John Bidwell was a trailblazer who organized the first wagon train of Americans to come to California in 1841, where he made the most of every opportunity that came his way. He was a pioneer in the opening of the American West, a Gold Rush entrepreneur, a leader in California politics, an innovator in agriculture, and a generous donor to schools and churches. In 1865, as a new congressman in Washington, D. C., he met Annie Kennedy, who became his wife. Annie was active in the causes of education, Indian rights, women's rights, and temperance. This picture book biography portrays their love of nature, California, the town of Chico, and each other.

John Steele (1832-1915) traveled overland from Wisconsin to California in 1850 and remained for three years. Returning east, he taught school, served in the Union Army, and became an Episcopal minister after the Civil War. Echoes of the past about California and ... In camp and cabin (1928) reprints works by Bidwell and Steele published earlier. Bidwell's narrative was composed in 1889 and first published in 1890 in the Century Magazine. The version published here as "Echoes of the past," however, was based on a somewhat different version published in pamphlet form by the Chico, California Advertiser after Bidwell's death in 1900. This version does not include Bidwell's "Journey to California," the journal that he kept in 1841 and which was published in Missouri in 1843 or 1844 (and appears as part of his Addresses, reminiscences ..., 1906).

Over the past few decades, thanks to a new generation of historians, our sense of just exactly who were the Founders of nineteenth-century American California has been significantly enlarged and enhanced. With the publication of this meticulously researched and elegantly written biography, what many of us have long suspected now stands clear: namely that Annie Kennedy Bidwell--in her concern for civilized and humane values and her willingness to put such values into practice--ranks among the great women of California in the nineteenth century. Like her husband, Annie Bidwell was a Founder. Historian Lois Halliday McDonald has recovered for us the splendor and moral purpose of an engaged and value-oriented American life. --Kevin Starr, University Professor of History, University of Southern California; State Librarian Emeritus

Written by one of America's preeminent labor historians, this book is the definitive account of one of the most spectacular, captivating, complex and strangely neglected stories in Western history--the emergence of migratory farmworkers and the development of California agriculture. Street has systematically worked his way through a mountain of archival materials--more than 500 manuscript collections, scattered in 22 states, including Spain and Mexico--to follow the farmworker story from its beginnings on Spanish missions into the second decade of the twentieth century. The result is a comprehensive tour de force. Scene by scene, the epic narrative clarifies and breathes new life into a controversial and instructive saga long surrounded by myth, conjecture, and scholarly neglect. With its panoramic view spanning 144 years and moving from the US-Mexico border to Oregon, Beasts of the Field reveals diverse patterns of life and labor in the fields that varied among different crops, regions, time periods, and racial and ethic groups. Enormous in scope, packed with surprising twists and turns, and devastating in impact, this compelling, revelatory work of American social history will inform generations to come of the history of California and the nation.

Over time, the land of the Mechoopda Indians, where elk herds grazed on blue-stemmed grass, became Rancho Arroyo Chico, the land chosen by California pioneer John Bidwell for his stately creekside mansion. Bidwell later founded the town of Chico with its wooden plank sidewalks and iron-front and brick commercial buildings. Today Chico is a dynamic modern city with its own California State University, a wide, tree-lined Esplanade, andthanks to the legacy of Annie Bidwellthe eighth-largest municipal park in the nation.

In 1841 and 1842 small groups of emigrants tried to discover a route to California passable by wagons. Without reliable maps or guides, they pushed ahead, retreated, detoured, split up, and regrouped, reaching their destination only at great cost of property and life. But they had found a trail, or cleared one, and by their mistakes had shown others how to take wagon trains across half a continent. By 1844 a great migration was in progress. Each successive party learned from those who went before where to cross rivers and mountains, when to rest, when to forge ahead, and how to find food and water. Increased experience was translated into better wagon designs, improved understanding of climate and terrain, and better-supplied and -organized caravans. George R. Stewart's California Trail describes the trail's year-by-year changes as weather conditions, new exploration, and the changing character of emigrants affected it. Successes and disasters (like the Donner party's fate) are presented in nearly personal detail. More than a history of the trail, this book tells how to travel it, what it felt like, what was feared and hoped for.