First, the bad news: the California Historical Society (CHS), announced that it had gone out of business. Now the good news: while the society has closed, it has transferred its collection to the Stanford University Library.

CHS, a private non-profit, was founded in 1871 and based in San Francisco. Its collection includes over 600,000 items, from books and newspaper archives to photographs and videotapes. It contains original material from events like the 1848 Gold Rush and the 1906 San Francisco Earthquake and Fire, as well as archives on business, political and social organizations from the Northern California ACLU and California’s floral industry to the Peoples Temple.

While CHS was designated as an official state historical society in 1979, it suffered over the decades from a lack of state support as well as lagging support from private benefactors. To their credit, the society’s leaders always chose ways to keep their collection open and accessible rather than to shut it down. Thankfully, their efforts to save history have succeeded.

Here’s a link to the press release from the Stanford University Libraries on their acquisition of the collection:

Below is an item from the San Diego Union of February 11, 1904:

The Stowe Literary Society met every other Saturday for a number of years at the schoolhouse in the town of Stowe. The presentation of music, discussion of the works of noted authors, and readings from a journal written by local residents on life in the town were part of the regular meeting agenda. Reading about it now makes me think of it as an early form of social media, in real time as opposed to online, and showing an interest in facts and learning.

Note also that among the musicians contributing music were two people “present from Foster.”  Foster, like Stowe, was another San Diego County town which once thrived but then disappeared.

To find out more about such places, join me for my Oasis talk, “Lost Towns of San Diego County,” on Friday, January 17th, at 1 p.m. at the Oasis Grossmont Lifelong Learning Center.  Click on the link below to sign up:

Wishing Happy Holidays and A Historically Happy New Year to All!

Above is an ad from the Poway Progress newspaper of February 10, 1894, typical of ads for stagecoach schedules that appeared in San Diego city and county newspapers in the stagecoach era.

But for a few decades at least, the term “stage” apparently survived  the transition from the original horsepower to gasoline-fueled horsepower. Here’s an ad below from The San Diego Union of April 28, 1924:

The “stages” depicted in the two ads are automobiles, though they’re still operating out of a “stage depot.”

Eventually the terminology would evolve from “autostage” to “motorcoach” to “bus.” Company names in the field would evolve as well, such as the Pickwick Corporation, which  merged in 1929 with a Minnesota-based company, Northland Transportation Company, which then renamed itself the Greyhound Corporation.

In addition to historic San Diego newspapers, sources for this post were  mnopedia.org and coachbuilt.com, two websites examining Minnesota and bus-building history, respectively.

Ever wonder who Felicita was, as in Felicita Park? Or who put the Warner in Warner Springs? Join me this Wednesday at 1 p.m. at Oasis Rancho Bernardo Lifelong Learning Center as I present my class: “Who Were Those People?,” putting together the human stories behind some of our county’s familiar place-names. Go to the link below to sign up for the class.

https://san-diego.oasiseverywhere.org/product/who-were-those-people/.