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My suggestion would be to start from a reference librarian at the SF public library. You really do want to concentrate on non-fiction, since filling in the fiction areas will be so much easier. I'd start by looking for older history (or maybe "historical") books that might be old enough to evade copyright restrictions, or might just be old enough to collect interest in a digital edition.
An example of the type of book I'm thinking of would be "Land of Giants" by David Lavender. This is a history of the Northwest fur trade and thus early exploration and settlement of the Pacific Northwest. I read this in 8th grade, and based on that one book, knew more local history than the teacher (who was from out of state, but woefully under-prepared.) Sorry, I don't know equivalent work for CA. Journals of John C. Fremont maybe? Records of some of the Spanish explorers?
Get your reference librarian's hints, and use the library catalog to search for appropriate content. Might try looking at the bibliography from the print editions of local textbooks. Might try looking up Wikipedia articles just to find references to appropriate works.
A currently appropriate topic might be to get copies of the earlier editions of Mark Twain's autobiography - parts of it were published several times over the years, with more of the "good parts" included in each edition. Don't know how successful you'd be in getting the new one from this year, but it might be ok to just send students to the SF library for that.
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