ABSTRACT
Fort Ross, the Russian-American Company settlement on the Sonoma coast, has been preserved as a California State Historic Park since its acquisition from the local ranching family of George Washington Call in 1903 by the California Landmarks League, and its subsequent donation to the State of California in 1906. The change in government in the early 1990s that converted the old Soviet Union to the Russian Federation has marked an ever greater period of interest and cooperation between the United States and Russia in the study of this piece of Russian colonial history. In conjunction with the celebration of the bicentenary of the founding of Fort Ross, this renewed fascination with the history of the Russians and Alaskans in California reached even greater heights. A conference held in San Francisco in 2011, called "Hidden Stories" and sponsored by the California State Parks Foundation, increased interest in the broader story of Russians in early nineteenth-century California.
