San Benito County History Articles

Since the Gold Rush era, land reclamation projects have helped to build California, but they are also damaging the state’s environment for people, plants and animals by eliminating essential wetlands.

Climate change has warmed Pacific Ocean waters, causing storms to rapidly intensify, leading to the first tropical storm watch in Southern California ever as Hurricane Hilary prepares to make landfall.

California has used reclamation districts to turn millions of acres of unusable swamps into fertile agricultural land, starting in the earliest days of the Gold Rush. Here’s how it happened.

Since 1947, California has led the United States in the fight against climate change. Here is a list of some of the steps the state has taken to battle global warming, greenhouse gases and air pollution.

Here are 10 of the most often-heard climate change denial claims and arguments. Do any of them hold any water?

To understand climate change denial, we must go back to the Ronald Reagan presidency and his proposal for the “Star Wars” space-based missile defense system.

Barbie is the most famous California-born toy. But there are other iconic playthings that were created or brought to market here.

Here's how the iconic Barbie doll and its manufacturer, toy giant Mattel, built an industry in Southern California that pours billions into the state’s economy.

Dedicated to commemorating parts of history that sometimes offend the local chamber of commerce, E Clampus Vitus has studded California with plaques.

Pam Marino of Monterey County Weekly reports that the city government there is grappling with a unique problem: How to provide access to the places that make Monterey “the most historic city in California.”

The Supreme Court has now overturned decades of precedent in a new ruling that bans affirmative action, the consideration of race in college admissions as a way to create campus diversity.

The first-in-the-nation state-appointed task force report contains hundreds of recommendations for reparation, including a proposal that the state apologize and make financial amends for slavery and decades of racist policies.

Bernice “B” Bode and her great-granddaughter, Jasmin Sauer, have similar personalities and they enjoy spending time together—in much the same way that intergenerational members of many families do. But Bernice and Jasmin’s relationship is unique because they are 100 years …

California bans affirmative action in college admissions, but two pending Supreme Court decisions may go further than the current state law, which was passed as Prop 209 in 1996. Here’s what that could mean for the state.

California is unwinding the prison-building boom of the 1980s and 1990s. The cuts are falling on small towns that banked on government jobs to anchor their communities.

More than 4 percent of death penalty convicts have been wrongfully convicted, data shows. But courts including the U.S. Supreme Court have failed to provide protections for the innocent facing death at the hands of the state.

The death penalty remains legal in California, but Gov. Gavin Newsom ordered a moratorium on executions in 2019. Will capital punishment end in the state? Here’s what’s happening.

The California Supreme Court has kept the state at the forefront of legal issues surrounding abortion, the death penalty and same-sex marriage, starting in its earliest days in the Gold Rush era.

Comics may have been born in New York, but they came of age in California. And there’s more to the story than San Francisco comix.

Almost one million California residents are forced to drink from contaminated water supplies, or pay for bottled water. Economic inequality makes the crisis worse. What is the state doing to fix it?