Captain Joseph Libby Folsom arrived in California in 1847 as a staff officer with the New York Volunteers, a regiment of men formed in New York under the command of Colonel Jonathan D. Stevenson. A native of New Hampshire, a…
Category: This and That
Happy Birthday Placerville Bell Tower
This story was written in 1998. It is February of 1898, one hundred years ago, and the firemen in Placerville are concerned about the tower that holds the fire bell in the plaza on Main Street. For twenty years this…
El Dorado County – Its Changing Boundaries
From its creation in February 18, 1850, as one of California’s original twenty-seven counties, El Dorado County has seen its boundaries change nearly a dozen times – often drastically. Originally bounded on the north by Yuba County, the south by…
Origin of the names California and El Dorado
The names that are given to states, counties, communities and even the streets on which we live, come from many sources. Some have complicated mythical origins (with numerous variations), others reflect the location from which the first settlers came, while…