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The Historic Marysville City Cemetery contains the ghosts of the city founders, politicians, Western heroes and bandits, and murder victims and murderers. Among the 10,000 individuals buried in this cemetery is a survivor of the ill-fated Donner Party; the brother of the founder of Macy’s department store; the minister to Japan, appointed by Pres. Ulysses S. Grant; and the founders and co-owners of one of the oldest continuously operated businesses in California, the Union Lumber Company, established in 1852. This cemetery is one of the oldest city-owned cemeteries in the area, with burials dating from 1850. The cemetery became inactive in 1939, allowing burials only in existing family plots and later only ashes. The most recent interment was in 2016.

Phyllis E. Smith and Victoria M. Tudor are board members of the Friends for the Preservation of Yuba County History (FPYCH). The group’s monthly newsletter, the Yuba Legacy, is written by Tudor and edited by Smith. They both help plan the organization’s fundraising activities, providing tours of the cemetery. Tudor spends considerable time working in the cemetery and coordinates headstone repairs with a local monument company. Smith digitized the handwritten book of burials, from 1870 to 1930, a four-year effort.

From its Native American and mission graveyards to its modern megacemeteries, San Diego County's historical landscape has an incredibly diverse array of final resting places. Cemeteries of San Diego County takes the reader in-depth to reveal the region's dynamic cultural history through dramatic modern photographs and never-before-seen vintage images of the county's most sacred spaces--its lost and forgotten historical burial grounds. A number of these graveyards have disappeared entirely, erasing the last vestiges of too many of the region's formative pioneers. This book uncovers the location of dozens of local cemeteries and reestablishes them as consecrated grounds.

San Diego has a rich and unique cultural history that can be effectively told through the commemoration of its dead. Local cemeteries throughout the city reflect San Diego's multiethnic cultural dynamism and pinpoint marked shifts in power from Native American to Spanish to Mexican to American governance. They also reveal the current struggle for space in a burgeoning metropolis. Graveyards, with their individually detailed and hauntingly beautiful monuments, offer an unrivaled historic yet continuous glimpse at the essence of this diverse community. The story of San Diego's cemeteries is a telling narrative that offers remarkable insight into the evolution of "America's Finest City."

Cemeteries are more than final resting places for the dead; they are gateways to an area's shared history. Every hand-carved granite or marble monument, every faded wooden marker, holds a clue. Western Sierra populations boomed with the discovery of gold and often dwindled as gold fever waned. Cemeteries of the Western Sierra uses the lens of the cemetery to glimpse a rich and disappearing history. Displaced indigenous populations, miners, dueling newspaper magnates, Chinese pioneers: all are part of the mosaic of history represented in a historical cemetery. From solitary graves in the forest to almost forgotten graveyards near the center of a town, cemeteries tell a story not just of who may have died but also of who lived and what was meaningful in their time.

Strolling through Santa Clara's historic cemeteries, you will find architectural treasures, thoughtful or cryptic verses carved in stone, and monuments everywhere that resist and challenge the ceaseless waves of time and change. Santa Clara Mission Cemetery and Mission City Memorial Park were both founded before the city itself. Santa Clara Mission Cemetery was established by the Jesuit fathers along with Santa Clara College in 1851. Many pioneers are interred
here, and beneath the Varsi Chapel floor lies what may be the oldest mausoleum in the valley. Mission City Memorial Park, known simply as the graveyard when it was founded in 1850, once doubled as a dump and a refuge for stray farm animals. It is now a beautifully landscaped, 30-acre cemetery memorializing valley residents of the past 150 years.

The stories of those who lived in the city by the sea begin long before the 1878 date on the oldest headstone found in the city. Long Beach was the site of ceremonies, and perhaps the burial grounds, for the Tongva tribe.  Many of those who later settled the city are buried in one of the four known cemeteries, Municipal, Sunnyside, Forest Lawn Long Beach, and All Souls. Two of the cemeteries hold the graves of several hundred Union and Confederate Civil War veterans, one Medal of Honor recipient, and a slave who served in the 1st Colored Heavy Artillery Regiment. The histories of the Municipal and Sunnyside Cemeteries include the 1921 discovery of oil, which made national news as descendants of the deceased fought for the oil underneath the graves. The fight resulted in a second Sunnyside Cemetery that later became Forest Lawn Long Beach. The scene of oil derricks surrounding the cemeteries was so surreal that it caught the attention of Ansel Adams, whose photographs of Sunnyside Cemetery are included.

California's Eastern Sierra region, encompassing Inyo and Mono Counties, is a paradise of striking contrasts and beauty. Early settlers came to this area--now known chiefly for recreational activities such as fishing, hiking, and skiing--for its mining and agricultural prospects. Towns like Bodie, Lundy, and Keeler rose with the promise of quick riches but failed when the promise dimmed. Throughout this unique landscape are sprinkled the poignant resting places of early pioneers. Reflecting the diversity of the natural setting, the area's cemeteries range from the Mono County Cemetery overlooking Mono Lake to the overgrown cemetery at the Civil War-era Fort Independence to the garden cemeteries of Bishop. The monuments in these cemeteries, along with the beautiful country that surrounds them, honor the men and women who once carved lives out of this rugged wilderness.

Opened to the public in June of 1923, the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum can arguably be called "America's Most Historic Sports Stadium." In 1984 the Memorial Coliseum was declared a State and Federal Historic Landmark for its contributions to both the State of California and the United States. The history of this institution is captured here in over 200 vintage images.

The Memorial Coliseum's history spans eight decades, playing host to two Olympiads, two Super Bowls, one World Series, a multitude of concerts and political rallies, a Papal mass, and one of the most famous Democratic presidential nomination acceptance speeches of the 20th century by John F. Kennedy. Using photographs culled from its archives, pictured here are never-before-seen photographs of the Coliseum's construction; rare images of political and religious rallies held at the Stadium and the Los Angeles Sports Arena, and home to famous speeches by Franklin Roosevelt, Martin Luther King Jr., and Nelson Mandela; and a myriad of other sporting and entertainment events hosted by the Memorial Coliseum, including the Los Angeles Dodgers, motocross racing, and the Rolling Stones.