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California Historical Society

California History Online
Published by the California Historical Society

History of California
Official state page

California Digital Library
A Co-Library of the campuses of the University of California

  • MelvylÆ Catalog
    "...records for materials (books, archives, audio-visuals, computer files, videorecordings, dissertations, government documents, maps, music scores, and recordings) in the libraries of the nine UC campuses, California State Library, California Academy of Sciences, California Historical Society, Center for Research Libraries, and the Graduate Theological Union. There are currently over 10 million unique titles representing over 15 million holdings."
  • The Online Archive of California (OAC)
     "...a digital information resource that facilitates and provides access to materials such as manuscripts, photographs, and works of art held in libraries, museums, archives, and other institutions across California. The OAC includes digitized version of many of these materials as well as archival "finding aids," or collection inventories that help students and scholars to identify and relevant primary source materials."
    • California Heritage Collection
      "...is an online archive of more than 30,000 images illustrating California's history and culture, from the collections of the Bancroft Library at the University of California, Berkeley. Selected from nearly two hundred individual collections, this unique resource uses the latest online archiving techniques to highlight the rich themes of California's history."
      The Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley
    • Japanese American Relocation Digital Archive (JARDA)
      "Curators from the eight participating OAC members selected a broad range of primary sources to be digitized, including: photographs, documents, manuscripts, paintings, drawings, letters, and oral histories. Over 10,000 digital images have been created complimented by 20,000 pages of electronic transcriptions of document and oral histories."

Berkeley Digital Library SunSITE

  • California Heritage Collection
    "...is an online archive of more than 30,000 images illustrating California's history and culture, from the collections of the Bancroft Library at the University of California, Berkeley. Selected from nearly two hundred individual collections, this unique resource uses the latest online archiving techniques to highlight the rich themes of California's history."
    The Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley

19th-Century California Sheet Music
"A virtual library of some 2,000 pieces of sheet music published in California between 1852 and 1900, together with related materials such as a San Francisco publisher's catalog of 1872, programs, songsheets, advertisements, and photographs."
By Mary Kay Duggan, Dept. of Music; School of Information Management & Systems, University of California, Berkeley.

Alameda County Library

Bibliographies of Northern and Central California Indians

California Academy of Sciences - Dept. of Anthropology

  • Collection Database - (dead link)
    "Current strengths of the collection are general holdings from the U.S. Southwest and the Pacific Islands, and basketry from California. Earlier years of collecting have yielded both ethnographic and archaeological materials from East Africa, the Middle East, Europe, and Central and South America....The database includes digital images of collection objects. Currently there are over 7,000 images available, documenting the areas of strength in the collection. Digital photographing of the remainder of the collection is an on-going project."

California African-American Museum

"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."
- American Memory, Library of Congress

California Case Law: 1934-Present
California Supreme Court and Appellate Court Opinions
From FindLaw

California Climate Change Portal
Sections include: Background ; Policy & Program ; West Coast Initiative ; Documents ; Glossary ; Links ; Research ; Events.
- California Environmental Protection Agency

California Energy Commission

California Geological Survey

  • Earthquakes
    "...studies earthquakes to help Californians plan and build earthquake resistant communities. We record the strong ground motion from earthquakes, study the distribution of historic earthquakes and evaluate faults that are the source of earthquakes. We combine that information to prepare maps showing the potential for ground shaking, fault rupture, liquefaction and seismically induced landsliding."
  • Seismic Hazards Zonation Program
    Sections include: Zone Maps, Reports & GIS Data ; Laws and Guidelines ; Affected Cities and Counties ; Probabilistic Seismic Hazard Assessment Maps ; Alquist-Priolo Earthquake Fault Zones ; Seismic Hazards Mapping Bulletins.

California Gold: Northern California Folk Music From the Thirties
"...a multi-format ethnographic field collection that includes sound recordings, still photographs, drawings, and written documents from a variety of European ethnic and English- and Spanish-speaking communities in Northern California. The collection comprises 35 hours of folk music recorded in twelve languages representing numerous ethnic groups and 185 musicians."
American Memory, Library of Congress

California Indian Heritage
Sections include: In the News ; Putting a Face on the Past ; Historic Timeline ; Tribal Groups ; Directory of California Tribes ; Links
- Official Website of U.S. Senator Barbara Boxer.

The California Latino Demographic Databook
"By 2005, more than a third of all Californians are projected to be Latino. The portrait of California Latinos in the California Latino Demographic Databook addresses the characteristics of this growing population, detailing characteristics for Latinos by national origin, nativity, citizenship, and period of entry for the foreign-born, and providing comparative figures for non-Hispanic whites, blacks, and Asians.
California Policy Research Center

California Pioneer Project
"The California Pioneer List (CPL) is a list of settlers to California who migrated to or were born in California prior to 1880 (included in the 1880 California Census) and obtained from those sent (e-mailed) directly from individuals doing genealogical research."
- By the California GenWeb Project

California State Historical Landmarks - (dead link)

The Chinese in California, 1850-1925
"...illustrates nineteenth and early twentieth century Chinese immigration to California from 1850 to 1925 through about 8,000 images and pages of primary source materials. Included are photographs, original art, cartoons and other illustrations; letters, excerpts from diaries, business records, and legal documents; as well as pamphlets, broadsides, speeches, sheet music, and other printed matter."
- American Memory, Library of Congress

Colorado River Board of California
"...established in 1937 by State statute to protect California's rights and interests in the resources provided by the Colorado River and to represent California in discussions and negotiations regarding the Colorado River and its management."

Five Views: An Ethnic Historic Site Survey for California
Sections include: American Indians ; Black Americans ; Chinese Americans ; Japanese Americans ; Mexican Americans.
- Office of Historic Preservation, California Dept. of Parks and Recreation

Free Speech Movement: Student Protest - U.C. Berkeley, 1964-65
Sections include: Collections ; Text Documents ; Media Center ; Chronology ; Bibliography.
- University of Berkeley Library

The Geo-Images Project
"The Geo-Images Project attempts to make images (mostly photographs) that are useful in teaching geography more widely available using computers and the internet."
It was conceived, constructed, and is maintained by G. Donald Bain, Director of the Geography Computing Facility, University of California at Berkeley.

The Grapes of Web
A Digital Companion To California's Statewide Reading Program
"...is lii.org's contribution to this state-wide reading project. Through a constellation of freely-accessible Internet resources, travel with the Joads across the country and into Weedpatch Camp, explore the history of this novel's creation and its critical aftermath, then learn more about John Steinbeck, the Great Depression, the Dust Bowl, and the world of migrant agricultural workers."
lii.org - Librarians' Index to the Internet

Historic Topographic Maps of California
"This is a project to provide Web access to the historic topographic quadrangles produced by the U.S. Geological Survey between 1895 to the present."
Earth Sciences & Map Library, University of California, Berkeley

Korean American Digital Archive
"...aimed at bringing disparate collections of materials--manuscripts, documents, photographs, oral histories--together in one searchable database. The initial collection of more than 11,000 pages of documents and over 1300 photographs will continue to grow as additional materials are identified for inclusion."
- University of Southern California Libraries

Learn California.org
"...the electronic resource for students, teachers and everyone else interested in California history! This easy to use site combines the collections of the California State Archives with the power of the Internet to bring you reliable and entertaining information about the Golden State."

Library of Congress - American Memory

  • Ansel Adams's Photographs of Japanese-American Internment at Manzanar
    "In "Suffering under a Great Injustice": Ansel Adams's Photographs of Japanese-American Internment at Manzanar, the Prints and Photographs Division at the Library of Congress presents for the first time side-by-side digital scans of both Adams's 242 original negatives and his 209 photographic prints (with the print on the left and the negative on the right), allowing viewers to see his darkroom technique and in particular how he cropped his prints."

Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA)

  • LACMA Collections Online
    "Nearly 25,000 records and over 10,000 images from our South and Southeast Asian, Japanese, Islamic, Photography and Costume and Textiles collections are currently available online, along with bibliographic records from our non-circulating art research library of 150,000 publications."

Los Angeles Public Library

  • Electronic Neighborhood:
    "By searching its databases: California Index, Menu Collection, Turnabout Theatre, California Fiction, one can access data and visual images -- indexes, documents and photographs that provide unique information on local communities, neighborhoods and people that date back hundreds of years. The Electronic Neighborhood site also includes valuable links to other regional history and informational web pages."
  • California in the 20's
    "Images of marathon dancing, state society picnics, silent films and junk car races re-create that celebrated decade which secured California's reputation as a social trendsetter. Important, too, are the photographs of daredevil young pilots, industrial and manufacturing workers, dock hands and small businessmen."

[Muir, John] John Muir National Historic Site
"The John Muir exhibit features photographs, family and belongings, specimens collected by John Muir on display at John Muir National Historic Site, Martinez, California. John Muir, father of the National Park System and founder of the Sierra Club was a naturalist and conservationist."
- National Park Service

Oakland Museum of California

  • Helen Nestor: Personal and Political
    "The exhibition presents 33 vintage black and white photographs of the California social scene of the '60s and '70s, documenting such subjects as the Free Speech Movement at Berkeley, nontraditional California families, Vietnam War protests, California feminists, mid-life women, the early days of busing in the Berkeley Unified School District, street life on Telegraph Avenue and the Haight Ashbury, and the People's Park movement."
    Special Feature: Nestor Free Speech Movement Photographs

Ohlone/Costanoan Esselen Nation
The First People of the Monterey Bay Area, California
Sections include: Our Nations Name ; Our Indigenous Homelands ; Our History Since European Contact ; Ohlone/Costanoan Esselen Nation Today ; Our Annual Gathering.

Oviatt Library Quake Damage
California State University Northridge University Library
January 17, 1994 Northridge Earthquake.
Sections include: What Happened ; Photographs ; Federal Depository Library Conference Presentation.
By Mary Finley

National Park Service - Sequoia & Kings Canyon National Parks

  • Fire Information Cache
    • Fire and Park Resources
      "Researchers at Sequoia and Kings Canyon National Parks have investigated the role of fire in park ecosystems for many years and have produced many papers on fire and fire management. Some of this research information is available as on-line papers from this Web site."

PBS - American Experience - Ansel Adams: A Documentary Film (March 2003)
Companion web site to the TV broadcast.
"...offers insights into American history topics including the closing of the wilderness, the American West, California history, Japanese American internment, the natural environment, conflicts between economic growth and conservation of the American landscape, photographs as documentary historical sources, media literacy, and the role of art."
Sections include: Transcript ; Primary Sources ; Further Reading ; Inside a View Camera ; Adams' Photo Gear ; Art or Document ; Early Hiking Footage ; Timeline ; Gallery ; People & Events ; Teacher's Guide.

PBS FRONTLINE - The Enemy Within (Watch Episode Online)
Companion website to the October 2006 broadcast.
Sections include: The Lodi, Calif. Case ; The Reality of a Terrorist Attack & U.S. Preparedness ; Interviews ; Teacher's Guide ; Readings & Links.

PBS - P.O.V. - American Aloha: Hula Beyond Hawai'i (August 2003)
Companion website to the film by Lisette Marie Flanary and Evann Siebens.
"...shows the survival of the hula as a renaissance continues to grow beyond the islands...From the suburbs of Los Angeles to the San Francisco Bay Area, the largest Hawaiian communities have settled in California, and the hula continues to connect communities to their heritage on distant shores. Sounding a universal note of cultural adaptation and renewal, "American Aloha" takes us on a tour through the practices and philosophies of some of those at the forefront of hula's renaissance on the mainland. The film focuses on the work of three kumu hula, or master teachers of hula, in the largest Hawaiian communities in California."
Sections include: More About Hula ; On Language ; Discover More ; Resources ; For Educators.

http://lewis.sppsr.ucla.edu/special/metroamerica/LA.HTM
Lewis Center for Regional Policy Studies, UCLA

San Andreas Fault System, California
"This multimedia document is based on U.S. Geological Survey, Professional Paper 1515 titled The San Andreas Fault System, California edited by Dr. Robert E. Wallace and published by United States Government Printing Office, Washington in 1990 and 1991."

San Fernando Valley History Digital Library
"...is the first effort to assemble, digitize and make globally available historically significant documents, manuscripts, photographs and related graphic materials from public and private collections in the San Fernando Valley. It provides full, open and equal access to materials demonstrating the socio-economic changes and cultural evolution of the San Fernando Valley from the early 19th century through the end of the 20th century."
University Library, California State University, Northridge

Southern California Earthquake Center (SCEC)

Slavery Era Insurance Registry
"[I]nsurance policies from the slavery era have been discovered in the archives of several insurance companies, documenting insurance coverage for slaveholders for damage to or death of their slaves, issued by a predecessor insurance firm. These documents provide the first evidence of ill-gotten profits from slavery, which profits in part capitalized insurers whose successors remain in existence today." SB2199 Sec. 1(a).
Gov. Davis signed the bill into law in September 2000.
"...links to the Departmentís report to the California Legislature describing the information received from insurers in response to this statute, including the database of slave and slaveholder names and identifying information."
- California Dept. of Insurance

Tobacco Control Archives (TCA)
"TCA's purpose is to collect, preserve, and provide access to papers, unpublished documents and electronic resources relevant to tobacco control issues primarily in California."
The Library & Center for Knowledge Management, University of California, SanFrancisco

Tribal Maps
EPA Region 9 [Southwest]

TriNet: The Seismic System for Southern California
"...is a five-year collaborative project to create a better, more effective real-time earthquake information system for Southern California. TriNet will incorporate new technologies to provide vital information within minutes of an earthquake. Our goal is to mitigate the impact of future large earthquakes in Southern California."

U.S. Forest Service

UCLA Lewis Center for Regional Policy Studies
"...to promote the study, understanding and solution of regional policy issues, with special reference to Southern California, including problems of the environment, urban design, housing, community and neighborhood dynamics, transportation and economic development..."

University of California, Riverside / california museum of photography

  • Afghanistan, 1933
    "Photographs of Afghanistan from the Keystone Mast collection, made in 1933."
  • Journey to Mecca: Works by Max Yavno
    Watts, California, 1977 ; Journey to Mecca, 1979
    "...viewers may travel through the images from two different countries, cultures and decades from a variety of sites in California and Egypt. The exhibit contains a selection of Yavno's photographs from different areas of California, mainly from the late 1940s and from his trip to Cairo, Egypt in 1979...This exhibition examines relationships between the different subjects of the works, while still displaying Max's characteristic style and composition."
  • Queer(ing) Warhol: Andy Warhol's (Self-) Portraits

University of Southern California Libraries - Digital Archive - (dead link)
"...provides access to over 8,000 photographs, maps, manuscripts, dissertations, records, texts, and sound recordings owned by USC and partnering institutions with particular emphasis on materials related to Southern California."

USC - Tsunami Research Center
Sections include: News ; Video/Animation / Publications ; Staff ; Links.

VOAHA: The Virtual Oral/Aural History Archive
California State University, Long Beach
"This site provides access to the full audio recordings of oral histories that have been deposited in Special Collections of the University Library - enabling you, the user, to hear the voice, pitch, and rhythm of the narrations as well as the emotions these convey. You will hear the actual spoken words of oral history narrators, rather than seeing a written version of them in the form of a transcript...Presently, more than three hundred hours of Los Angeles basin oral histories in women's, labor history and Long Beach area history are available online, including forty hours of interviews with California women who were rank and file activists in the national suffrage movement."

Virtual Reality Panoramas of the California Missions
From Virtual Guidebooks

Writings of John Muir
Full text editions

Los Angeles

Los Angeles and the Problem of Urban Historical Knowledge
"A Multimedia Essay to Accompany the December Issue of The American Historical Review, published by the historycooperative.org December 2000."
 By Philip J. Ethington, History Dept., University of Southern California

Los Angles City Fire Department Historical Archives
"From the Volunteers to the paid Los Angeles Fire Department, From the era of the Horses to Motorized Apparatus the Archive contains photos, maps, articles, reports, records and much more covering the greatest years of the LAFD."

Los Angeles Public Library

Los Angeles--A City in Stress - (dead link)
"Growing out of Los Angeles--A City in Stress, this project involves bringing up on the Web a series of full text documents dealing with the manifold problems of Los Angeles in the 1990's with emphasis on the civil disturbances of April and May 1992."
- University of Southern California Libraries

  • Violence in the City: An End or a Beginning? - (dead link)
    A Report by the Governor's Commission on the Los Angeles Riots, December 2, 1965
    (The McCone Report)
    "The digitization of this document is being undertaken as part of an on-going project to digitize many documents dealing with Los Angeles in the 1990's."

PBS - American Experience - Zoot Suit Riots (March 2004) (English or Spanish)
Los Angeles Erupts in Violence
"In August 1942 the murder of a young Mexican-American man ignited a firestorm in the City of the Angels. In no time at all, ethnic and racial tensions that had been building up over the years boiled over."
Sections include: Transcript ; Primary Sources ; Further Reading ; Special Feature ; Timeline ; Gallery ; People & Events ; Teacher's Guide.

University of California, Riverside / california museum of photography

  • Journey to Mecca: Works by Max Yavno
    Watts, California, 1977 ; Journey to Mecca, 1979
    "...viewers may travel through the images from two different countries, cultures and decades from a variety of sites in California and Egypt. The exhibit contains a selection of Yavno's photographs from different areas of California, mainly from the late 1940s and from his trip to Cairo, Egypt in 1979...This exhibition examines relationships between the different subjects of the works, while still displaying Max's characteristic style and composition."

VOAHA: The Virtual Oral/Aural History Archive
California State University, Long Beach
"This site provides access to the full audio recordings of oral histories that have been deposited in Special Collections of the University Library - enabling you, the user, to hear the voice, pitch, and rhythm of the narrations as well as the emotions these convey. You will hear the actual spoken words of oral history narrators, rather than seeing a written version of them in the form of a transcript...Presently, more than three hundred hours of Los Angeles basin oral histories in women's, labor history and Long Beach area history are available online, including forty hours of interviews with California women who were rank and file activists in the national suffrage movement."

San Francisco

Alameda County Library

Museum of the City of San Francisco

California Historical Society

Chronology of San Francisco Rock - 1965-1969
Museum of the City of San Francisco

Practical Lessons from the Loma Prieta [San Francisco area, 1989] Earthquake
Geotechnical Board, National Research Council, 1994.

San Francisco 1906 Earthquake and Fire
Includes maps, photographs, reports, seismic readings, newspaper clippings, and much more
- Museum of the City of San Francisco

San Francisco Cable Car Museum
 Includes around 75 modern and historical photographs

San Francisco Estuary Invasive Spartina Project
"...is a coordinated regional effort among local, state and federal organizations dedicated to preserving California's extraordinary coastal biological resources through the elimination of introduced species of Spartina (cordgrass)."

San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (SFMOMA)

San Francisco Public Library - James C. Hormel Gay and Lesbian Center
Sections include: Introduction ; Collections ; Exhibits & Programs ; GLBT Resources.

SFGate.com - San Francisco Chronicle

U.S. National Archives and Records Administration

University of San Francisco - GALEN Digital Library

The Port Chicago Disaster
A Resource for the Classroom
"... on July 17th, 1944, the worst home front disaster of WWII, occurred at a Naval pier in the San Francisco Bay Area. Five thousand tons of ammunition in ships being loaded by black sailors exploded, sending a blast more than 12,000 feet into the sky."
Sections include: The Site ; The Explosion ; The Mutiny ; The Court Martial ; The Pardon.
By Contra Costa County Office of Education

The Last Wave from Port Chicago
"The result of a 20 year investigation into the July 17, 1944 explosion at the Port Chicago Naval Magazine. This web-based book chronicles the total history of the explosion and connections with Los Alamos and the Manhattan Project."
By Peter Vogel


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