<p><span class="deck"> A corrupt lawyer and his complaisant ally ran San Francisco as their private preserve until a crusading editor toppled their plots and schemes, and sent one of them to jail</span> </p>
<p><span class="deck">Granddaddy of all desert mining discoveries was the Comstock Lode, which sent the Far West on a silver stampede to Nevada’s Washoe country a century ago.</span> </p>
<p><span class="deck"> <span class="typestyle"> One day San Franciscans suddenly learned that their city was the property of a Frenchman, one Monsieur Limantour</span> </span></p>
<p>For hoboes, the West was the land of milk and honey, of adventure, scenery, and easy living. A “land stowaway” hopped the first transcontinental train, and for six more decades they rode the rails</p>
<p><span class="deck"> <span class="typestyle"> Westward with the course of empire Colonel Jonathan Drake Stevenson took his way in 1846. With him went the denizens of New York’s Tammany wards, oyster cellars, and gin mills—the future leaders of California.</span> </span></p>
<p><span class="deck"> <span class="typestyle"> For more than a century, the august members of this San Francisco body have enjoyed a unique, all-male midsummer night’s dream</span> </span></p>
<p><span class="deck"> <span class="typestyle"> An all-but-forgotten San Francisco photographer has left us a grand and terrible record of the destruction and rebirth of an American city</span> </span></p>
<p><span class="deck"> <span class="typestyle"> We built a merchant marine despite the opposition of the Royal Navy, went on to develop the most beautiful of all sailing ships, and held our supremacy for years. But how do we measure up today?</span> </span></p>
<p><span class="deck"> <span class="typestyle"> California has always been as much a state of mind as a geographical entity. For the better part of two centuries, artists have been defining its splendid promise.</span> </span></p>
<p><span class="deck"> <span class="typestyle"> A pioneer locomotive builder used pen and ink, watercolor, and near-total recall to re-create the birth of a titanic enterprise</span> </span></p>
<p><span class="deck">Magnificently impractical and obsolete almost as soon as they were built, the cable lines briefly dominated urban transportation throughout the country.</span></p>
<p><span class="deck"> From Fort Ticonderoga to the Plaza Hotel, from Appomattox Courthouse to Bugsy Siegel’s weird rose garden in Las Vegas, the present-day scene is enriched by knowledge of the American past</span> </p>
<p><span class="deck"> No city has more energetically obliterated the remnants of its past. And yet no city has a greater sense of its history.</span> </p>
<p><span class="deck">New Yorkers recall 1939 as the year of the great World’s Fair in Flushing Meadow. But that’s just more Eastern provincialism. Take a look at what was going on in San Francisco.</span></p>
<p><span class="deck">The urge to move documents as fast as possible has always been a national preoccupation because it has always been a necessity. Faxes and Federal Express are just the latest among many innovations for getting the message across.</span></p>
<p><span class="deck">The Thirteenth Amendment outlawed slavery in 1865, but right on into this century, sailors were routinely drugged, beaten, and kidnapped to man America’s mighty merchant marine.</span></p>
<p><span class="deck"><lead_in> THIRTY YEARS AGO, A HARD-FOUGHT</lead_in> gubernatorial campaign heralded the third great political upheaval of our century.</span></p>
