California History for the Young Reader

The Land Known as Alta California

The Conquered Province

Gold Discovered in California

They Came by Way of Panama

They Came Around the Horn

They Came Overland by Train

The Story Ends Where it Began:
Along El Camino Real

I was the youngest of seven children, all attending the Whittier schools. In the fourth grade we studied about the Missions, then later, about the Gold Rush, but nothing about how California became part of the United States. The gold Rush was exciting to me because my grandfather brought his circus to California in 1851.

As a child it was shear joy sitting around the supper table listening to my father talk about the "old days." He talked about his childhood, growing up on a large ranch outside of town, land his father purchased from Don Pio Pico, the last Mexican governor of California. Our mother, too, enjoyed talking about her family and how her grandparents came to California, first to San Francisco, then on to Los Angeles in 1856. It was my mother's grandfather who fought in the war with Mexico. She and her sister, Emma, would talk by the hour and my sisters and I would take it all in. Being raised by their grandparents, they knew little of their father, I came by that information through research.

I graduated from Whittier College in 1942. My first teaching position was at Hudson Elementary in Puente. Later I taught physical education at Excelsior High School in the Norwalk School District and ended my career at La Mirada High School. In 1987, my book The Gold Chain came out, published by Arthur H. Clark. Though gratifying, I felt I had a greater calling. I needed to share this material with the young reader, the fourth graders of our State.

Yes, I did find out about how California became a state. Thanks to Bernard de Voto in his The Year of Decision 1846. He wrote the history of California, the story of people "... about ordinary people who did extraordinary things."