Thank you for stopping by. I write historical fiction about the development of the American West. Lead Me Home is a tale of a couple on a wagon train journey along the Oregon Trail in 1847. Now I’m Found follows this couple through the early years of the California Gold […]
Theresa Hupp has lived on both ends of the Oregon Trail, which has inspired her writing. She grew up in Eastern Washington State and in the Willamette Valley in Oregon. Her ancestors include early emigrants to Oregon and immigrants to Sacramento, California (though her California forebearers arrived after the Gold […]
I enjoy hearing from readers. Please feel free to leave me a question or comment below about my writing or about anything you saw on this website.If you are a media representative or you are interested in having me speak to your book club, historical society, writing group, or others, […]
Using social media takes a lot of time. Some of it is wasted time, some of it is productive—at least in terms of learning what our friends are doing and thinking. Now that the election is over, I can read most people’s posts without my blood pressure rising. Authors are […]
Every so often I look at what WordPress.com tells me about searches that have led people to my blog. I’ve mentioned some of these odd requests before. Most of the search requests relate to topics along the Oregon Trail or in the California Gold Rush era. I can tell when […]
Over the Christmas break, I went to the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art in Kansas City to see a special exhibit called American Epics: Thomas Hart Benton and Hollywood. I’ve always liked Benton’s artwork. Each piece tells its own story, and his murals show aspects of an era or of our […]
As I searched for a topic on the California Gold Rush to write about this month, I came across issues for the Sacramento Placer Times in July 1849. At that time, Sacramento was a burgeoning outpost at the confluence of the American and Sacramento Rivers. It still was not an […]
In January 1943, the U.S. Army selected the town of Hanford, Washington, as the site for plutonium production on the Manhattan Project. Beginning in February 1943, the Army acquired vast amounts of land around Hanford pursuant to the Second War Powers Act. The three hundred residents of Hanford were evacuated […]
My first post on this blog went live in January 2012, but I didn’t start a regular posting schedule until March of that year, so I consider March my blog’s anniversary. This blog is now three years old. I deliberately set the blog’s theme “Story and History” to be broad […]
Last year I recounted the story of James Marshall finding a gold nugget at Sutter’s Mill in January 1848. He looked down into the mill race and saw the bright and glittering metal. Like Marshall’s original find, many of the early gold discoveries were made by men who simply spotted […]
