A Treasure Trove of State History : California’s Library, Started in 1850, Has 8 Million Items

The date was Jan. 19, 1850 when a wagon arrived at a San Jose building, then serving as the Capitol where California’s first elected Legislature had convened. The driver had followed a trail from Monterey carrying a small trunk filled with a hundred books consigned to Peter H. Burnett, who had been sworn in as the first civil governor of California.

The books were a gift from Col. John C. Fremont, the explorer who charted the trail to the Far West.

Fremont had learned that the Legislature was considering establishing an official library. Those volumes would be its first books. On April 9, 1850, the Legislature passed an act setting up the State Library, designating the secretary of state to be its librarian. At that time, the library’s books were limited to the use of state governmental officers and members of the Legislature. In 1903, a revision of the law permitted the public to use the library.

Gary Strong, 42, has been state librarian since 1980. Seated at his desk, he opened one of Fremont’s books. “Mostly they were about New York and the New England states,” he said. “But it was a beginning. Today, our collection contains 8 million items and we add 100,000 more each year. They include fine books, maps, posters, periodicals, journals, photographs and even historical post cards. Much of the material comes from private gifts and bequests.”

The California State Library’s purpose is to meet the research needs of state government and of the general public. Any citizen can use its extensive resources either in Sacramento or through their local library’s interlibrary loan service.

After the recent disastrous fire at the Los Angeles Central Library, Strong sent two members of his staff to determine how they could help. They were Gary F. Kurutz, director of special collections, and Tere Silva, who is preservation officer.

“Los Angeles lost its patent collection,” Strong continued. “We have this on microfilm, and we can furnish them duplicates. Also, many periodicals in their collection were destroyed. These date back to the booster years when there were a number of publications promoting California as a place to live and work. We’ve duplicate copies of a number of them that we will be able to give Los Angeles.”

The state library publishes a newsletter that is sent to about 1,600 libraries throughout the nation. In a recent one, they asked all libraries to search their stacks for duplicate volumes that could be offered to the Los Angeles Public Library.

To aid the Legislature, thousands of publications are on file that are primarily of interest to senators, assemblymen and other government agencies. One of the largest law libraries in the United States is housed in its building across the street from the State Capitol.

Established in 1903, the library’s California section is one of the foremost regional history collections in the western United States. There are about 70,000 volumes on its shelves relating to California’s geography, history and current conditions.

California’s early history was well chronicled by foreign visitors such as British and American sea captains who arrived while the territory was under Spanish and later Mexican rule. Trappers began drifting across the Sierra during the early 1800s in search of beaver, and later came settlers who followed the long trail west in covered wagons. The great migration caused Pio Pico, the last Mexican governor of California, to declare on the eve of war with the United States:

“We find ourselves suddenly threatened by hordes of Yankee emigrants whose progress we cannot arrest.”

The library also has collected novels with California as a setting or inspiration. Among the authors represented are Bret Harte, Samuel Clemens, Joaquin Miller, Jack London, John Steinbeck and Raymond Chandler.

First Newspaper Saved

Gary Kurutz, who is in charge of the California room, displayed some of the items that the library considers its most prized treasures. “We have copies of California’s first newspaper,” he said. “It was called the Californian, and the first issue was published in Monterey on Aug. 15, 1846. Its owners were Robert Semple and Walter Colton. We have a complete run of this newspaper. It was issued every Saturday and was printed in both English and Spanish.

“Newsprint was sometimes scarce and on occasion the editors printed several issues on cigar wrappers.”

Semple moved the paper to the growing city of San Francisco in May, 1847, but a year later he was forced to suspend publication for six months. The cause was the Gold Rush. Semple announced that because everyone had gone off to the gold fields, there was no one left to read paper. He resumed publication that fall when he merged with San Francisco’s first newspaper, the California Star.

In the manuscript collection is a letter from Lansford Hastings, the author of California’s first overland guide book. Dated March 25, 1846 from present Sacramento, it was addressed to John Marsh who had come to California in 1836 and for a time practiced medicine in Los Angeles. Both men were ardent California boosters, and in the letter Hastings predicted that thousands of settlers would be coming west. His guidebook would indirectly result in one of the worst tragedies in California history.

In 1846, a party of emigrants headed by George Donner left Independence, Mo. There were nearly 100 men, women and children in the party following a trail through the wilderness, and they were using Hasting’s book as a guide. Hastings had recommended a shortcut to California that would eliminate many miles from the journey. The Donner party followed that cutoff. Lacking a competent guide, they became lost.

It was late November when this slow-moving procession finally crossed into California, reaching a small lake that now bears Donner’s name. The emigrants gazed fearfully at the towering Sierra that lay ahead, its summit white with snow. They stood shivering in a cold wind, the first sign of an impending storm. The party decided to wait for help, and built crude shelters near the lake.

Some of the men fashioned snowshoes and attempted to climb the mountain barrier. Trapped in a blinding snowstorm, eight died. The survivors ate their bodies.

Word finally reached Sutter’s Fort in Sacramento and relief parties were organized, but blizzards and impassable snowdrifts blocked their efforts until spring. The exact loss of life has been debated, but a creditable figure is that out of 79 members of the party, only 45 reached the settlements in California when the last survivors were brought to Sutter’s Fort on April, 29, 1847.

“Another of our rare documents is a map drawn by James Marshall of the site where he made the first discovery of gold in California,” Kurutz said. “He made a pencil sketch of the sawmill he was building for John Sutter when he saw nuggets in the tailrace.”

The date was Jan. 24, 1848, a clear cold morning as Marshall would recall many years later while telling the story to a writer that would appear in the Century magazine:

“As I was taking my usual walk along the race after shutting off the water, my eye was caught with the glimpse of something shining in the bottom of the ditch. There was about a foot of water running then. I reached my hand down and picked it up; it made my heart thump, for I was certain that it was gold. The piece was about half the size and of the shape of a pea. Then I saw another piece in the water . . . “

News of Gold Spreads

A week later, Marshall returned to the fort with several ounces of gold, showing them to Sutter. They tried to keep the find a secret, but the news spread across the continent and created a stampede for California and instant wealth. For many it would be a futile quest, and for Marshall it would mean future poverty. For Sutter, it would result in financial disaster.

Three months later, there were 4,000 gold seekers on the American River, panning and using sluice boxes.

As thousands flocked to Sacramento, the jumping-off point for the mining regions, Sutter found it impossible to maintain control of his vast holdings. The newcomers stole his cattle and overran his lands. He was an easy victim for scheming speculators who tricked him into a succession of disastrous business ventures that resulted in bankruptcy and financial ruin. Marshall was equally unlucky, ending his days working as a gardener. He died in 1885.