Three fishermen from Lone Pine become the first recorded to reach the 14,505 summit of Mt. Whitney, the highest peak in the continental United States.…
Comments closedCategory: Nature
Stories about plants, animals, and geology of California
Catherine Hittell is passionate about wildlife preservation. Saving the meadowlark from extinction, in particular. During the 19th Century and the beginning of the 20th Century,…
Comments closed
Yosemite Valley’s majestic 8,839 foot Half Dome is “probably the only one of all the prominent points of Yosemite which has never been — and…
Comments closed
Bummer and Lazarus are the most famous dogs in San Francisco’s history. Maybe even in California’s history. Between 1861 and 1865, the two mongrels are…
Comments closed
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…
Comments closed
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…
Comments closed
As a boy growing up in Suffolk County on Long Island, I climb the tops of the highest hills with my mother and father and…
Comments closed
It is late summer 1839, and John Sutter makes his first journey up the Sacramento River to establish a fortified colony that will be the…
Comments closed
Baldassare Forestiere, born July 8, 1879, leaves his home in Sicily as a young man and immigrates to the United States where he works as…
Comments closed
Annie Montague Alexander is the privileged daughter of Samuel Thomas Alexander founder of what becomes the California & Hawaiian Sugar Company. (Better known as C&H…
Comments closed