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This is one of those historical features you would not know you were looking at unless you knew the history. The construction of this hand dug ditch began in 1853 for the purpose of transporting water from the American River to various dry digging sites throughout the area. It remained in use until 1942 when the gold deposits were exhausted and mining was no longer profitable. Today only sections of the ditch system remain, many have been destroyed by housing developments.
More information can be found here: www.loc.gov/pictures/collection/hh/item/ca1808/
Market Street, San Francisco, 02/15/2025
The San Francisco Chinese New Year Festival and Parade is truly the largest celebration of its kind in the world.
In 1847, San Francisco was a sleepy little village known as Yerba Buena with a population of 459. With the discovery of gold and the ensuing California Gold Rush, by 1849, over 50,000 people had come to San Francisco to seek their fortune or just a better way of life. Among those were many Chinese, who had come to work in the gold mines and on the railroad. By the 1860’s, the Chinese were eager to share their culture with those who were unfamiliar with it. They chose to showcase their culture by using a favorite American tradition – the Parade. Nothing like it had ever been done in their native China. They invited a variety of other groups from the city to participate, and they marched down what today are Grant Avenue and Kearny Street carrying colorful flags, banners, lanterns, and drums and firecrackers to drive away evil spirits.
Since 1958, the Parade has been under the direction of the Chinese Chamber of Commerce. At that time, it was moved from the afternoon to the evening so as not to compete with the very popular Miss Chinatown U.S.A. contest. The Parade remained a local community activity along Grant Avenue until the mid 1970’s, when the fire department and ever growing crowds dictated that the Parade route be moved to wider streets.
When KTVU, Channel 2, started televising the Parade in 1987, the Chinese Chamber of Commerce realized that although the Parade would still represent the community, its growth would demand a commitment to higher quality and corporate sponsorship involvement. The Chinese New Year celebration was expanded to a month-long Festival including two street fairs, a basketball jamboree, a public art project and the Miss Chinatown U.S.A Pageant & Coronation Ball.
In 2024, The San Francisco Chinese Chamber of Commerce and ABC7 Bay Area entered into a six-year commitment making ABC7 the exclusive broadcast home to the city’s world-renowned Lunar New Year celebrations, making the festivities available to viewers nationwide across its industry-leading broadcast and streaming platforms. The station will produce year-round special coverage, including local programming and news stories that showcase the city’s extraordinary monthlong Lunar New Year celebrations, beginning in 2025 with the welcoming of the auspicious Year of the Snake.
Today, the San Francisco Chinese New Year Festival and Parade is the largest celebration of its kind in the world, attracting over three million spectators and television viewers throughout the U.S., Canada, and Asia with the help of both ABC 7 and KTSF, Channel 26 (Chinese broadcast). Named one of the top ten parades in the world by the International Festivals & Events Association and recognized by USA Today’s 10Best Cultural Festivals, the Chinese New Year Parade in San Francisco is one of the few remaining illuminated parades in North America and the biggest parade celebrating Lunar New Year outside of Asia.
The parade still welcomes a variety of other groups to join in the march, and still hopes to educate, enrich and entertain its audience with the colorful pageantry of Chinese culture and tradition. In order to retain the integrity of the Parade, participants are asked to tie their float or specialty unit to a Chinese cultural theme. We are honored and delighted to have representatives from other Asian cultures participating in this year’s festivities.
Gung Hay Fat Choy!
Most of the buildings in Old Sacramento, California date from the mid to late 19th Century, when Sacramento was the hub for the California Gold Rush and Transcontinental Railroad.
2010 WPS Championship presented by Citi
FC Gold Pride vs. Philadelphia Independence
September 26, 2010
Pioneer Stadium
Hayward, California
The bunkhouse, blacksmith shop, and other structures at Plumas-Eureka State Park stand on a hill next to the Mohawk Mill. We tend to think of California gold miners in terms of grizzled guys panning for gold in streams, and that's how the California gold rush started out. But it didn't take long for somebody to figure out all that gold dust in the streams started out in rocks up in the hills. A group of nine miners found gold in the rock above this point on the slope of Eureka Peak on May 23, 1851, and before long various outfits had dug 30 miles of shafts into the mountain.
Once they got the rock out of the mountain, the job was to mimic what nature did, break the gold out of the rock and turn it to dust. They used a complicated, mechanized process depending on a series of machines like this, that crushed the rock into smaller and smaller chunks.
This ore crusher used to stand inside the Mohawk Mill a short distance up the hill, and was part of a much larger sequence of machines that could rip arms off in an instant. The Mohawk Mill is no longer structurally sound, though, so they moved the crusher down here.
Market Street, San Francisco, 02/15/2025
The San Francisco Chinese New Year Festival and Parade is truly the largest celebration of its kind in the world.
In 1847, San Francisco was a sleepy little village known as Yerba Buena with a population of 459. With the discovery of gold and the ensuing California Gold Rush, by 1849, over 50,000 people had come to San Francisco to seek their fortune or just a better way of life. Among those were many Chinese, who had come to work in the gold mines and on the railroad. By the 1860’s, the Chinese were eager to share their culture with those who were unfamiliar with it. They chose to showcase their culture by using a favorite American tradition – the Parade. Nothing like it had ever been done in their native China. They invited a variety of other groups from the city to participate, and they marched down what today are Grant Avenue and Kearny Street carrying colorful flags, banners, lanterns, and drums and firecrackers to drive away evil spirits.
Since 1958, the Parade has been under the direction of the Chinese Chamber of Commerce. At that time, it was moved from the afternoon to the evening so as not to compete with the very popular Miss Chinatown U.S.A. contest. The Parade remained a local community activity along Grant Avenue until the mid 1970’s, when the fire department and ever growing crowds dictated that the Parade route be moved to wider streets.
When KTVU, Channel 2, started televising the Parade in 1987, the Chinese Chamber of Commerce realized that although the Parade would still represent the community, its growth would demand a commitment to higher quality and corporate sponsorship involvement. The Chinese New Year celebration was expanded to a month-long Festival including two street fairs, a basketball jamboree, a public art project and the Miss Chinatown U.S.A Pageant & Coronation Ball.
In 2024, The San Francisco Chinese Chamber of Commerce and ABC7 Bay Area entered into a six-year commitment making ABC7 the exclusive broadcast home to the city’s world-renowned Lunar New Year celebrations, making the festivities available to viewers nationwide across its industry-leading broadcast and streaming platforms. The station will produce year-round special coverage, including local programming and news stories that showcase the city’s extraordinary monthlong Lunar New Year celebrations, beginning in 2025 with the welcoming of the auspicious Year of the Snake.
Today, the San Francisco Chinese New Year Festival and Parade is the largest celebration of its kind in the world, attracting over three million spectators and television viewers throughout the U.S., Canada, and Asia with the help of both ABC 7 and KTSF, Channel 26 (Chinese broadcast). Named one of the top ten parades in the world by the International Festivals & Events Association and recognized by USA Today’s 10Best Cultural Festivals, the Chinese New Year Parade in San Francisco is one of the few remaining illuminated parades in North America and the biggest parade celebrating Lunar New Year outside of Asia.
The parade still welcomes a variety of other groups to join in the march, and still hopes to educate, enrich and entertain its audience with the colorful pageantry of Chinese culture and tradition. In order to retain the integrity of the Parade, participants are asked to tie their float or specialty unit to a Chinese cultural theme. We are honored and delighted to have representatives from other Asian cultures participating in this year’s festivities.
Gung Hay Fat Choy!
New York Adventure Club February 4, 2015 private tour of the Consulate General of the Republic of Poland in New York, led by the Consul and Vice Consul. This tour covered the first two floors of the Joseph Raphael De Lamar Mansion at 233 Madison Avenue built in from 1905 to 1906 by C.P.H. Gilbert in the Beaux-Arts classical style.
The tour of the Murray Hill mansion included the former library, billiard room, and dining room. De Lamar was a merchant seaman, born Dutch, who made his money in mining and metallurgy during the California Gold Rush. The building once housed the National Democratic Club and the American Bible Society, and the AIA Guide to New York City notes that the “interiors are as opulent as the exterior, and largely intact.” One of the fun facts we learned on the tour is that the mansion has an elevator originally designed to lower a horse and carriage into the basement, and was later used for cars. Today it’s used for trash removal and freight.
Source: Untapped Cities, "Photos Inside the Historic NYC Polish Consulate with NY Adventure Club"