The California Heritage Project is a digital archive containing photographs, pictures, and manuscripts from the collections of the Bancroft Library. One example of the material available is the collection of 38 pencil California Mission Sketches by Henry Miller in 1856.
California as I
Saw It: First-Person Narratives of California’s Early Years, 1849-1900 consists
of the full texts and illustrations of 190 works documenting the formative
era of California’s history through eyewitness accounts. The collection
covers the dramatic decades between the Gold Rush and the turn of the twentieth
century. It captures the pioneer experience; encounters between Anglo-Americans
and the diverse peoples who had preceded them; the transformation of the
land by mining, ranching, agriculture, and urban development; the often-turbulent
growth of communities and cities; and California’s emergence as both
a state and a place of uniquely American dreams.
California History Online (California Historical Society)
has a timeline of California and sections on:
California Geology: The California Department of Conservation, Division of Mines and Geology, maintains this site which includes sections on the Gold Rush, the Saber Toothed Cat (our official fossil), Islands, and Mountains.
Web de Anza offers primary source
documents (including Anza’s own journal) and multimedia resources covering
Juan Bautista de Anza’s two overland expeditions from the Sonoran desert
to northern California, leading to the colonization of San Francisco in 1776.
California
Pueblos: California Historical Society’s California History
Online
California Mission History has an essay on each mission with photographs,
drawings, and pop-up definitions of words your students might not know. They
even include a “How to Cite this Site” section so students can give credit
when using the information in reports.
Mike Halle’s The Donner Party Site includes primary source material from Virginia Reed Murphy (who was 12 when she was stranded with the Donner Party) and Patrick Breen who kept a day to day diary from the day he was stranded until the day he was rescued.
Visit the home page for Lucinda’s 4th Grade Classroom
