Journal of California and Great Basin Anthropology

The Early California Population Project is a database that has been developed by the Henry E. Huntington Library over the course of eight years. The database, which is now accessible online, makes available all of the information contained in the California mission registers, records that are of unique and vital importance to the study of California, the American Southwest, and colonial America. The vast potential of these records has in many ways remained unexploited, since they are scattered across California and are often too old and brittle to handle. Microfilm copies of the registers exist in archives but are of poor quality and often hard to locate. Lacking adequate staff and the resources to facilitate genealogical and historical research, libraries, archives, missions, and dioceses each year turn away countless individuals who are eager to study early California's Indian, Hispanic, and Anglo-American inhabitants. The Early California Population Project was created as a solution to the problem of access, and is a significant new resource for the study of California before 1850.