California s Wine Country, its rolling hills studded with ancient oaks and laced with vines. Tourists flock to the charming, historic towns in the Valley of the Moon, from Kenwood in the north to Schellville in the south. The town of Sonoma may be the birthplace of the State of California. Its central plaza, designed as a parade ground by Mexican general Mariano Vallejo and still ringed by mid-19th century buildings, was the site of the 1846 Bear Flag Revolt. Since 1823, when Mission San Francisco Solano, the last link in the long chain of California missions, was established here, to the...

Morgan Hill lies at the foot of stately El Toro Mountain in southern Santa Clara Valley. Martin Murphy Sr. settled here in 1845, and only a generation later the Murphy family had managed to acquire 70,000 acres. Martin s son Daniel owned over a million acres in the western United States when his only daughter, the beautiful Diana, secretly married Hiram Morgan Hill in 1882. Hiram and Diana inherited part of the original ranch, where they built their lovely Villa Mira Monte. Although the Southern Pacific Railroad tried to name the nearby depot Huntington, passengers always asked to stop at...

It s hard to imagine cows walking up Third Street or sheep on Innes Avenue, yet a large portion of the area known today as Bayview Hunters Point was once extremely rural. Called Butchertown by locals, the neighborhood was a source of much of San Francisco s food. Over the years, it evolved into an interesting combination of residences, businesses, and industries. The area was home to slaughterhouses, tanneries, tallow works, a saddle shop, the Bethlehem Steel Corporation, numerous boat yards including the legendary Allemand Brothers Boat Repair, and the U.S. Naval operations at Hunters Point...

Columbia started life in 1850 when Dr. Thaddeus Hildreth and his brother set up the camp known as Hildreth s Diggins in the lovely Sierra foothills. More than 150 tumultuous years later, Columbia is an amazing example of a true gold rush community frozen in time. But this is no ghost town either the downtown area, with its plank sidewalks, ornate hotels, and saloons, is preserved as a California State Historic Park. The town today is a living, breathing, modern community at peace with both its past and its present. It s easy to imagine characters from the Old West swaggering through these...

A destination for beachgoers for a century, the Manhattan Beach Pier extends 928 feet out over the Pacific with the octagonal Roundhouse situated at the far end. Both the pier and Roundhouse have, through the years, come to symbolize this affluent seaside community. The concept for a pier at its present location can be traced to 1898, when the Potencia Townsite Company acquired the land. The first survey map, recorded in 1902, clearly labeled the object at the end of Center Street (now Manhattan Beach Boulevard) as the Old Iron Pier. The pier has been storm-ravaged, rebuilt, and restored...

Art Deco made its formal appearance in Paris at the 1925 L Exposition Internationale des Arts Decoratifs et Industriels Modernes, a showcase for art, architecture, and design that promoted progress, modernity, and the present. The greatest export from this exhibition was a style that has since been recognized as one of the great design movements of the 20th century. Art Deco s growing recognition coincided with the growth of Los Angeles as the entertainment capital. Between world wars, the city s architecture sprouted characteristic signs of Art Deco: the interplay of vertical and horizontal...

The Washoe Indians called it Tah-ve, an unfathomable liquid sapphire set in a 500 square-mile watershed of alpine snow and ice. Too deep and vast to freeze, Lake Tahoe s waters have, over time, reflected pristine forests, barren hillsides littered with slash and sawdust, managed restoration, and the glow of neon casino marquees. Its spectacular natural landscape, shared by both California and Nevada, is more designed than people realize. Humans transformed most of the old trees into mine shafts and cities. When the railroad, and later the automobile, domesticated the lake, putting it within...

The Mother Road hauled it all, traversing the American West from Chicago to Santa Monica Beach, the last 350 miles through Southern California. For settlers, Depression-era Okies and Arkies, and post World War II families bound for suburbia, Route 66 was a migration funnel for generations. Wending through the mountains and badlands of San Bernardino County into Los Angeles County, Route 66 became a state of mind and a catchphrase for travelers everywhere, especially after singer Bobby Troupe popularized the hit song (Get Your Kicks on) Route 66 and actors Martin Milner and George Maharis hit...

Orcas Island, the largest of the 172 islands in San Juan County, lies in the Salish Sea north of Puget Sound. Known as the "Gem of the San Juans" for her shimmering emerald hills bounded by 125 miles of rocky, tree-lined shore, Orcas was home to countless generations of Native Americans before the arrival of its first white settlers, formerly Hudson's Bay men who had hunted on the island, in the late 1850s. An international boundary dispute, popularly known as the Pig War, prevented early pioneers from settling land claims until the dispute was resolved by the German kaiser in 1872....

In 1845, Benjamin Davis Wilson--the future first mayor of Los Angeles and the grandfather of Gen. George S. Patton--led a 20-man posse into the San Bernardino Mountains in search of Native American raiding parties that had been attacking Riverside ranches. But what they found in a particular high-altitude valley were, instead, large and furry. Wilson's men soon roped 11 bears, bringing the creatures into camp, and the valley the Serrano Indians knew as Yuhaviat, or "Pine Place," received a new map designation. Wilson named a nearby body of water Big Bear Lake (now Baldwin Lake, with the...