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Neatly filed in plastic binder sleeves, in four cloth zipper binders.

Significant archive of original letters to an influential newspaperman in the latter quarter of the 19th century, from fellow journalists, politicians, historians, and others. James O'Meara (1825-1903), ventured to California in 1849, drawn, as so many were, by the lure of gold. Like many, he soon found mining arduous and unprofitable, and resumed a nascent career in journalism, writing for the Times and Transcript, and developing relationships with politicians. One of his accomplishments was to write "Broderick and Gwin," a key work on an early California political rivalry. In 1857 he left for Oregon, where he founded the Sentinel in Jacksonville, but with the onset of the Civil War O'Meara's southern sympathies led to the suppression of that newspaper. He was to publish, edit, or write for a number of newspapers across the west, returning to California in 1876, working for and contributing to the San Francisco Examiner, the Sonoma Democrat, the Call, the Alta, the Star, the Sacramento Bee, and many others. His long journalistic career led to many associations, as evidenced by the broad range of correspondence in the archive. There are letters from newspapermen M.H. De Young and James McClatchy, historian Hubert Howe Bancroft, Laura de Force Gordon (a lawyer and the first woman to run a daily newspaper in the United States), many letters about railroads, on railroad letterhead, and many many more. The earliest letters are from 1870, with most dating between 1882 and 1886. An important gathering of source material on the economic development, political evolution, and journalism of the American West.