The Reader has started this series of its best stories from the past 52 years — 2600 cover stories and some remarkable interior features — to help make up for the loss of its physical …
October 8, 2025
Barbara Palmer helped with the indexing of much of the Reader archives. She wrote history features for the paper.
Articles by Barbara Palmer
Pioneer woman Anne Sandrock killed in Mission Valley
San Diego wasn't so bad in the 1800s
The Little World That Almost Was“I was dressed in my ‘Little Lord Fauntleroy’ suit, and playing with K.T.’s dog (Theosophists are fond of using their leader’s initials). Suddenly, I looked up and said ‘I know …
October 6, 2025
San Diego blacks: what if I'd been white?
A whole different story if I'd been white Golden Age Garden Apartments (740 South 36th Street), built in 1983, has 76 apartments on its four floors. Requirements for obtaining an apartment here are that one …
January 20, 2024
Bin Laden brother runs tulip business from San Diego
Did Bin Laden's Brother Live a Secret Life in San Diego?What was Binladen, now 35, heir to a multibillion-dollar Middle Eastern fortune based on construction and Saudi oil, doing in San Diego? And why would …
September 10, 2023
Spreckels and the train over Carrizo Gorge, Ike and S.D. Country Club
140-Mile Mistake Ritz calls the Chinese the railroad’s “unsung heroes,” but new evidence suggests that labor problems were perhaps the major reason why the railroad took so long to be built. The route of the …
January 17, 2022
Santee's Creation Museum, the nuns behind Mercy Hospital
A Little Bit East of Eden There are also sharp disputes about Noah's Ark within the Creationist movement. Some years ago, in the ICR museum, I helped John Morris, their principal ark investigator, look for …
December 26, 2021
San Diego's madame Karen Wilkening, Metabolife's Mike Ellis and Mike Blevins
My Own True Story One morning, Hercules had left for work around 6:30 and I was still asleep, there was a knock on the door. I opened the door only about a half an inch. …
December 20, 2021
Digging up your San Diego family Who was Pio Pico? Life at the Presidio
How to Do Genealogical Research in SD “On July 1, 1769, soon after the arrival of Father Serra, burials began in consecrated ground on Presidio Hill.... Even though people began moving off Presidio Hill and …
November 22, 2021
Stingaree's red-light rules, early Horton Plaza, Lomaland
Murder in Mission Valley There was a history of immigrants to the area penning Indians up in reservations after throwing them off Mission lands. Indians tried to regain their lands, but they were often unable …
October 23, 2021