California Historical Society
U.S. state of California's state historical society
The California Historical Society (CHS) was the official historical society of California, until it dissolved and transferred its collections to the Stanford University Libraries in an agreement that was announced in January 2025. Founded in 1871 by a group of prominent Californian intellectuals at Santa Clara University, the Society was designated as the California state historical society in 1979. Although the Society was based in San Francisco, it hosted exhibits across California.
History
The California Historical Society was founded in June 1871 by a group of prominent Californian politicians and professors at the Santa Clara University (then the College of Santa Clara), led by Californian Assemblyman John W. Dwinelle (an influential founder of the University of California). The stated mission of the society was “collecting and bringing to light and publishing, from time to time, all information not generally accessible on the subject of the early colonization and settlement of the west coast of America, and especially Northwestern Mexico, California, and Oregon. The society published 32 papers until 1901. From 1901 to 1906, the CHS temporarily merged with the California Genealogical Society. Following the devastation of the 1906 San Francisco earthquake, the society fell into dormancy until 1922.
In 1922, the society was permanently reestablished by Templeton Crocker, famed expeditionary of the California Academy of Sciences. In 1979 the organization was named the official state historical society, in a bill signed by Governor Jerry Brown.
“California Historical Society” enters the record as u.S. state of California's state historical society. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what California, Historical and Society can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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Chronology, provenance and viewpoint should be read together before a broad social or political interpretation is accepted. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 14, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q14053. VIAF identifies the subject as 148345554. The Library of Congress control number is n50059108. Authority coordinates are 37.787, -122.401. 3 of 5 selected statements include explicit references; 1 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 2025, 1871, 1979 and 1901.
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This entry incorporates text from “California Historical Society” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.