Currently browsing California History Archives

4.16.2012

The Richard “Fresh Air” Janson Memorial Bridge

Drivers passing over the Sonoma Creek Bridge on Highway 37 between Novato and Vallejo may notice the bridge is named after Richard “Fresh Air” Janson.

Janson, who died in 1951, was a carver of duck decoys.  Janson’s work was the ‘gold standard’ against which all other Pacific Coast decoys are evaluated,” according to Assembly Concurrent Resolution 68 of 1996 naming the bridge in Janson’s honor.    Read more »

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3.27.2012

Meaning of the Name “Yosemite”

A group of some 200 miners called the Mariposa Battalion entered the Yosemite Valley on (March 27) 1851, hoping to drive out a tribe of Native Americans who lived in the Sierra Nevada Mountains and were threatening the miners’ claims to the land and its ore.

The group was led by John D.    Read more »

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3.15.2012

Not the First Time This Has Been Said, Nor the Last…

“Great difficulty is experienced by discharged convicts in obtaining employment.

“In many cases the convict leaves in impaired health and unable to work if he could find employment. He has neither money nor friends.

“What is to become of him? He has made up his mind to lead an honest life but he cannot live on resolves alone.    Read more »

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3.09.2012

Happy Birthday Governor Stanford!

Leland Stanford, president of the Central Pacific Railroad at the same time he served as California’s eighth governor, was born in Watervliet New York on March 9, 1824.

Elected in 1861, Stanford was California’s first Republican governor, the second of the state’s Civil War governors and the best known of those who held the office during the 19th century.    Read more »

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3.08.2012

No Wonder the Name Stuck…

 

Greenhorn in Siskiyou County was named after an unamed Gold Rush greenhorn who was told, as a joke, that a particular site — which everyone believed had no ore — would be the place he would strike it rich. He did.

(Life being full of rich irony and all.) 

-30-    Read more »

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3.05.2012

Happy Belated Birthday, Governor Bartlett!

Washington Bartlett, California’s 16th governor, served just over eight months. Born on Leap Year Day 1824, he was the nation’s first elected Jewish governor and California’s first chief executive to die in office.

Bartlett, 63 when he died of a kidney ailment, was also the 20th mayor of San Francisco.

The distinguished looking politician with his white hair and beard was born in Augusta Georgia and came to San Francisco, around Cape Horn on the Othello, in 1849.    Read more »

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3.01.2012

Happy Belated Birthday Governor Weller!

John B. Weller, California’s 5th governor who used his clemency powers more than any two-year chief executive and whose pro-South leanings led him to sign legislation allowing Southern California to become the territory of Colorado was born 200 years ago on February 22.

He forcibly took control of San Quentin from the outside vendor hired to operate it and presided over the Mendocino War, authorizing a private 40-man army to quell attacks on settlers in Round Valley by the Yuki Indians.    Read more »

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2.27.2012

What Was Wrong with Washington?

CHAPTER XCII.

AN ACT

To change and fix the County Seat of the County of Yolo.

[Approved March 25, 1857.]

The People of the State of California, represented in Senate and Assembly, do enact as follows ;

Section 1. That from and after the first day of June, A. D. eighteen hundred and fifty-seven, the county seat of said County of Yolo, shall be, and is hereby changed from the town of Washington, (the present county seat of said county,) to a place on Cache Creek, in said county, heretofore, and now known as ” Hutton’s,” but which shall be known and thereafter called by the name of Cacheville; and said Cacheville is hereby declared to be the county seat of said County of Yolo, from and after the first day of June, aforesaid.    Read more »

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2.14.2012

A Capitol Valentine’s Day Story

Over the years, members of the Legislature have engaged in any number of trysts, affairs and relationships, licit and illicit. Some were discovered, some weren’t.

But few resulted in anything remotely permanent.

One of the few was Jean Moorhead, formerly Macpherson, and Gordon Duffy.

 A Stanford grad with a masters in public health, Moorhead, a nurse, met Duffy, an optometrist who had been a Republican lawmaker from Hanford since 1964, in the mid 1970s when she was a Sacramento State nursing professor.    Read more »

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2.06.2012

Sound Familiar?

“The time has come for us to decide whether collectively we can afford everything and anything we think of simply because we think of it.  The time has come to run a check to see if all the services government provides were in answer to demands or were just goodies dreamed up for our supposed betterment.     Read more »

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