A witty, expansive narrative that reveals the real story of the people and places that makes up the Golden State. From the European conquest to today’s economic crisis, Californians have experienced tumultuous growth and painful conflicts. Like the grinding of tectonic plates that has produced the state’s very landscape, these encounters, disputes, and transformations have continuously made and remade California. California: On-the-Road History doesn’t relate the cleaned-up tale of the California dream that school textbooks and the tourism commission tell. Rather it presents the sometimes bitter, sometimes triumphant history behind the California myth. Included are recommended museums, state parks, and other attractions, alongside literary excerpts from local authors who give readers a sense of California in different eras.

This book is a step back into time and the history of California's Scenic Ridge Route. When it opened in 1915 it was hailed as the "Magnus Opus" of mountain highway engineering. By-passed by the Ridge Alternative in 1933, it was left to the elements and all but forgotten. In this book you will visit sites like Sandberg's famous Summit Hotel where you would have seen Cadillacs, Packards and Studebakers during the road's heyday; the former site of the opulent Hotel Lebec, playground for the world's finest; the Ridge Road House; the National Forest Inn; and Kelly's Half Way House. Motorists faced 697 curves when navigating this famous moutain highway. You will follow "Ridge Route Annie's" adventurous search for gold. Read how highwaymen relieved unsuspecting motorists of their valuables and the 1922 blizzard that stranded scores of motorists. All of this in addition to early history on north - south routes and how Los Angeles had to entice the Butterfield Stage and later the Southern Pacific Railroad in Los Angeles. While this book focuses on the 1915 Scenic Ridge Route, it also addresses the 1930 Ridge Alternative, (U.S. Highway 99) and the current I-5 Ridge Route Highway.

How could Northern California, the wealthiest and most politically progressive region in the United States, become one of the earliest epicenters of the foreclosure crisis? How could this region continuously reproduce racial poverty and reinvent segregation in old farm towns one hundred miles from the urban core? This is the story of the suburbanization of poverty, the failures of regional planning, urban sprawl, NIMBYism, and political fragmentation between middle class white environmentalists and communities of color. As Alex Schafran shows, the responsibility for this newly segregated geography lies in institutions from across the region, state, and political spectrum, even as the Bay Area has never managed to build common purpose around the making and remaking of its communities, cities, and towns. Schafran closes the book by presenting paths toward a new politics of planning and development that weave scattered fragments into a more equitable and functional whole.

An unprecedented book showcasing the California coast via the Pacific Coast Highway and beyond. As America stands to the rest of the world, so stands California to America—a shining promise of endless possibility. California is both dream and reality. Coastal California is for anyone who has felt the lure of a Pacific sunset. From the physical beauty of Monterey to the grandeur of Southern California, photographer Jake Rajs displays his skillful command of capturing the coastline and Pacific Ocean in every season and the land that is affected by it. Including such locations as Redwood National Park, Point Reyes National Seashore, Sausalito, Huntington Beach, Long Beach, and Pacific Palisades, Coastal California is sure to be the gift book of the year for those who feel the rush of the Pacific Coast Highway and those who just dream of it.

"In the north, it stops in the shadow of San Francisco's Golden Gate Bridge and towering redwood forests, in the south, it slips into the City of Angels. You can begin your trip at either end of the 656-mile (1,055-km) highway or anywhere in between. Skirting the California coastline, you will discover all that California has to offer, from the bustle and excitement of Los Angeles and the star-studded Hollywood Hills to the ultimate "City by the Bay," San Francisco. On the way, there is an overwhelming choice of where to stop, what to see and what to do: checkered winery fields, waterfalls and wildflower meadows; sky-kissing redwood forests; freshly caught seafood at every stop; beaches of sand or sparkling pebble, not to mention sea lions. Stop to watch for whales, to explore towns and historic sites; to tour elegant Santa Barbara, and the beaches and attractions of Carmel, Monterey, and Santa Cruz. The photographs, descriptions and detailed maps in this book are all you need to travel Highway 1 for as long and as far as your spirit of adventure takes you. [This book] presents the iconic road in stunning color, a vibrant testament to why California welcomes the most domestic visitors of all the states, and is consistently one of the top three states visited by international travelers. Each worthwhile stop or side trip is shown in multiple photographs, all with extended captions."--Dust jacket flaps.

"[A] gorgeously illustrated compendium."--Sunset This lavishly illustrated atlas takes readers off the beaten path and outside normal conceptions of California, revealing its myriad ecologies, topographies, and histories in exquisite maps and trail paintings. Based on decades of exploring the backcountry of the Golden State, artist-adventurer Obi Kaufmann blends science and art to illuminate the multifaceted array of living, connected systems like no book has done before. Kaufmann depicts layer after layer of the natural world, delighting in the grand scale and details alike. The effect is staggeringly beautiful: presented alongside California divvied into its fifty-eight counties, for example, we consider California made up of dancing tectonic plates, of watersheds, of wildflower gardens. Maps are enhanced by spirited illustrations of wildlife, keys that explain natural phenomena, and a clear-sighted but reverential text. Full of character and color, a bit larger than life, The California Field Atlas is the ultimate road trip companion and love letter to a place.