Download or read book The Story of San Jose 1777 1869 written by Oscar Osburn Winther and published by . This book was released on 1935 with total page 54 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book San Jose California s First City written by Edwin A. Beilharz and Donald O. DeMers Jr. and published by Grand Lake Media. LLC. This book was released on 1980-09-10 with total page 581 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “Nobody wanted to go at first. California was practically uninhabited except for the Indians. Those first residents had to be paid to go and there were few takers. The first years were hard and supplies scarce. Still, those early families managed to grow enough foodstuffs to plant a firm hold in the land. It was truly a cultural melding from the first — of Indian, Spanish and Mexican people and a few others. Then in 1848, California joined the United States. That move — and the lure of gold nearby — gave the city the boost it needed.” “Newcomers soon realized the land was good. Fruits and flowers were abundant and the climate mild. It was the kind of place men dreamed of — and many followed their dreams. They called it the Garden City. Like all cities, it had its problems. But its leaders were both dreamers and doers — they anticipated, prepared and planned. The growth from a struggling outpost to a complex cultural and economic society has been a major evolution — and a tribute to those who made their dreams — and the city of San Jose — come true.” San Jose: California’s First City California’s first city, San jose, represents a microcosm of the development of the Golden State’s urban centers. Over the last two centuries, the “Garden City” has occupied an important position as California’s first civilian settlement, first state capital, leading agricultural center and nucleus of the space-age electronics industry. As narrated by the distinguished historian Edwin A. Beilharz, San jose was founded as a planned civil settlement. In 1777, Governor Felipe de Neve established the pueblo in the lush Santa Clara Valley to provide a reliable food source for the growing yet isolated colony of Alta California. It soon emerged as a major producer of cereal grains, orchard fruit and cattle. During the Spanish and Mexican era, San Jose also served as a social center for the nearby ranchos and attracted such influential families as Peralta, Suriol, Castro and Vasquez. By the late 1830s and 1840s, foreign visitors eyed California with envy. Several saw the promise of the verdant valley. Political upheavals in Mexico made possible the easy assimilation of non-Mexican residents. With the conclusion of the Mexican War and the ‘Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo in 1848, San _lose and California became a formal possession of the United States. Donald O. DeMers takes up the story with the establishment of American rule in California. The discovery of gold on the American River changed the entire complexion of California and quickly led to admission as a state in 1850. As the result of a strong lobbying effort, the newly formed state government selected San Jose as its first capital. Political infighting ensued, and the state Legislature moved the capital to Benecia after only one year. Despite this blow, the city on the Guadalupe River continued to expand, capitalizing on its mild climate, abundant water supply, proximity to San Francisco Bay and fertility of the Santa Clara Valley. Confusion over Mexican land grants also opened vast tracts of land for development. San Jose took prominence in wine production, fruit raising, silk culture, nurseries and agricultural experimentation. The advent of the railroad made possible the establishment of a packing and shipping economy. The pueblo was soon transformed from a collection of crude adobes to one of frame houses, brick business blocks, schools, churches, theaters and parks replete with horsecars traveling along tree-lined streets. After the 1906 earthquake, San Jose entered the twentieth century as a typical American city. It experienced the anxiety of World War 1, jubilation of the 1920s, subterfuge of prohibition and the Great Depression. During this time, too, sensational events rocked the city _ the tragic Hart kidnapping and the lynchings at St. _lames Park. World War ll shifted the socio-economic base from a land of gardens and orchards to that of a defense production center. The burgeoning population of defense workers, engineers and scientists created a new force for continued development. Excerpt From: Edwin A. Beilharz and Donald O. DeMers Jr. “San·Jose California’s First City.” iBooks.

Download or read book The Forgotten Frontier written by John William Reps and published by University of Missouri Press. This book was released on 1981 with total page 188 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Americans imagine the Early West as a vast expanse of almost empty land populated only by farmers, ranchers, cattle, and horses. Now a leading scholar challenges this stereotype with his concise examination of early city planning and urban development in the region. Extending and elaborating on studies by Carl Bridenbaugh and Richard Wade of the Atlantic Seaboard and the Ohio Valley, John Reps demonstrates that throughout the Trans-Mississippi West cities and towns, not farms and ranches, formed the vanguard of frontier settlement. Urban communities thus stimulated rather than followed the opening of the West to agriculture. These cities did not grow randomly, for their founders established patterns of streets, lots, and public sites to guide expansion as population increased. Reps supports his thesis with 100 illustrations-plans, maps, surveys, and views-showing the original designs of every major Western city and of dozens of smaller places. Based on Reps's massive Cities of the American West (winner of the Beveridge Prize in 1980), this succinct account includes extensive notes and references that will be useful to readers who wish to pursue his penetrating critique.

Download or read book The Pacific Historical Review written by Anna Marie Hager and published by Univ of California Press. This book was released on 1976 with total page 588 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Uninvited Neighbors written by Herbert G. Ruffin and published by University of Oklahoma Press. This book was released on 2014-03-28 with total page 369 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the late 1960s, African American protests and Black Power demonstrations in California’s Santa Clara County—including what’s now called Silicon Valley—took many observers by surprise. After all, as far back as the 1890s, the California constitution had legally abolished most forms of racial discrimination, and subsequent legal reform had surely taken care of the rest. White Americans might even have wondered where the black activists in the late sixties were coming from—because, beginning with the writings of Fredrick Jackson Turner, the most influential histories of the American West simply left out African Americans or, later, portrayed them as a passive and insignificant presence. Uninvited Neighbors puts black people back into the picture and dispels cherished myths about California’s racial history. Reaching from the Spanish era to the valley’s emergence as a center of the high-tech industry, this is the first comprehensive history of the African American experience in the Santa Clara Valley. Author Herbert G. Ruffin II’s study presents the black experience in a new way, with a focus on how, despite their smaller numbers and obscure presence, African Americans in the South Bay forged communities that had a regional and national impact disproportionate to their population. As the region industrialized and spawned suburbs during and after World War II, its black citizens built institutions such as churches, social clubs, and civil rights organizations and challenged socioeconomic restrictions. Ruffin explores the quest of the area’s black people for the postwar American Dream. The book also addresses the scattering of the black community during the region’s late yet rapid urban growth after 1950, which led to the creation of several distinct black suburban communities clustered in metropolitan San Jose. Ruffin treats people of color as agents of their own development and survival in a region that was always multiracial and where slavery and Jim Crow did not predominate, but where the white embrace of racial justice and equality was often insincere. The result offers a new view of the intersection of African American history and the history of the American West.

Download or read book The Great Thirst written by Norris Hundley Jr. and published by Univ of California Press. This book was released on 2023-11-15 with total page 830 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The story of "the great thirst" is brought up to date in this revised edition of Norris Hundley's outstanding history, with additional photographs and incisive descriptions of the major water-policy issues facing California now: accelerating urbanization of farmland and open spaces, persisting despoliation of water supplies, and demands for equity in water allocation for an exploding population. People the world over confront these problems, and Hundley examines them with clarity and eloquence in the unruly laboratory of California. The obsession with water has shaped California to a remarkable extent, literally as well as politically and culturally. Hundley tells how aboriginal Americans and then early Spanish and Mexican immigrants contrived to use and share the available water and how American settlers, arriving in ever-increasing numbers after the Gold Rush, transformed California into the home of the nation's preeminent water seekers. The desire to use, profit from, manipulate, and control water drives the people and events in this fascinating narrative until, by the end of the twentieth century, a large, colorful cast of characters and communities has wheeled and dealed, built, diverted, and connived its way to an entirely different statewide waterscape. The story of "the great thirst" is brought up to date in this revised edition of Norris Hundley's outstanding history, with additional photographs and incisive descriptions of the major water-policy issues facing California now: accelerating urbanization

Download or read book A P Giannini Banker of America written by Felice A. Bonadio and published by Plunkett Lake Press. This book was released on 2024-02-07 with total page 633 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “It is rare for a banker to win national acclaim, or even recognition... J. P. Morgan apart, it is hard to think of a banker who achieved this kind of status. A. P. Giannini had it on the West Coast, but even though he remained a regional banker, his influence was national... Felice A. Bonadio... describes him... as the Henry Ford of banking... While recognizing that Giannini was no saint, Mr. Bonadio accepts him at his own valuation as ‘the people’s banker.’ There is no question that in creating the world’s largest bank he greatly benefited California, much of the state’s explosive growth in this century having been financed by Bank of America. And as Mr. Bonadio points out, by extending easy credit more broadly than anyone else, he ‘expanded the boundaries of life for millions.’ To do so was his dream, and the realization of it justifies the effort Mr. Bonadio has put into this book.” — William L. O’Neill, The New York Times “Giannini, who began his career as a wholesaler of fruit and vegetables, became a financial giant. As early as 1920, his San Francisco bank had 220,000 depositors. Competing bankers joined fundamentalist Protestant groups in charging him with fomenting a Catholic-Italian plot to take over the West’s financial institutions. Giannini’s 410-branch banking octopus did, indeed, engage in such tactics. The author uncovered internal bank memos documenting quite ruthless attempts to capture the bank accounts of immigrant school children and women family members. The investments which the Bank of America backed included the movie business. In addition to becoming Walt Disney’s first financial sponsor, Giannini helped to subsidize the building of the Golden Gate bridge. Bonadio gives one a real sense of what it meant for the warm-hearted but sometimes volatile Giannini to help finance such huge enterprises. Bonadio’s narrative is direct and forceful. The description of Giannini’s personal character moves the story along skillfully.” — Andrew Rolle, Italian Americana “By starting a bank and nurturing it into the biggest bank in the world, Amadeo Peter Gianninni became possibly the most spectacular entrepreneur of the early part of the twentieth century. His story is inspiring and of interest to anyone who wants to understand the history of the West or the development of financial institutions in the United States... This book should... be a part of every complete library on the history of the west or financial history.” — Lynne Pierson Doti, The Journal of Economic History “Until this biography appeared, we have had to rely on [a] very old and limited account of the Bank of America... Felice A Bonadio has made what appears to be thorough use of the bank’s archives to go far beyond [that old account]. He adds much to our knowledge of Giannini’s enterprises, which included not only his early ventures as a produce merchant, but also his major involvement with the film industry throughout the 1920s and ‘30s. Bonadio writes well, and knows how to tell a story.” — Richard M. Abrams, Pacific Historical Review “[Bonadio’s] accomplishment rests on the careful presentation of archival resources and of a large secondary literature. The clarity of the story is reinforced through the use of extensive quotes... a well-documented business biography.” — Gunther Barth, Montana Magazine of Western History “[T]hose interested in the reconstruction of one financier’s view of his world will find in Bonadio’s book much to think about.” — Kerry Odell, The American Historical Review

Download or read book Luis Mar a Peralta and His Adobe written by Frances L. Fox and published by . This book was released on 1975 with total page 112 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book The History of Alta California written by Antonio Maria Osio and published by Univ of Wisconsin Press. This book was released on 1996-05-15 with total page 401 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Antonio María Osio’s La Historia de Alta California was the first written history of upper California during the era of Mexican rule, and this is its first complete English translation. A Mexican-Californian, government official, and the landowner of Angel Island and Point Reyes, Osio writes colorfully of life in old Monterey, Los Angeles, and San Francisco, and gives a first-hand account of the political intrigues of the 1830s that led to the appointment of Juan Bautista Alvarado as governor. Osio wrote his History in 1851, conveying with immediacy and detail the years of the U.S.-Mexican War of 1846–1848 and the social upheaval that followed. As he witnesses California’s territorial transition from Mexico to the United States, he recalls with pride the achievements of Mexican California in earlier decades and writes critically of the onset of U.S. influence and imperialism. Unable to endure life as foreigners in their home of twenty-seven years, Osio and his family left Alta California for Mexico in 1852. Osio’s account predates by a quarter century the better-known reminiscences of Mariano Guadalupe Vallejo and Juan Bautista Alvarado and the memoirs of Californios dictated to Hubert Howe Bancroft’s staff in the 1870s. Editors Rose Marie Beebe and Robert M. Senkewicz have provided an accurate, complete translation of Osio’s original manuscript, and their helpful introduction and notes offer further details of Osio’s life and of society in Alta California.

Download or read book Los Paisanos written by Oakah L. Jones and published by University of Oklahoma Press. This book was released on 1996 with total page 380 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Little has been written about the colonists sent by Spanish authorities to settle the northern frontier of New Spain, to stake Spain’s claim and serve as a buffer against encroaching French explorers. "Los Paisanos," they were called - simple country people who lived by their own labor, isolated, threatened by hostile Indians, and restricted by law from seeking opportunity elsewhere. They built their homes, worked their fields, and became permanent residents - the forebears of United States citizens - as they developed their own society and culture, much of which survives today.

Download or read book Bandido written by John Boessenecker and published by University of Oklahoma Press. This book was released on 2012-10-11 with total page 494 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Tiburcio Vasquez is, next to Joaquin Murrieta, America's most infamous Hispanic bandit. After he was hanged as a murderer in 1875, the Chicago Tribune called him "the most noted desperado of modern times." Yet questions about him still linger. Why did he become a bandido? Why did so many Hispanics protect him and his band? Was he a common thief and heartless killer who got what he deserved, or was he a Mexican American Robin Hood who suffered at the hands of a racist government? In this engrossing biography, John Boessenecker provides definitive answers. Bandido pulls back the curtain on a life story shrouded in myth — a myth created by Vasquez himself and abetted by writers who saw a tale ripe for embellishment. Boessenecker traces his subject's life from his childhood in the seaside adobe village of Monterey, to his years as a young outlaw engaged in horse rustling and robbery. Two terms in San Quentin failed to tame Vasquez, and he instigated four bloody prison breaks that left twenty convicts dead. After his final release from prison, he led bandit raids throughout Central and Southern California. His dalliances with women were legion, and the last one led to his capture in the Hollywood Hills and his death on the gallows at the age of thirty-nine. From dusty court records, forgotten memoirs, and moldering newspaper archives, Boessenecker draws a story of violence, banditry, and retribution on the early California frontier that is as accurate as it is colorful. Enhanced by numerous photographs — many published here for the first time — Bandido also addresses important issues of racism and social justice that remain relevant to this day.

Download or read book An Index to Hall s 1871 History of San Jos written by Everett Gordon Hager and published by . This book was released on 1974 with total page 36 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Genealogical Encyclopedia of the Colonial Americas written by Christina K. Schaefer and published by Genealogical Publishing Com. This book was released on 1998 with total page 846 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Covers the period of colonial history from the beginning of European colonization in the Western Hemisphere up to the time of the American Revolution.

Download or read book The Butterfield Overland Mail written by Waterman L. Ormsby and published by Pickle Partners Publishing. This book was released on 2018-12-05 with total page 241 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This is the classic firsthand account by Waterman L. Ormsby, a reporter who in 1858 crossed the western states as the sole through passenger of the Butterfield Overland Mail stage on its first trip from St. Louis to San Francisco. Ormsby’s reports, which soon appeared in the New York Herald, are lively and exciting. He describes the journey in close detail, giving full accounts of the accommodations, the other passengers, the country through which they passed, the dangers to which they were exposed, and the constant necessity for speed. “A most interesting account of the first westbound trip of an overland mail stage.”—Southern California Historical Society Quarterly “The best narrative of the trip and one of the best accounts of western travel by stage.”—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. 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

Download or read book Land and Law in California written by Paul Gates and published by Purdue University Press. This book was released on 2002-09 with total page 394 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Land and Law in California present essays by Paul W. Gates, a foremost authority on American public lands history.

Download or read book The San Francisco Bay Area Second Edition written by Mel Scott and published by Univ of California Press. This book was released on 2023-12-22 with total page 981 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press’s mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1985.

Download or read book We are Not Slaves written by Richard Steven Street and published by . This book was released on 1995 with total page 372 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: