Spring hasn’t actually arrived in our neck of the woods yet, but on a day like we had yesterday, it seems very close. I hiked in the area around Horseshoe Bar on Folsom Lake, enjoying the blue sky and the cool wind that kept the noontime sun from feeling too overpowering.
When I was in elementary school back in the early 1970s, our lessons on California history skimmed lightly over the story of the Spanish missions, unlike the more in-depth study available to later students. I did visit the gold discovery site at Coloma and Sutter’s Fort with my class, but a field trip to the nearest mission would have meant […]
There are plenty of examples of negative space to be found on the dry lakebed at Folsom. My favorite ones, of course, relate to the remnants of the North Fork Ditch and the empty spaces it has left behind.
This is not the first time I’ve featured an episode of California’s Gold related to Manzanar, but I can’t help feeling that this piece of California history remains timely and important, with some serious lessons for all of us. I’m currently reading the memoir Farewell to Manzanar by Jeanne Wakatsuki Houston and James D. Houston (for the first time, in […]
I’ve been on loads of fishing trips since I met the Big Guy 30-plus years ago, but I never imagined my mom and dad going salmon fishing until I came across these slides from 1950. My mom had relatives, the Ramsdells, living in Port Townsend, and they had what looks to me like a wonderful outing on Al Ramsdell’s boat.
Back in January I showed you some vintage family photos from San Diego that included the steam ferryboat Berkeley. I recalled seeing this boat in an episode of California’s Gold, and I was surprised to realize I had never featured it on my blog. So this week, I’m correcting that oversight! You may notice the mention of another San Francisco […]
Here is a random collection of things that caught my eye over three separate visits to the same area of Folsom Lake, along the North Fork near the Narrows.
I’m sure that one reason I find the North Fork Ditch remnants at Folsom Lake so fascinating is that their history goes all the way back to the mid 1850s. (Ditches were also constructed around the same period along both sides of the South Fork, but I’ve never seen the remains of these.) I’ve shot photos of bits and pieces […]
A few days ago I posted a photo I shot at Folsom Lake showing a high curved rock wall. I took my initial pictures from a distance and didn’t have a chance to explore the wall more closely — but when I got home and started looking at the area on Google maps, something odd caught my attention. The screenshot […]