Pío Pico: California and Local History

A document collection which contains newspaper articles, event programs, case studies, court case documents, and speeches from 1996 - 2016. Awards and certificates of appreciation from various individuals and community organizations range from 1976 – 2016, from such organizations as the Orange County Probation Dept., Hispanic Council of Realtors, Orange County Board of Education, League of United Latin American Citizens, the Anaheim Police Dept., and the Anti-Defamation League.

The Elisha Palmer Papers Collection largely consists of legal documents (deeds, mortgages, a land patent signed by President Woodrow Wilson, lease agreements and tax records), correspondence (oil and land related). The collection also contains a great deal of his records regarding his citrus crops going back to the mid-1920s (harvest receipts and growers association bulletins) and his oil interests maps and revenues from his property.

Fae Lenaire Sutton is an individual who resided in Orange County whose family were original property owners in the area of Orange and Santa Ana reaching back to the 1880s. The Fae Lenaire Sutton papers are composed of documents regarding the ownership, transfer, and sale of property in Southern California.

The Local History Collection includes materials about Orange County, California and other California cities and counties from 1776-to date. It includes 3860 cataloged books and pamphlets, correspondence, ephemera, manuscripts, maps, memorabilia, papers, periodicals, posters and photographs.

Contains office records, correspondence, events, awards documentation, Add One and OC Reporter magazines, Disney designed logo artwork, and photographic portraits of past presidents.

Small collection of assorted postcards, the bulk of which are of cities and sites in California. It also includes other states, Canada, and Europe.

This yearbook collection focuses on Southern California with an emphasis on Orange County. The collection covers 1915 to the present.

Consists of 110 photographs from an exhibit titled "The Vietnamese: Self-Portrait of a People" circa 1999. The exhibition traveled and was accessioned into the archives in 2011. It is the work of Jeffrey Brody and Dave DeVries of the CSUF Communications Department, the Vietnamese Student Association, and Art Hansen of the Center for Oral and Public History. Contributors documented the Vietnamese-American community in commemoration of the 25th anniversary of the arrival of Vietnamese in Orange County.

With over 5,000 items, our map collection is an invaluable resource for anyone researching California. It includes rarities such as a map of California as an island, James Marshall's gold-discovery map, and a map of John Bidwell's land grant. We have highlighted a small selection of our maps in our catalog. If you have any questions about these resources or if you cannot find what you need (many of our map records are not yet online), please feel free to contact us.

The exhibit features many examples drawn for the California History Section's extensive manuscript collections. Scores of Gold Rush manuscript collections holding thousands of letters were examined. Included are such treasures as Marshall's own map showing where he discovered gold, pioneer preacher Joseph A. Benton's journals of his voyage to California and his first years in Sacramento looking for souls instead of gold, and letters to his mother by Sacramento's first historian, Dr. John F. Morse. Letters by those less well known, however, vividly tell us of the travel to California by land and sea and then the cold reality of the diggings and its hardships, loneliness, lawlessness, and disappointments. Printed books, pamphlets, periodicals, and newspapers, of course, form a major component of any Gold Rush exhibition. These printed sources, more than any single medium, spread the news and influenced would-be gold seekers.

Welcome to Calisphere: your gateway to California’s remarkable digital collections. Calisphere provides free access to unique and historically important artifacts for research, teaching, and curious exploration. Discover over 400,000 photographs, documents, letters, artwork, diaries, oral histories, films, advertisements, musical recordings, and more.

The collection covers the dramatic decades between the Gold Rush and the turn of the twentieth century. It captures the pioneer experience; encounters between Anglo-Americans and the diverse peoples who had preceded them; the transformation of the land by mining, ranching, agriculture, and urban development; the often-turbulent growth of communities and cities; and California's emergence as both a state and a place of uniquely American dreams. The production of this collection was supported by a generous grant from the David and Lucile Packard Foundation.