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...
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...
The Sweater Girl, Queen of the Silver Screen, Lanita, Nightclub Queen—Lana Turner was known by many nicknames after her rise to fame, most of which she detested. Her private life,...
In the past century, dreams have flourished in the deserts of California, fueled by gold, war, optimism and wealth, only to later be abandoned. Homes, mines, utopian societies, railroads, airports,...
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...
Grapes have been grown in the Temecula Valley since the mission days in the 1830s, but the development of the region as a renowned wine-producing area occurred centuries later. Temecula...
The Mendocino Coast is known for its breathtaking beauty. Jagged cliffs surround pristine beaches. Giant redwoods follow the coastline. It’s no surprise that many movies have been filmed here. Artists...
Quail Run Ranch, a place forgotten to time, sits hidden in the hills of Southern California. Although it looks sedate and unimposing, the very land it sits on has a...
Plenty of tales of heroism have been shared about the Second World War, but few illustrate the anxiety and injustices endured on U.S. soil. Dick is a fatherless boy and...
Echoing a sentiment that could be expressed by many Santa Cruz residents today, Sara White wrote this about Santa Cruz to a friend in 1896: “The country is so beautifully...
The settlement and development of Oakley is the story of a thriving California pioneer town. Nestled in California’s San Joaquin Delta, the area quickly became San Francisco’s easternmost frontier for...
Boneyard: SoCal’s Aircraft Graveyards at Night is a nocturnal love letter to the rarely seen aviation junkyards and derelict aircraft of the Southern California desert. Follow the author as he...
Randsburg, California, once a booming and bustling Mojave Desert town during the golden era of gold and silver mining, still lives on. At one time, this place was peopled with...
The San Francisco Bay Area is a beautiful region of California with diverse scenery, population, and history. Over the years, many businesses and institutions have come and gone. Sometimes these...
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...
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...
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,"...
