The Shinn House Museum collects, preserves, exhibits, and shares materials related to the Shinn family and relatives. James and Lucy Shinn arrived in the San Francisco Bay Area in 1856. In 1873 they established a nursery in Southern Alameda County which operated until 1887. The Shinns operated a fruit ranch until the 1950s. The last four acres became a park in the city of Fremont in the 1960s.
The Shinns, their extended family, and descendants were involved in many fields across the state: mining, horticulture, agriculture, botany, forestry, lumbering, shipping, shop-keeping, pharmacy, psychology, education, art, writing, publishing, and military.
The Shinn House Museum's digital collection at California Revealed consists of still images and texts from the 1870s through 1887. The collection primarily consists of letters and photographs of the Shinn family members who ran Shinn's Nursery, one of the first nurseries in California, on the property from the 1870s to 1887.