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Explore California History

“There’s only the American Dream and the California dream.”
—Gov. Gavin Newsom

CAL@170 is a collection of 170 stories celebrating California’s 170 years of statehood. The aim 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.

“A Person Always Doing His or Her Best Becomes a Natural Leader Just by Example.”

DiMaggio invests part of his first year salary with the Yankees to partner with his baseball-playing brothers on this restaurant,…

History as Fiction: The California Social Novel

California writers have created a rich tradition of social protest novels, beginning with John Rollin Ridge’s The Life and Adventures…

The Finest College Football Team of All Time — Both On The Field and Off

In the view of many sportswriters and historians of the game, the University of San Francisco's 1951 team is the…

A Governor Resigns to Become Chief Justice

Lt. Gov. Goodwin Jesse Knight, a genial,…

True Heroes of the Transcontinental Railroad

Work on the last mile of the Pacific Railroad [2008-3303] California State Library Between 1864 and 1869, thousands of Chinese…

Hollywood’s Castle on a Hill

For nearly 90 years, as a city and a world have change utterly around it, the famed hotel Chateau Marmont,…

Annie Burke and Elsie Allen, Pomo Basket Weavers

Annie Burke, 1944. [2007-0340], California State Library The lands of the Pomo spread across modern-day Sonoma, Mendocino, and Lake counties.…

California’s Long “War of Extermination”

"The California Gold Rush was a “universal mass trespass that shortly created laws to legitimize itself.” -- Wallace Stegner Some…

Coast-to-Coast Direct Dial Phone Service Begins

The First Transcontinental Direct Dial Phone Call: Flanked by Phone Company Executives, Mayor M. Leslie Denning of Englewood, New Jersey…

The Face of the True California

As a boy growing up in Suffolk County on Long Island, I climb the tops of the highest hills with…