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The story of Anglo settlement in the nineteenth century through the period when the immigration explosion created the Southern California of the twentieth century. "Glenn Dumke has made a solid contribution to both Californiana and Americana; and he has also told a gorgeous, exciting, tragicomic, incredibly bizarre story."—Los Angeles Times "The author has told a good story historically. He has captured the spirit of the boom days, and has produced a well-written book that sacrifices neither interest nor truth. He has placed the booms in their historical setting where their significance is viewed as being chiefly responsible for the region's fantastic development, and as factors in the growth of the modern Pacific West." -- Pacific Historical Review336 pages, 6 x 9, illus., cloth |
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The Butterfield Overland Mail See our special page on this title A classic first-hand account of a historic overland journey. Waterman L. Ormsby was a reporter who, in 1858, crossed the western states as the sole and first through-passenger of the Butterfield Overland Mail stage on its first trip from St. Louis to San Francisco. Ormsby's reports, which promptly appeared in the New York Herald, are lively and exciting. He describes the journey in great detail, giving full account of the conveyances, the accommodations, the other passengers, the country through which they passed, the dangers to which they were exposed, and the constant necessity for speed. Serving as a frontispiece is a fold-out copy of the earliest known through timetable of the Overland Mail Company. 194 pages, 6 x 9, paper “The best narrative of the trip and one of the best accounts of western travel by sage.”—Pacific Historical Review “If other travelers had been as careful and observant as Ormsby we should know vastly more about our country and the ways of our fathers than we do . . . The book is fascinating.”—Southern California Historical Society Quarterly “The book is fascinating. It will prove interesting to all who care for travelogues, the history of the West, and particularly to those interested in our economic history.--Journal of Economic History |
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The Cattle on a Thousand Hills: Southern California, 1850–1880
An account of Southern California in its transition from a cattle frontier under Mexican rule to an agricultural American community on the eve of great industrial and urban expansion. 368 pages, 6 x 9, illus. "This is the book to read if one wishes to know what Southern California was like."--Westways "The Cattle on a Thousand Hills is without a peer as a broad, rich, specific, and authenticated description of southern California in transition . . . Professor Cleland's book is written with a great deal of charm and is a striking illustration of the wealth of material in the Huntington Library."--The Mississippi Valley Historical Review "As you read, you grow into the lives of the people, Californians and Yankees, and begin to see the era as you never could without the book."--Los Angeles Times "A Book of the Old West; of the social and economic history of Southern California with the grazing ranches, its hectic frontier days, and the disturbing violence that reached a spectacular climax in the Gold Rush and the building of the cross-country railroad."--New York Times |
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Charles F. Lummis Editor of the Southwest Edwin R. Bingham Charles F. Lummis (1859–1928) was a colorful, dynamic, and often eccentric crusader for the Spanish heritage of California. The founder and editor of Land of Sunshine—or Out West, as the magazine was known after 1902—he recruited writers such as Mary Austin, Jack London, and Charlotte Perkins Gilman to contribute short stories, poetry, articles, and essays, many of them based on Western themes. Lummis himself wrote editorials extolling the glories of Southern California, decrying racial prejudice, and calling for the preservation of California’s historic landmarks. Bingham examines Out West from a number of angles: as a Western business enterprise, as a promotional vehicle, as an outlet and training ground for regional writers, and as an instrument of reform. His study, first published in 1955, remains an important and absorbing account of Lummis’s life and of the magazine he established. “A clear and concise picture of the man as well as of the editor…written in a smooth-flowing style, and well documented, this study will appeal to students of Southwestern culture.”—United States Quarterly Book Review “Bingham writes an important chapter in Western literary history, describing the association of [Lummis] with such writers as Washington Matthews, Ambrose Bierce, Frank Norris, Joaquin Miller, Eugene Manlove Rhodes, Sharlot M. Hall, and Mary Austin.”—American Literature “Carefully documented and thoughtfully written.”—Pacific Historical Review “The author shows how an aggressive and talented editor projected his personality and translated his ideas into action.”—Essential Books Edwin R. Bingham is professor emeritus of history at the University of Oregon. He is the author of a biography of Charles Erskine Scott Wood and the editor of California Gold, Northwest Perspectives, American Frontier, Frontier Experience, and Fur Trade in the West. 228 pages, 6 x 8 3/4 inches, 5 black-and-white illustrations, paperback ISBN: 978-0-87328-221-5, $19.95 |
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Ho For California!: Women's Overland Diaries from the Huntington
Library See our special page on this title Five diaries of unusual interest reflect the experiences of five different women on three major westward routes during the mid-nineteenth century. “This well-organized and handsomely designed volume is an important primary resource and a valuable addition to the library of any collector of Western Americana.”—California History “An excellent presentation of an often overlooked aspect of western emigrant history.”—Utah Historical Quarterly 320 pages, 6 x 9, illus., paper |
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The Irvine Ranch The colorful history of the Irvine Ranch—from the days of the Gabrielino Indians, through the rule by Spain and Mexico, to the ownership and administration by four generations of the Irvine family. The ranch was a combination of three large land grants that went, wholly or in part, into the making of the Irvine property. Dr. Cleland tells the history of these grants and provides reproductions of old maps and portraits of early owners. An Epilogue by Robert V. Hine describes the changes that have taken place since the book was first published. 180 pages, 6 x 9, black and white illus., paper "This is almost as much a history of the whole region (and, in the social sense, of the state itself), as it is of the Irvine Ranch . . . an example of local history at its best?the story of a limited area, fully told, yet relating to and helping to interpret the larger scene, physical and historical, of which it is a part."--San Francisco Chronicle "Cleland . . . has traced with considerable affection and obvious skill the development of this extensive estate . . . and has recounted a goodly amount of the social and economic history of southern California."--Pacific Historical Review |
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Juan Rodríguez Cabrillo See our special page on this title This biography traces Cabrillo's rise from a ragged childhood on the streets of Seville to a position of power and wealth as one of the richest landholders and most intrepid adventurers in the New World. "A major contribution to Spanish Californiana and a must for all libraries and collections in the field."—The Californians “At last a distinguished biography of California's first authenticated European visitor . . . Kelsey has resurrected Cabrillo from fancy and myth and made him a truly recognized hero.”—Utah Historical Quarterly "Harry Kelsey's Cabrillo is engaging, well-illustrated, imaginatively researched, and intelligently written with an eye for context as well as for vivid and concrete detail."--Southern California Quarterly276 pages, 6 x 9, illus. |
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Mexican Gold Trail The Journal of a Forty-Niner by George W. B. Evans Edited by Glenn S. Dumke with a preface by Robert Glass Cleland and a new foreword by Peter J. Blodgett Publication date: Fall 2006 On February 20, 1849, 29-year-old attorney George W. B. Evans set out from Defiance, Ohio, determined to make a fortune for his wife and family in the Gold Rush. He kept a painstaking record of his journey to California on one of the least known of the overland routes, crossing northern Mexico on the wild, little-used trail through Chihuahua and across the deserts of southern Arizona. Along the way, he faced many perils and hardships, including cholera outbreaks, Indian attacks, and long, waterless treks. Evans reached the Agua Fria diggings on the Mariposa Grant in late October that year, but failed to strike it rich. Moving on to work as a customs inspector in San Francisco and then as an auctioneer in Sacramento, he became weakened by disease and overwork and died at age 31 on December 16, 1850. “This well designed and executive volume [gives an] account of a little-known route to the gold fields, [Evans’] day-by-day entries on the results of actual mining, and sheds light on bay and river life and the hubbub of early Sacramento.” -- Pacific Historical Review “With its unexpected color and the author’s literate style…this book is a surprise and a delight…one has the feeling of being there.” -- California Folklore Quarterly “[This] is the journal of a tenderfoot who ‘saw the elephant’ on a strange trail, who faced death by disease, starvation or thirst more than once, whose single desire was to gain wealth enough in the gold fields to permit him to return to his family in Ohio, and who, failing to attain this desire, died at an early age a few days after the journal ends.” -- Southwest Review George W. B. Evans (1819–1850) kept a vivid, detailed diary of his journey to California via Mexico to join in the Gold Rush. Peter J. Blodgett is the H. Russell Smith Foundation Curator of Western Historical Manuscripts at the Huntington Library. 360 pages, 6 x 9 inches, 9 b/w illustrations, paperback ISBN: 978-0-87328-222-2
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Edited by Robert Glass Cleland and Juanita Brooks Back in Print John Doyle Lee (1812–1877) was one of the most controversial figures of early Mormon history. A fervent convert, he was adopted by Brigham Young and rose to become a leading member of the church's hierarchy. Lee's five diaries reveal in fascinating clarity and detail the everyday life of the pioneer settlers of Utah. A foreword by Dr. Andrew Rolle, written for the new printing of this western history classic, comments on Cleland and Brooks and their important contributions to scholarship. “This fourth printing of John D. Lee's diaries is handsomely packaged and moderately priced. The Huntington Library serves all students of nineteenth-century Utah and the West by reprinting these important diaries.”\Utah Historical QuarterlyFrom reviews of the original edition: “Lee's Diaries are a veritable mine of historical fact and interpretation.”—Pacific Historical Review “Thanks to the quality that was in John D. Lee, and thanks to the healing march of time, no American can read these Diaries without thrilling to the rough-hewn courage and tenacity that is written into every page of them.”—Time 832 pages, 6 x 9, paper
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A Victorian Gentlewoman in the Far West: The Reminiscences
of Mary Hallock Foote See our special page on this title Mary Hallock Foote tells the story of her training as an artist in the 1860s and her marriage to a mining engineer whose work took the young couple west in the closing days of the frontier. “Mrs. Foote’s ability to capture, vividly and freshly, the tenor and detail of life in the virtually undescribed regions during this formative period makes this book highly valuable and entertaining.”—Utah Historical Quarterly “A Victorian Gentlewoman in the Far West should give us a more complete sense of our heritage.”—Western American Literature “A unique portrayal of the feelings of a Victorian woman: the tensions of her personal life as a wife and mother: her relationships with other women . . . Such reminiscences provide the research sources for the innovative and imaginative history of American women being written today.”—California Historical Quarterly “Rodman Paul demonstrates a rare sensitivity, even compassion, for this talented woman and those she loved, destined to live a life of frustration but still able to absorb great sustaining power from occasional triumphs.”—The Historical Society of Southern California 420 pages, 6 x 9, illus., paper
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The Boom of
the Eighties in Southern California 
A Mormon Chronicle: 