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View of a violent conflagration on Front Street, with a throng of people and their belongings crowded on the levee.

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View of Goodyears Bar, with mountains looming large in the background, and signs for Beauchamp, S. Charles, Nicols, J. Spring, Olimpic Saloon, Marks, the Sierra House, Post Office, Franco, Union, and other businesses.

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View of a roaring conflagration, from Nob Hill, with Telegraph Hill and the bay in the background.

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View of town and mining operations, with hills in the background.

Scope and Contents From the Collection: The collection consists of California lettersheets, mostly pictorial, created approximately between the years 1850 and 1870, with the bulk dating from the 1850s. Pictorial lettersheets are illustrated with lithographs or wood engravings depicting California and Western themes. Intended to be used as stationery during and after the California Gold Rush, these lettersheets served as a kind of reportage, depicting important events and popular stories of the day. Common illustrated topics and...

Scope and Contents

Crowded, carnivalesque scene of the river, levee, and town of Marysville, including illustrations of the boats Ella P., Rose Bud, Refugia, and Martha Ruffin; hotels, businesses, and other buildings; signs on storefronts and trees; and men at work and leisure.

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View of a large crowd watching a parade in the San Francisco plaza, with buildings in the background identified by the following signs: F.C. Butler Lithographer; Atwill & Co.; Music Piano-Forte Stationary; Post Office; Cheap Publications Magazines Newspapers; Burgess, Gilbert & Still; Monumental F. Co.; and Justices Court.

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View of Second Street, with signs, from left to right, for Rivett & Co.; Orleans Hotel; Adams & Co.; Atlantic & Pacific Express; Wells Fargo & Co.; B.F. Hastings & Co., and Stanley & Stevens Attorneys.

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Four vignettes depicting: a variety of travelers on a California road, including Native Americans, and Chinese, African American, Chileno, Mexican, and Hawaiian miners; the Chinese battle of "Five Cent Gulch" in Weaverville; and Native Americans, catching grasshoppers and gathering acorns. (See also Baird 217.)

Scope and Contents

Two illustrations, depicting the arrival of a train (with the flag "USM") in California, being greeted by a crowd including a Native American family; and a fireside scene, with parents, grandmother, and children in a middle-class living room.