“There’s only the American Dream and the California dream.”
—Gov. Gavin Newsom
This year marks the 175th anniversary of California’s admission to the U.S. as the 31st state. But statehood wasn’t the beginning of the story. Celebrating California is a collection of 175 stories that highlight California’s unique history and role in the world. The goal is to offer examples of California’s unique character and that of its residents, past and present. That means among the good there will be some bad. For every success story, there’s a failure, a tragedy, an injustice. It’s from these mistakes that we learn and grow stronger together. Share a story with us that helps define what California means to you.
California writers have created a rich tradition of social protest novels, beginning with John Rollin Ridge’s The Life and Adventures…
In the view of many sportswriters and historians of the game, the University of San Francisco's 1951 team is the…
Work on the last mile of the Pacific Railroad [2008-3303] California State Library Between 1864 and 1869, thousands of Chinese…
For nearly 90 years, as a city and a world have change utterly around it, the famed hotel Chateau Marmont,…
Annie Burke, 1944. [2007-0340], California State Library The lands of the Pomo spread across modern-day Sonoma, Mendocino, and Lake counties.…
"The California Gold Rush was a “universal mass trespass that shortly created laws to legitimize itself.” -- Wallace Stegner Some…
The First Transcontinental Direct Dial Phone Call: Flanked by Phone Company Executives, Mayor M. Leslie Denning of Englewood, New Jersey…
As a boy growing up in Suffolk County on Long Island, I climb the tops of the highest hills with…
Bay tug boat circa 1890 [2009-0412], California State Library That’s how an article in the July 30, 1897 San Francisco…