John Neely Johnson was an American lawyer and politician. He was elected as the fourth governor of California from 1856 to 1858, and later appointed justice to the Nevada Supreme Court from 1867 to 1871. As a member of the American Party, Johnson remains one of only three members of a third party to be elected to the California governorship.
Đorđe Šagić, also known as George (Jorge) Fisher, was a customs officer and early leader of the Texas Revolution.
The San Francisco Committee of Vigilance was a vigilante group formed in 1851. The catalyst for its formation was the criminality of the Sydney Ducks gang. It was revived in 1856 in response to rampant crime and corruption in the municipal government of San Francisco, California. The need for extralegal intervention was apparent with the explosive population growth following the discovery of gold in 1848. The small town of about 900 individuals grew to a booming city of over 20,000 very rapidly. This growth in population overwhelmed the previously established law enforcement, and led to the organization of vigilante militia groups.
The Barbary Coast was a red-light district during the second half of the 19th and early 20th centuries in San Francisco that featured dance halls, concert saloons, bars, jazz clubs, variety shows, and brothels. Its nine block area was centered on a three block stretch of Pacific Street, now Pacific Avenue, between Montgomery and Stockton Streets. Pacific Street was the first street to cut through the hills of San Francisco, starting near Portsmouth Square and continuing east to the first shipping docks at Buena Vista Cove.
The San Francisco Call ( Post ) was a newspaper that served San Francisco, California. Because of a succession of mergers with other newspapers, the paper variously came to be called The San Francisco Call & Post, the San Francisco Call-Bulletin, San Francisco News-Call Bulletin, and the News-Call Bulletin before the name was finally retired after the business was purchased by the San Francisco Examiner.
James Van Ness was an American politician who served as the 6th Mayor of San Francisco from 1855 to 1856.
Fremont Older was a newspaperman and editor in San Francisco, California for nearly 50 years. He is best known for his campaigns against civic corruption, capital punishment, prison reform, and efforts on behalf of Tom Mooney and Warren Billings, wrongly convicted of the Preparedness Day bombing of 1916.
Abraham Ruef was an American lawyer and politician. He gained notoriety as the corrupt political boss behind the administration of Mayor Eugene Schmitz of San Francisco during the period before and after the 1906 San Francisco earthquake.
The media in the San Francisco Bay Area has historically focused on San Francisco but also includes two other major media centers, Oakland and San Jose. The Federal Communications Commission, Nielsen Media Research, and other similar media organizations treat the San Francisco-Oakland-San Jose Area as one entire media market. The region hosts to one of the oldest radio stations in the United States still in existence, KCBS (AM) (740 kHz), founded by engineer Charles Herrold in 1909. As the home of Silicon Valley, the Bay Area is also a technologically advanced and innovative region, with many companies involved with Internet media or influential websites.
The history of newspapers in California dates back to 1846, with the first publication of The Californian in Monterey. Since then California has been served by a large number of newspapers based in many cities.
Edward "Ned" McGowan was an American lawyer, Pennsylvania assemblyman, Judge of the California Court of Quarter Sessions, poet, Fraser Canyon gold seeker, adventurer, assistant sergeant-at-arms in the United States Congress, newspaper publisher and bon vivant instigator of the eponymous McGowan's War in colonial British Columbia.
The San Francisco Examiner is a newspaper distributed in and around San Francisco, California, and published since 1863.
Joseph Thompson Goodman was an American journalist, writer, and epigrapher. During the Comstock silver boom in Virginia City, Nevada, he was owner and editor of the Territorial Enterprise, one of the largest and most influential newspapers on the West Coast. He hired Samuel Clemens as a reporter for the paper, giving Clemens his "start" as a professional writer. He later became interested in deciphering Maya inscriptions and made significant contributions in the field.
John Strother Griffin (1816–1898) was a surgeon attached to the General Stephen W. Kearney expedition from New Mexico to California, a landowner and founder of East Los Angeles and a member of the Common Council of the city of Los Angeles, where he was one of the first university-trained physicians to settle.
James King of William was a crusading San Francisco, California, newspaper editor whose assassination by James P. Casey, a member of the San Francisco Board of Supervisors in 1856 resulted in the establishment of the second San Francisco Vigilance Committee and changed the politics of the city. King was among the first newspapermen to be honored by the California Journalism Hall of Fame.
The Montgomery Block, also known as Monkey Block and Halleck's Folly, was a historic building active from 1853 to 1959, and was located in San Francisco, California. It was San Francisco's first fireproof and earthquake resistant building. It came to be known as a Bohemian center, from the late 19th to the middle of the 20th-century.
Belle Cora, also known as Arabella Ryan, was a madam of the Barbary Coast of San Francisco during the mid-nineteenth century. She rose to public attention in 1855 when her lover, Charles Cora, killed US Marshall William H. Richardson after they had a conflict at the theater. She died in 1862.
Samuel Williams was an American newspaper editor and author of Welsh descent. He was born in Utica, New York. He worked for the Albany Evening Journal and San Francisco Evening Bulletin. After his death, his widow Elizabeth Balmer became the wife of William Barnes Sr.
The San Francisco Herald, or San Francisco Daily Herald, was a newspaper that was published from 1850 to 1862 in San Francisco, California. The paper stood out aggressively against crime and corruption associated with the California Gold Rush. The editors fought several duels with men whom they had offended. In 1856 the paper attacked the Vigilance Committee, which was taking the law into its own hands. Supporters of the committee withdrew their subscriptions and advertising, almost forcing the newspaper to close. However, the newspaper continued to be published with smaller circulation until 1862.
Lone Mountain Cemetery was a complex of cemeteries in the Lone Mountain neighborhood of San Francisco, California, United States on the land bounded by the present-day California Street, Geary Boulevard, Parker Avenue, and Presidio Avenue. Opened 1854, it eventually comprised Laurel Hill Cemetery, Calvary Cemetery, the Masonic Cemetery, and Odd Fellows Cemetery.
