Before there was a city of Fremont, there was the town of Irvington, and earlier still a busy crossroads called Washington Corners. Fields of grain once spilled over an open landscape, spurring production here of the first wheat harvesters in California. After local landowners built the Washington College of Science and Industry in the 1870s, they renamed its host town Irvington. By 1890, it boasted the largest, most advanced winery in the state and had earned the title, "Beautiful Irvington," home of gracious estates, apricot orchards, baseball, and first-class, high-bred trotters. Cows from...

Beautiful Niles Canyon in Fremont is a chosen spot. Jose de Jesus Vallejo chose it for the first mill town in Alta California, Joaquin Murieta slept here, and Leland Stanford chose it in 1869 for the last leg of the transcontinental railroad, the true "last spike" of the line linking the Atlantic to the Pacific. The home of the largest nursery in the West, Niles could also boast the first gravel mines in California and fine Art Deco tile production. In 1912 world famous Essanay Studios chose the oak-studded hills of Niles Canyon as the location for some of the most famous silent films of all...