5 historic sites to learn more about the Bay Area’s Civil War era

5 historic sites to learn more about the Bay Area’s Civil War era

California was never a hotbed of Civil War action, but the Golden State — and the Bay Area in particular — played a major role. The riches of the Gold Rush didn’t just line the pockets of lucky miners; they fueled the Union war effort. “We enlisted 17,000 Californians, but they mostly fought in the West, marching across the desert into Arizona and New Mexico,” says Concord native Glenna Matthews, a former Cal and Stanford history professor and a…