"California as I Saw It": First-Person Narratives of California's Early Years, 1849-1900

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California As I Saw It: First Person Narratives, 1849-1900, documents the formative era of the state of California. Eyewitness accounts record the turbulent history of the pioneer experience and the Gold Rush. It includes complete works by Mark Twain, Robert Louis Stevenson, and William Tecumseh Sherman, as well as a rich array of journals, diaries, and letters illustrating everyday life of the period. The descriptions of the development of urban centers such as San Francisco and Los Angeles are also a highlight of this collection.

Early California History: An Overview

The Civil War and Reconstruction, 1850-1877
Development of the Industrial United States, 1876-1915
Emergence of Modern America, 1890-1930

American Life Histories, 1936-1940
California Gold: Folk Music from the Thirties
Evolution of the Conservation Movement, 1850-1920
Great Earthquake and Fire: San Francisco, 1897-1916
Panoramic Maps, 1847-1929
Touring Turn-of-the-Century America, 1890-1920
Words and Deeds in American History

Read More About It! - A bibliography
Further Reading About California's Early Years - Bibliography

Several search options are available. You can search by keyword, or you can browse the Author or Title listings. You can Search the "Descriptive Information" about the items (bibliographic records), or the "Full Text" of the materials.

There is no searchable index of the illustrations which are embedded in the texts of California as I Saw It. One way to look for illustrations is within the Book Navigator, which is the online table of contents for each item.You can access the Book Navigator by clicking on the "full text of the document" link on the bibliographic record for the item. If the book contains engravings or illustrations, they will most likely be listed in a separate section. You may also choose to do a full text search which includes the search terms illustration or captions in its scope, but the yield of hits will be very large.

For more help with search words, go to the California as I Saw It Subject Index and the Synonym List.

For help with search strategies, see Finding Items in American Memory.

You can search descriptions, read most of the texts, and view most of the images in this collection without special viewers. However, to see some items, you may need special viewers. For help, go to American Memory Viewer Information.