90 years, as a city and a world have change utterly around it, the famed hotel Chateau Marmont, perched above a famous road…
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