Howard Hughes was an industrialist, aviator, and eccentric, but he was also the most important movie producer during the golden age of Hollywood. At a time when filmmaking was tightly...
For well over a century, San Diego has been at the forefront of air and space innovation, development, and exploration. From the first flights by John J. Montgomery in 1883...
Some of the richest gold strikes in California history were found in the areas of Randsburg and Johannesburg, located in the Mojave Desert section of Kern County. The desert is...
This book is a photographic essay on the history of Pico Boulevard in Los Angeles, highlighting continuity and changes from the late nineteenth century into the twenty-first through the prism...
Judge Richard Harvey Chambers served on the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit from his appointment in 1954 to his death in 1994. Serving for seventeen years...
In 1880, San Diego was a sleepy, dusty, western border town of about 2,500 souls. Today, it is a modern, world-class city with a greater metropolitan area population of more...
This book outlines the history of both Long Beach and its hospitals. Few other California cities can boast of their efforts to keep the public healthy as can Long Beach....
American Prisoner of War Camps in Northern California describes the impact of the large number of prisoners of war on the population of Northern California, as well as the impact...
Driving through Northern California, you will find sprawling military bases, immense wineries, gold mining towns, and amusement parks all lying abandoned. The combination of different people and industries this part...
Los Angeles is one of the biggest cities in the world, but is incongruously a ten-minute drive from a vast impenetrable mountain wilderness, the Angeles National Forest. This 700,000-acre forest...
Founded as a college community in 1887, Pacific Beach was a rural suburb of San Diego during the first part of the twentieth century. WWII brought a five-fold increase in...
American Prisoner of War Camps in Southern California describes the impact of the large number of prisoners of war on the population of Southern California, as well as the impact...
From prospectors' haunts in old ghost towns dating back to the Gold Rush, to the now-almost-deserted roadside towns of Route 66, the history of Southern California lives on through its...
Over one hundred years ago, volunteer firemen sold a book, titled Santa Monica Fire Department, Souvenir Book of Santa Monica, 1902, door to door. Legend has it that the newly-established...
In November of 1989, as workers were finishing their repairs to the quake damaged section of the Oakland-San Francisco Bay Bridge, an 18-inch metal sculpture of a troll was smuggled...
Mountains and Molehills is essential reading for anyone wishing to build a mental picture of San Francisco and the Sacramento areas during the period of the Gold Rush from 1850...
The discovery of gold on the magical date of January 24, 1848, when James Marshall discovered gold at Sutter's Mill near Coloma, started a rush that was unprecedented in all...
The Crescenta Valley is a typical suburb of the metropolis of Los Angeles, containing residential neighborhoods nestled in chaparral-covered hills. But hidden in these typical neighborhoods are remnants of an...
It was a sailor's dream: more than 100 bars, casinos and whorehouses, just a short boat ride across the Napa River that separated the sprawling Mare Island Naval Shipyard from...
On May 21, 1927 the Carquinez Bridge opened to traffic between Crockett and Vallejo, California. Just a few miles north of San Francisco, the Carquinez Bridge was the longest highway...
California's sawmill and railroad industries grew up together, each at least partially depending upon the other for survival. However, not all of the Golden State's sawmills lay upon the routes...
The Tenderloin District of San Francisco Through Time is a brief history of a neighborhood known to early San Franciscans as St. Ann’s Valley. The story of this once-placid piece...
This book was inspired by San Rafael Illustrated & Described, a rare promotional brochure published by W. W. Elliott & Co. in 1884. The brochure's purpose was to attract new...
Pinole is a small city with a very big history. Pinole holds the unique distinction of having the oldest name in Contra Costa County. The area's first fast food, "pinolli,"...
Professional and amateur photographers have captured images of Lake Tahoe, California and Nevada, since the invention of the camera. In this photographic journal, we experience the transformation of Lake Tahoe...
Idyllwild, California, is an extraordinary mountain village. On weekends and holidays, it hosts a flood of visitors. Many are drawn by its reputation as an arts community; more come simply...
Lancaster, California Through Time enables the reader to explore the community's architectural legacy, which is constantly changing; although many of its earliest structures have disappeared or exist in dilapidated remains,...
San Francisco's first cable car line opened in 1873. The successful development of the electric streetcar by Frank Sprague in 1888 plus the 1906 San Francisco earthquake resulted in the...
