California home
This certificate of residence for Chin Num is part of his son’s, Chin You Wong’s Arrival Investigation Case File. It was required under the Chinese Exclusion Act...
Cathedral Spires, Yosemite Valley
So spectacular are the landscapes of California’s Yosemite Valley that San Francisco photographer Carleton Watkins invented in 1861 a larger format to capture its...
Devastation in San Francisco
This photograph of California Street looking north from Battery Street and the wholesale fruit and produce district shows the damage wrought by the 1906 San Francisco...
Economy of beer
In April 1917 the California Hop Growers telegrammed Congressman John Edward Raker objecting, on economic grounds, to possible legislation banning the brewing of beer...
Ellis Island of the West
This undated photograph captures just a few of the millions of Asian immigrants to pass through Angel Island, in California’s San Francisco Bay. Now a National...
From marriage to internment
George and Michiko Ushida were married in Berkeley, California, on April 22, 1942. Two days later, they left for the Tanforan assembly center in San Bruno,...
Fugitive slave arrested…and freed
This March 17, 1858, warrant—from the only known Federal fugitive slave case tried in California—directed the arrest of a fugitive slave named Archie. His owner,...