The youth of America should be acquainted with the history, the development and the ideals of our nation. They should know under what conditions our nation had its birth; what problems have beset it; and how they have been solved. The should know something of our present problems, and such knowledge can be built only upon an understanding of the past. They should know the facts of our nation's history, of which they should be proud. Not only is this true of our nation, but it is as true of our state and our immediate locality. It has been my purpose to gather together some of the interesting facts of Tuolumne County's history and present then in a form suitable for the use of high school pupils. I trust that all who read these pages will be inspired with an appreciation of and a greater reverence for the forefathers of Tuolumne County.

Back in the foothills of the Sierra Nevada, in the heart of the Mother Lode, lies Tuolumne County, whose history is rich with memories of the days of forty-nine. It was in this country of yesterdays, during those frenzied days of gold, that men fought and toiled and died for that precious metal. Miners in search of this precious substance penetrated into its forests, prospected up and down its canyons, and climbed its steep and rugged mountains. Towns sprang up overnight and disappeared almost as quickly. The miners were forever moving on to richer diggings in search of the “El Dorado.” The gold rush days found Tuolumne a wild and rough country, with the most varied population of any country in the whole region. Yankees, Mexicans, Englishmen, “Sidney Ducks”, Frenchmen, Germans, Spaniards, Chinese, Negroes, Irishmen, and Chileans rubbed elbows and occasionally fists with each other. The region was full of gamblers, drunkards, fast women and lumps of gold. Before the great rush for gold, California was a quiet, peaceful, sparsely settled land. In 1842, the population was about 5,000, not including the Indians. There were about 4,000 native Californians, 90 Mexicans, 80 Spaniards, 80 Frenchmen, 360 Scotchment, Irishmen and Englishmen, 90 Germans, Italians, and Portuguese. There was little immigration, and by 1847 the population had increased to only 7,000 or 8,000. The pueblos of Monterey, San Jose and Yorba Buena were the principal centers of trade. San Diego, Los Angeles, Sonoma and New Helvetia (now Sacramento) also contained a small population. Then came the discovery of gold. It took a little while for the news to travel, and at first people thought the reports were exaggerated, but as more and more reports were carried back to the pueblos, the excitement increased. On the first of April, 1848, the California Star printed “We are happy to be able to say that California continues to be perfectly quiet…. For more than a year no disorders have occurred, -the native Californians are beginning to mingle with our people, and are gradually turning their attention to agriculture. No further difficulties are apprehended.” Little did the writer of this article dream what was to take place before very long. BY the end of May only about 300 men were in the gold fields. So rapidly did the gold-fever take hold, however, that by the tenth of June, the same newspaper was fearing that every town would be depopulated. It reported that “every seaport south to San Diego and every interior town is drained of human beings.” As yet, of course, the news had not had time to reach the Atlantic states, so the gold rush was purely local, and there were relatively few digging for gold. The Star estimated that there were “1,000 souls washing gold”, and that about $100,000 had been taken from the mines since the first of May from an area about 100 miles in length and 200 miles wide.

This thesis is an examination of the reaction of a human population to a new and disturbing environment. It deals with the disintegration of the aboriginal Indian culture of northern Mendocino County under the influence of American settlers and military personnel. As such it is concerned with the factors and responses inherent in, and resulting from the interaction of two civilizations, the one old and static, the other ew and dynamic.

When Marineland of the Pacific opened in 1954 on the Palos Verdes Peninsula in greater Los Angeles, it was the second oceanarium in the world and the first on the West Coast. An initial investment of $3 million by Oceanarium Inc., owners of the popular Marine Studios park located near St. Augustine, Florida, ensured that Marineland was built with the same state of the art facilities needed to produce an authentic representation of the ocean floor on land. Building on Marine Studios' success exhibiting bottlenose dolphins (Tursiops truncatus), Marineland's central draw was its performing cetaceans. During the park's early years, its collectors pioneered the capture of Pacific dolphin species, such as the Common dolphin (Delphinus delphis) and the Pacific white-sided dolphin (Lagenorhynchus obliquidens), the short-finned pilot whale (Globicephala macrorhynchus), and were the first to capture a live killer whale (Orcinus orca) in 1961. By exposing audiences to previously unknown species through circus-like performances, Marineland played a central role in changing public perceptions of small cetaceans in the post-World War II era. However, with few prior studies to consult, Marineland curators experimented with their own methods of capture, husbandry, and veterinary care that often resulted in the harm or death of cetaceans under their care. Caretakers contended with animal aggression and sexual behavior, the refusal of animals to perform in show routines, and high mortality. Despite the difficulties posed by exhibiting cetaceans, advertisements, press interviews, and films advanced a contrary narrative that animals under Marineland's care enjoyed the conditions of captivity and performing for an audience. This thesis explores the tension between entertainment and animal care that defined the early years of cetacean captivity in North America.

The essential objective of this study was to fill a bibliographic void of secondary source material concerning Russian California. This was accomplished by combining available translations and more specific studies on the subject into one extensive work. Introductory chapters provide: (1) a brief statement regarding Russia's massive eastward expansion through Siberia, to Kamchatka and Alaska; (2) an examination of the nature of the Russian-American Company; and (3) a detailed look at the programs instituted by the Company to provision Alaska and Kamchatka. The establishment of Fort Ross in 1811 is viewed as one of those programs. The settlement's primary function throughout its existence was to send foodstuffs to Russia's northern colonies. The main body of the paper describes fully the structure of the settlement and analyzes the various activities, undertaken by the Russians at Fort Ross, in order to provide grain to the Company. Those activities were sea otter hunting, manufacturing, and agriculture and animal husbandry. In closing, the paper focuses on the Native Californians of Fort Ross, detailing their culture and their relationship with imperialist powers in nineteenth-century California. The industries of Fort Ross--hunting, manufacturing, and husbandry--met with failure. Each endeavor proved to be either inadequate or untimely: The harvesting of pelts was quickly curtailed by the depletion of animal populations; a successful manufacturing enterprise was interrupted by foreign competition; and lack of labor and expertise hindered the Russians' effort to transform the Ross Counter into the Company’s “granary.” The research conducted for this study led to the conclusion that the Russians' decision to abandon their California settlement was finalized when another means to provision the northern colonies became available. A Study of Fort Ross necessarily demands an international historical perspective. A consideration of the Spanish colonial enterprise in Mexico and California, the British activities in the Pacific Northwest, and the increasing strength of the United States on the western coast of North America are essential in understanding the failure of the Russians at Fort Ross and in Alaska. A number of published, primary source materials were used exhaustively to complete this study. A complete selected bibliography is included. Several categories of material were of prime importance. Briefly, they are: (1) correspondence between the Chief Manager of the Russian-American Company colonies in Alaska and the Company’s Main Office in St. Petersburg. These documents are available on microfilm in the National Archives and in Vneshniaia Politika Rossii, Series I and II, edited by N. N. Bolkhovitinov. (2) Journals, kept by navigators who participated in Russian circumnavigations which made calls in the Russian America, are invaluable sources of information on the circumstances of the colonies. (3) Reports of Company employees, such as Kirill T. Klebnikov and Ferdinand P. Wrangell provide important statistical information on agricultural production, otter hunting, manufacturing, and the population of Russian California. As mentioned, secondary sources on Russian California are scarce. However, James R. Gibson's work, Imperial Russia in Frontier America, does offer a thorough treatment of Russian trade and husbandry in California.

The purpose of this paper is to attempt to write a complete history of Saint Anne's Church in Columbia, California. Since Saint Anne's Church was the second Catholic Church in Columbia, the writer has felt it necessary to also include information regarding the first church.