Throughout the 19th and early 20th centuries, the Sacramento River Delta fairly bustled with paddlewheel steamboats traveling between the cities of Sacramento and San Francisco. Most of these iconic riverboats have been long forgotten; but the sister ships Delta King and Delta Queen, launched in 1927, are two survivors of that bygone era. For 50 years one of the most […]
Throughout the 1960s and 1970s, the freeway sign pointing towards Mare Island was yet another of the familiar signs I saw along the road to San Francisco’s Bay Area, but I never really thought about what sort of place it was or what went on there until much later. In this episode of California’s Gold Huell tours the naval shipyard […]
During the 1960s, every road trip I took with my family down Interstate 80 toward San Francisco was highlighted by a few familiar landmarks. One of these was the old “Mothball Fleet” anchored in Suisun Bay. At the time I didn’t really understand the significance of these ships, but I was always impressed by their bulky outlines far away across […]
This week I wanted to share an episode from California’s Golden Parks, another series that Huell Houser created. This is another occasion when Huell gets a chance to go a bit deeper and see things most visitors might never get a chance to see and hear stories that don’t often get told. In fact, as you’ll see in the episode, […]
When I visited Capitol Park in Sacramento, I was overwhelmed by all the different varieties of trees covering the grounds. I actually didn’t get a chance to see them all; so I have at least one good excuse for going back again. Luckily, this episode of California’s Gold stuck in my memory, and I spent a few minutes hunting up […]
Cee’s Black & White Photo Challenge last week was about All Things Farm Related, and that inspired me to share this fun episode of California’s Gold. I also just happened to hear a Capital Public Radio report the other day on the ways California vineyards are transitioning to new machine-based harvesting methods. It got me thinking about how technological change […]
Half the fun of this episode of California’s Gold is the mini road trips between stops, as Huell searches along the beautiful Lost Coast for the historic Cape Mendocino Lighthouse. He briefly revisits the small town of Petrolia, which you might remember from the episode I featured last week, California Firsts. He also discovers Honeydew, California, and is introduced to […]
You may have heard that oil wells are a Southern California thing, and the discovery of gold happened in the foothills of Northern California. Well, in this episode of California’s Gold we learn that just the opposite is true! The fact is that gold was first discovered on a quiet little rancho just north of Los Angeles; and the location […]
I’m a little embarassed to admit that after living my entire life in the Sacramento area, I had never actually visited the state capitol building until today. I became inspired to go explore it on Tuesday after watching this episode of California’s Gold, and I have to say I was not disappointed. In fact, I’m already looking forward to my […]