The California Historical Society (CHS) has permanently closed and transferred its collection to Stanford University.
Founded in 1871, CHS became the state’s official historical society in 1979; unlike others of its kind, however, it never received general operating funds from California. Financial stability became a challenge over the last decade as attendance declined and donations dwindled, with the problems only further exacerbated by the Covid-19 pandemic. As such, CHS’s board voted to dissolve the organization last summer.
Tony Gonzalez, chair of the board of trustees for CHS, said in a statement, “The transfer of the CHS Collection to Stanford University Libraries is a watershed moment for the California Historical Society, as it marks a path forward to continue engaging both the public and scholars in discovering our history.”
Now known as the California Historical Society Collection at Stanford, in an effort brokered by the Bill Lane Center for the American West and Stanford University Libraries, the holdings will be stewarded by Stanford University and will continue to be accessible to the public. As one of the most significant holdings in California, there are more than 600,000 pieces in the collection dating back as far as the 18th century, including a trove of Gold Rush-era diaries, documentation of Jim Jones’s Peoples Temple cult, and archives from the founding of the wholesale California Flower Market.
In addition to the archives, Stanford will also inherit CHS’s roughly $3.2 million endowment as well as the three people remaining on staff.
In 2016, San Francisco tasked the nonprofit with leading a potential restoration of a former 100,000-square-foot mint building that had survived the city’s infamous 1906 earthquake and fire, but it was ultimately too expensive. In 2020, CHS tried to sell its 20,000-sqaure-foot 678 Mission Street building, which it had acquired in 1993, but the market soured in the wake of the pandemic. The nonprofit unexpectedly lost its executive director and CEO Alicia L. Goehring, who had been overseeing the plans, two years later.
In the interim, CHS took out a loan of $5 million against its building to cover its $3.5 million budget.
Though the 678 Mission Street building sold last summer for almost $6.7 million to a limited liability company affiliated with the San Francisco Baking Institute, it was not enough to save the organization from closing.
