Photo Essay: Off the Shore of Avalon, A Cove for Lovers and Tropical Fish

California's Catalina Island may offer more than 60 miles of coastline—but among its most popular and secluded beaches is Lover's Cove, located between Avalon Bay and Pebbly Beach. 

The rocky shore off Pebbly Beach Road near the rock formation known as Abalone Point leads you to the Lover's Cove State Marine Conservation Area, a protected ocean habitat where sportfishing is prohibited.

Anaheim: Where Orange County's Oldest City Got Started (Nearly 100 Years Before Mickey Mouse Moved In)

In 1857, Anaheim became the second-oldest colony experiment in California—nearly a century before the arrival of Disneyland. 

Named "Ana" for the Santa Ana River and "heim" after the German word for home, this "Home by the Santa Ana River" was originally founded  by a collective of 50 German families who had formed the Los Angeles Vineyard Society.

Although you might associate such a German community with biergartens, these German immigrants established Anaheim with 50 vineyard lots, 20 acres each, on 1,165 acres of the former Rancho San Juan Cajón de Santa Ana. They hoped to find wealth through wine, planting primarily Mission grapes in an attempt to create the largest vineyard in the world—despite being miles from markets, seaports, and railroad depots (at least until 1875).

And they succeeded, reigning for a time as the greatest wine-producing district in California, until 1885 when a blight wiped out their wine grapes. 

That's when they quickly shifted their attention to other agricultural crops, like Valencia oranges and walnuts.

Anaheim is now the oldest town in Orange County (though it was LA County back when it was founded). And much of its history has been forgotten, or at least eclipsed, by haunted mansions, intergalactic adventures, and the smell of freshly baked churros. 

But there are still traces of it to be found—if you know where to look.

 

Photo Essay: Mt. Ada on Catalina Island, The Other Wrigley Mansion

Chewing gum magnate William Wrigley Jr. did most of his candy business out of Chicago—but he liked Southern California so much, he bought the island of Catalina in 1911 and spent his summers in the city of Avalon, Los Angeles County, California. 

Postcard by Western Publishing & Novelty Co., Los Angeles (via University of North Texas Libraries)

Photo Essay: The Steepest Narrow-Gauge Railroad (With the Tightest Curves) Survives Among the Redwoods in the Santa Cruz Mountains

It had been almost a year since I'd ridden the Sugar Pine Yosemite Railroad in Sierra National Forest (and gotten smoked out of the area by local wildfires)—and it had come time for me to ride the rails once again. 

  

covered bridge (one of the shortest in the U.S,), built 1969

I'd planned a trip up to San Jose to tour Winchester Mystery House (blog post forthcoming) and had decided to drive the long way back home—mostly so I could ride the Roaring Camp Railroad on an antique train through the redwood forest of the Santa Cruz Mountains.

Photo Essay: A Sanctioned Visit Into the Off-Limits Sanctuary of Forest Lawn's Great Mausoleum

I recently posted about the incredible stained glass collection of Forest Lawn Memorial Park's Glendale location—but the truth is, I was really only scratching the surface. 

Gladiola Archway

Many of its most significant stained glass windows are inside the Great Mausoleum—which celebrated its centennial in 2020 and deserves a post entirely dedicated to it. 

Photo Essay: A Southern Sea Otter Safari in Monterey Bay

I don't remember how long ago it was when someone first told me about Elkhorn Slough as a destination for sea otters—only that it was sometime before I made it to the otter viewing spot in Morro Bay in 2019. 

Leave it to me to make smalltalk about otters with strangers. 

But when I was mapping out my trip to San Jose last weekend, I noticed that if I took the long way—hugging the coast instead of staying on an inland freeway—I could convince myself that this otter destination in Monterey Bay was on the way home.

   

Photo Essay: Dormant, Ignored San Jose Carousel Waits Patiently For Riders to Return

I've visited a handful of ill-fated carousels in my day—ones that are in disrepair or threatened with demolition and have survived fire and years in storage. 

 

Photo Essay: S.S. Palo Alto, the Concrete Oil Tanker-Turned-Party Ship That's Being Overtaken by the Pacific Ocean

"The Cement Ship"—formerly known simply as "The Ship"—has become a symbol of the unincorporated town of Aptos, California (in Santa Cruz County) and its Seacliff State Beach in the 90+ years since it first arrived. 

It's actually a misnomer, because the ship isn't made of cement—but steel-reinforced concrete (a.k.a. ferroconcrete), which the WWI-era Emergency Fleet Corporation deemed necessary for a small handful of ships built for the war effort during a shortage of both steel and lumber circa 1917. 

      circa 1920, Oakland (Photo: Naval History and Heritage Command, Catalog No. NH 799, Public Domain)

Only problem was that the 420-foot oil tanker, built by the San Francisco Shipbuilding Company at the U.S. Naval Shipyard in Oakland, wasn't finished and ready to launch until 1919—and by then, the war was already over.

 

And now, 102 years later, that ship—the S.S. Palo Alto—is falling apart before our very eyes. 

Photo Essay: Where Robots Tell the Story of Old California and Steinbeck's Cannery Row (Updated for 2024—Closed)

[Last updated 12/23/24 12:47 PM PT—I just found out that this place permanently closed in 2022. What a loss.]

Honestly, I hadn't thought much about John Steinbeck since I read Of Mice and Men and The Grapes of Wrath and saw East of Eden as a teenager. 

 

I didn't know anything about the time he spent in Monterey, California at Cannery Row, yet I still felt drawn to the "Spirit of Monterey" wax museum that's often referred to by his name.   

Photo Essay: L.A.'s Beaux Arts Library, Built of Bricks and Funded By a Copper Fortune

The William Andrews Clark Memorial Library in the West Adams neighborhood of Los Angeles was one of those places I didn't know I wanted to go to until it was closed and I couldn't go. 

I think I first heard about it when it was undergoing a restoration (and earthquake retrofitting), sometime between 2015 and 2017. I kept my eye on it—and finally managed to take a tour in 2018. 

L-R Observatory, library (Photo: Security Pacific National Bank Collection, via LAPL)