General research and reading: San Francisco pre-Gold Rush
- Seventy-Five Years in California, by William Heath Davis, 1889 & 1929
- An Hour’s Walk in Old Yerba Buena, by Douglas S. Watson, 1957
- Annals of San Francisco, by Frank Soulé, John H. Gihon, M.D., and James Nisbet, 1855
- Two Years Before the Mast, by Richard Henry Dana, 1840
- Beginnings of San Francisco, by Zoeth Skinner Eldredge, 1912
- The Colonial History of San Francisco, by John W. Dwinelle, 1867
- Yerba Buena San Francisco, From the Beginning to the Gold Rush 1769-1849 by Peter Browning
Online:
- Defining San Francisco: When Our City Became a City – Tramps of San Francisco
- From the 1820s to the Gold Rush – SFMuseum.org
At the Edge of the Known World: Wayward Explorers, Distant Empires & the Foundations of San Francisco
- The First Spanish Ship Entry into San Francisco Bay, 1775 – The Original Narrative by Fr. Vicente Maria, Howell Books, San Francisco. 1971
Online:
Fauna, Flora, Floods & Faultlines: San Francisco’s Hidden Nature
- Geology of the San Francisco Bay Region (California Natural History Guides), by Sloan, Doris and John Karachewski (2006)
- Geology of the Sierra Nevada (California Natural History Guides), by Hill, Mary and Phyllis M. Faber and Bruce M. Pavlik (2006)
- San Andreas Fault and Coastal Geology from Half Moon Bay to Fort Funston: Crustal Motion, Climate Change, and Human Activity. USGS Field-Trip Guidebook, by Anderson, David W. and Andrei M. Sarna-Wojcicki and Richard L. Sedlock (2001)
- Geology of the Golden Gate Headlands. USGS Field-Trip Guidebook. by Elder, William P. (2001)
- Conomos, T.J. and R.E. Smith and J.W. Gartner (1985). Environmental Setting of San Francisco Bay. Hydrobiologia, Vol. 129, pp. 1-12.
- “San Francisco in 1792” by George Vancouver, California Historical Society Quarterly, Vol. 14, No. 2, pp. 111-120 (1935)
Online:
- Saving the Bay: The Story of the San Francisco Bay (2009). Produced by Ron Blatman for KQED
- Envisioning California’s Delta As It Was. Produced by KQED-QUEST
- San Francisco Bay Area National Parks Science and Learning: Connecting parks, science, and people
- Educational Multimedia Visualization Center, UC Santa Barbara. Animations by Tanya Atwater
- Mammoth Discovery in San Jose. University of California Museum of Paleontology website
- Geologic Map of the San Francisco Bay Region, 2006 – US Geological Survey
The Military & the Missionary Men: Exploration, Conflict and Compromise in Spanish Alta California
- Lancers for the King, A study of the military system of the Northern New Spain, with a translation of the Royal Regulations of 1772, by Sidney B Brinkerhoff and Odie B. Faulk
- Converting California, Indians and Franciscans in the Missions, by James A Sandos
- Junipero Serra, California’s Founding Father, by Steven W. Hackel
- The Spanish Frontier in North America, by David J. Weber
- The Archaeology of Ethnogenesis, Race and Sexuality in Colonial San Francisco, by Barbara L. Voss
- Arms and Armament: Presidios of California, by Hardwick MR
Online – MilitaryMuseum.net
Online:
- A History of the Presidio – Presidio Trust
- Presidio of San Francisco – History & Culture – NPS.gov
- Misión San Francisco de Asís – MissionDolores.org
Guadalupe, María de la Luz & Juana Briones: San Francisco’s Original Start Up Sisters
- Juana Briones of Nineteeth-Century California, by Jeanne Farr McDonnell
- Stories of Juana Briones, Alta California Pioneer, by Glenda Richer
- Conciliaciones de los años de 1840—1841 (From Official Documents Relating to Early San Francisco, 1835—1857), Bancroft Library, UCB collection
Online:
- Juana Briones Online Exhibition – California Historical Society
- Stanford University Research at the Presidio of San Francisco
- The Juana Briones Heritage Foundation
- El Polín Spring – Presidio Trust
Robert Ridley, Aguardente and the Art of Getting Drunk in Old Yerba Buena
- Cool Gray City of Love: 49 Views of San Francisco, by Gary Kamiya
- A Memorial and Biographical History of Northern California: Containing a History of this Important Section of the Pacific Coast from the Earliest Period of Its Occupancy to the Present Time, Lewis Publishing Company, 1891
Online:
Resources at the California Historical Society
Bancroft, Hubert Howe. History of California. San Francisco: A.L. Bancroft, 1884-1890.
Beebe, Rose Marie and Robert M. Senkewicz. Testimonios: Early California through the Eyes of Women, 1815-1848. Berkeley, Calif.: Heyday Books, 2006.
Bouvier, Virginia Marie. Women and the Conquest of California, 1542-1840: Codes of Silence. Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 2001.
Bowman, Jacob N. “Juana Briones de Miranda.” Historical Society of Southern California Quarterly (1957): 227-241.
“Prominent Women of Provincial California.” Historical Society of Southern California Quarterly (1957): 149-166.
Camarillo, Albert . Chicanos in California: A History of Mexican Americans in California. San Francisco, CA: Boyd & Fraser Pub. Co., 1984.
Chapman, Charles Edward, 1880-1941. Catalogue of materials in the Archivo General del Indias for the History of the Pacific Coast and the American Southwest. Berkeley, University of California Press, 1919.
Chávez-García, Miroslava. Negotiating Conquest: Gender and Power in California, 1770s to 1880s. Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 2001.
Davis, William Heath. Seventy Five Years in California. San Francisco: J. Howell Books, 1929.
Figueroa, José. Manifiesto to the Mexican Republic. Oakland: Biobooks, 1952. (Original 1835 Spanish-language edition available online at https://archive.org/details/manifiestolarepu01figu)
Greenwood, Robert. California Imprints, 1833-1862; a Bibliography. Los Gatos, Calif.: Talisman Press, 1961.
Haas, Lisbeth. Conquests and Historical Identities in California, 1769-1936. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1995.
Huntington Library. Early California Population Project.
Hurtado, Albert L., Intimate Frontiers : Sex, Gender, and Culture In Old California. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1999.
Indian Survival on the California Frontier. New Haven: New Haven University Press, 1988.
Hyslop, Stephen G. Contest for California: From Spanish Colonization to the American Conquest. Norman. Okla.: Arthur H. Clark Co., 2012.
Jimeno, Manuel Casarin. Jimeno and Hartnell’s Indexes of Land Concessions from 1830 to 1846; also, Toma de Razon, or, Registry of Titles, for 1844-’45…. San Francisco: Kenny & Alexander, 1861.
Mason, William M. The Census of 1790: A Demographic History of Colonial California. Menlo Park, CA: Ballena Press, 1998.
McDonnell, Jeanne F. Juana Briones of Nineteenth-Century California. Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 2008.
Official Documents Relating to Early San Francisco, 1835-1857, BANC MSS C-A 370. The Bancroft Library.
Shoup, Laurence H. and Milliken, Randall. Inigo of Rancho Posolmi: the Life and Times of a Mission Indian. Menlo Park, Calif.: Ballena Press, 1999.
United States. District Court (California). Documents Pertaining to the Adjudication of Private Land Claims in California, circa 1852-1904, BANC MSS Land Case Files 1852-1904. The Bancroft Library.
Valle, Rosemary K. Medicine and Health in the Alta California Missions, 1769-1833, as Exemplified by a Study of Mission Santa Clara de Asis. PhD. Diss., University of California, San Francisco, 1973.
Voss, Barbara. The Archaeology of Ethnogenesis: Race and Sexuality in Colonial San Francisco. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2008.
“The Archaeology of El Presidio de San Francisco: Cultural Contacts, Gender, and Ethnicity in the Spanish-colonial Military Community.” PhD. Diss., University of California Berkeley, 2002.
Weber, David J. The Spanish Frontier in North America. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2009.
For more information or to search the collection at the California Historical Society, visit http://www.calhist.org/research/
For each salon, we invite our speakers to share the resources and interesting reading they came across in researching their talk, so that we can all dig more deeply. This reading list was compiled by Odd Salon with Marie Silva of the California Historical Society, and speakers John Martini, Miles Traer, Matthew Nelson, KC Crowell and Josh Greenwalt. Thank you!
