Omnibus: Coming of Age Out West in the Early 20th Century

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When Elizabeth Chambers was born in San Jose in 1900, half a century after the Gold Rush, there were fewer than one and a half million residents in California, nearly half of them in the San Francisco Bay Area. Today’s California, with nearly forty million residents, is a very different place. In 1900, electricity and indoor plumbing were replacing candles, gas lamps, and outdoor privies. The Central Pacific Railroad had shaped the state’s development, as towns sprang up around train routes; during her lifetime, the automobile would reshape the state’s development.

Omnibus is a portrait of my grandmother, descended from westward migrating pioneer Americans, who grew up in the Bay Area. This memoir was written for her three children, who knew her as a mother, to let them know about her childhood, and about the mothers and fathers from whom we are all descended.

Mark Farmer

Sebastopol, California