Book Review

Sierra Crossing: First Roads to California. By Thomas Frederick Howard. (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1998. x, 218 pp. $28.00, isbn 0-520-20670-3.)

Migrants West profiles a baker's dozen pioneer Los Angeles families who represent the diverse cultures in a community experiencing the gradual demise of the rancho system and transition to American rule. Ronald C. Woolsey's well-researched and lively vignettes highlight a number of issues faced by citizens of the pueblo: business growth, legal and political issues, vigilantism, the Indian question, and slavery. Since individual paths crossed many times, we also have an integrated history of the town up to Civil War days.

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We are introduced to the wealthy Yankee ranchero and businessman Abel Stearns, who was typical of many who were ambivalent about losing the old ways. His close friend, the Scotsman Hugo Reid, was married to a Gabrieleño woman and published essays sympathetic to aboriginal rights and culture. Helen Hunt Jackson found that information helpful as she wrote her novel Ramona (1884). She was also greatly influenced by the Hispanic resident Antonio Coronel. Woolsey, however, gives us too much Jackson (who only spent a winter in California) and too little Coronel, a major political and cultural leader; he was among the founders of many of the town's permanent institutions, including the Los Angeles public school system. Benjamin Wilson was another early resident who made multiple contributions as mayor, Indian agent, and state senator. The author chose instead to profile his second wife, Margaret Hereford, who he believed "personified the frontier woman," but he covered a good deal of paper discussing a remarkable woman's past that had nothing to do with southern California.

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