Illustrated with hundreds of original plates, this volume is a collection of 33 different articles, essays, and stories ranging from the years 1875 to 1912.

For over four centuries, California has been an ever-changing landscape of innovation and revolution, triumph and tragedy. In Fascinating True Tales from Old California, author Colleen Adair Fliedner mines the history of theGolden State to collect more than fifty tales of famous Californians and their escapades from 1542 through 1940. For many, like James Lick, Leland Stanford, and John Downey, California was a place to strike it rich. Others sought freedom and a new beginning, including Chinese immigrants and African Americans, like philanthropist and freed slave, Biddy Mason. And still some characters just wanted to live their lives outside of society’s rules, like swindler James Reavis or the cross-dressing stagecoach driver, Charley Parkhurst. Readers will be entertained and enlightened as they take a trip through California’s colorful past.

In 1855 an ex-miner lamented that nineteenth-century California "can and does furnish the best bad things," including "purer liquors...finer tobacco, truer guns and pistols, larger dirks and bowie knives, and prettier courtezans [sic]" than anywhere else in America. Lured by boons of gold and other exploitable resources, California's settler population mushroomed under Mexican and early American control, and this period of rapid transformation gave rise to a freewheeling culture best epitomized by its entertainments. Hellacious California tours the rambunctious and occasionally appalling amusements of the Golden State: gambling, gun duels, knife fights, gracious dining and gluttony, prostitution, fandangos, cigars, con artistry, and the demon drink. Historian Gary Noy unearths myriad primary sources, many of which have never before been published, to spin his true tall tales that are by turns humorous and horrifying. Whether detailing the exploits of an inebriated stallion, gambling parlors as a reinforcement and subversion of racial norms, armed skirmishes over eggs, or the ins and outs of the "Spirit Lover" scam, Noy expertly situates these stories in the context of a live-for-the-moment society characterized by audacity, bigotry, and risk. Published in collaboration with Sierra College Press.

Badge and Buckshot is a comprehensive book at many of the once-famous peace officers and outlaws of Old California. Told here for the first time are the true stories of Ben Thorn, the iron-willed but scandal-plagued sheriff of Calaveras County; John C. Boggs, the fast-shooting nemesis of the Tom Bell and Rattlesnake Dick gangs; Ben and Dudley Johnson, the notorious “Tulare Twins”; Kid Thompson, whose train-robbing exploits took place just blocks from present-day Los Angeles film and television studios; and Coates-Frost feud, California’s bloodiest vendetta, which endured more than twenty years and left fourteen men dead. Here, too, are the first complete accounts of Captain Ingram’s Rangers, the band of Confederate guerrillas who raided stagecoaches in California during the Civil War; Steve Venard, the soft-spoken lawman who killed three outlaws in a single gunfight; and the legendary Bill Miner, whose career of banditry spanned almost half a century. The product of more than ten years of painstaking research, Badge and Buckshot recounts one of the forgotten sagas of the Old West, an action-packed tale of shoot-outs, stage holdups, manhunts, and lynchings. At the same time, through extensive use of pioneer newspaper files, court records, and previously unpublished illustrations, it shatters old myths and demonstrates the overall effectiveness of the criminal justice system in Old California. For authentic Americana, Badge and Buckshot is not to be missed.

"The Splendid Idle Forties: Stories of Old California" by Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton is a collection of short stories about early California. The volume contains: The Pearls Of Loreto, The Ears Of Twenty Americans, The Wash-tub Mail, The Conquest Of Doña Jacoba, A Ramble With Eulogia, The Isle Of Skulls, The Head Of A Priest, La Pérdida, Lukari's Story, Natalie Ivanhoff: A Memory Of Fort Ross, The Vengeance Of Padre Arroyo, The Bells Of San Gabriel, and When The Devil Was Well.

The Bodie Mining District was established in 1860 after the discovery of gold deposits in the area. Bodie’s largest boom ended ust over twenty years later, but the town survived into the twentieth century supported by a few small but steady mines. Mining ended with World War II. What remained of the town became a state park in 1964. In Bodie’s Gold, author Marguerite Sprague uncovers the original sources of information whenever possible, from the first mining claims to interviews with former Bodieites. Enhanced with numerous historic photographs and extracts from newspapers of that period, as well as by the reminiscences of former residents, the book offers a fascinating account of life in a Gold Rush boomtown.

This is a collection of stories by J. Smeaton Chase set in the context of the Spanish colonization of California. The book presents vivid depictions of the life and culture of the indigenous people and the Catholic missions in the region.

This collection of fifty outlaw tales includes well-knowns such as Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, Frank and Jesse James, Belle Starr (and her dad), and Pancho Villa, along with a fair smattering of women, organized crime bosses, smugglers, and of course the usual suspects: highwaymen, bank and train robbers, cattle rustlers, snake-oil salesmen, and horse thieves. Men like Henry Brown and Burt Alvord worked on both sides of the law either at different times of their lives or simultaneously. Clever shyster Soapy Smith and murderer Martin Couk survived by their wits, while the outlaw careers of the dimwitted DeAutremont brothers and bigmouthed Diamondfield Jack were severely limited by their intellect, or lack thereof. Nearly everyone in these pages was motivated by greed, revenge, or a lethal mixture of the two. The most bloodthirsty of the bunch, such as the heartless (and, some might argue, soulless) Annie Cook and trigger-happy Augustine Chacón, surely had evil written into their very DNA.

Vols. for 1971- include annual reports and statistical summaries.