Gateway to Alta California

Gateway to Alta California PDF

Author: Harry W. Crosby

Publisher:

Published: 2003

Total Pages: 254

ISBN-13:

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The first time -- plus pertinent information on their backgrounds and future lives (including those who continued on in July of 1769 with Gaspar de Portola, seeking the port of Monterey). Book jacket.

Antigua California

Antigua California PDF

Author: Harry W. Crosby

Publisher: UNM Press

Published: 1994

Total Pages: 608

ISBN-13: 9780826314956

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This Spanish Borderlands classic recounts Jesuit colonization of the Old California, the peninsula now known as Baja California.

San Diego

San Diego PDF

Author: Iris Wilson Engstrand

Publisher: Sunbelt Publications, Inc.

Published: 2005

Total Pages: 316

ISBN-13: 9780932653727

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A comprehensive history of San Diego from the time of the indigenous people to the controversial mayoral election of 2004. Chapters cover the Spanish, Mexican, Victorian, WWI and WWII eras, and the post-war boom. Includes a 25-page chronology of events, plus bibliography and index.

Californio Portraits

Californio Portraits PDF

Author: Harry W. Crosby

Publisher: University of Oklahoma Press

Published: 2015-10-08

Total Pages: 251

ISBN-13: 0806152583

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First published in 1981, Harry W. Crosby’s Last of the Californios captured the history of the mountain people of Baja California during a critical moment of transition, when the 1974 completion of the transpeninsular highway increased the Californios’ contact with the outside world and profoundly affected their traditional way of life. This updated and expanded version of that now-classic work incorporates the fruits of further investigation into the Californios’ lives and history, by Crosby and others. The result is the most thorough and extensive account of the people of Baja California from the time of the peninsula’s occupation by the Spaniards in the seventeenth century to the present. Californio Portraits combines history and sociology to provide an in-depth view of a culture that has managed to survive dramatic changes. Having ridden hundreds of miles by mule to visit with various Californio families and gain their confidence, Crosby provides an unparalleled view of their unique lifestyle. Beginning with the story of the first Californios—the eighteenth-century presidio soldiers who accompanied Jesuit missionaries, followed by miners and independent ranchers—Crosby provides personal accounts of their modern-day descendants and the ways they build their homes, prepare their food, find their water, and tan their cowhides. Augmenting his previous work with significant new sources, material, and photographs, he draws a richly textured portrait of a people unlike any other—families cultivating skills from an earlier century, living in semi-isolation for decades and, even after completion of the transpeninsular highway, reachable only by mule and horseback. Combining a revised and updated text with a new foreword, introduction, and updated bibliography, Californio Portraits offers the clearest and most detailed portrait possible of a fascinating, unique, and inaccessible people and culture.

Alta California

Alta California PDF

Author: Nick Neely

Publisher: Catapult

Published: 2020-06-09

Total Pages: 433

ISBN-13: 164009444X

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This national bestseller chronicles one man’s 650–mile trek on foot from San Diego to San Francisco—sure to appeal to readers of naturalist works like Edward Abbey’s Desert Solitaire, Paul Thoreau’s On the Plain of Snakes, and Mark Kenyon’s That Wild Country. In 1769, an expedition led by Gaspar de Portolá sketched a route that would become, in part, the famous El Camino Real. It laid the foundation for the Golden State we know today, a place that remains as mythical and captivating as any in the world. Despite having grown up in California, Nick Neely realized how little he knew about its history. So he set off to learn it bodily, with just a backpack and a tent, trekking through stretches of California both lonely and urban. For twelve weeks, following the journal of expedition missionary Father Juan Crespí, Neely kept pace with the ghosts of the Portolá expedition—nearly 250 years later. Weaving natural and human history, Alta California relives Neely’s adventure, while telling a story of Native cultures and the Spanish missions that soon devastated them, and exploring the evolution of California and its landscape. The result is a collage of historical and contemporary California, of lyricism and pedestrian serendipity, and of the biggest issues facing California today—water, agriculture, oil and gas, immigration, and development—all of it one step at a time. “Rich in little–known history . . . Up the Santa Barbara and San Luis Obispo county coasts, then inland into the Salinas Valley to Monterey Bay. Somewhere along here, the owl moons and woodpeckers do something you might not have thought possible in 2019: they make you fall, or refall, in love with California, ungrudgingly, wildfires and insane housing prices and all . . . What a journey, you think. What a state." —San Francisco Chronicle

Adventure Guide to the Alps

Adventure Guide to the Alps PDF

Author: Krista Dana

Publisher: Hunter Publishing, Inc

Published: 2004-03

Total Pages: 476

ISBN-13: 9781588433916

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Annotation Switzerland, Germany, Italy, France, Austria -- the Alps extend through them all and this guide shows you how to experience their excitement and beauty. A native of the German Alps, the author explores the history, flora, fauna, people and culture, foods, festivals, adventures. Cortina, St. Moritz, Innsbruck, Chamonix, Milan, Zermatt, Intertaken and Venice are just a few of the magical spots you will visit.

San Ysidro and The Tijuana River Valley

San Ysidro and The Tijuana River Valley PDF

Author: Barbara Zaragoza

Publisher: Arcadia Publishing

Published: 2014

Total Pages: 128

ISBN-13: 1467131881

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In 1851, surveyors placed a marble obelisk on a mesa overlooking the Pacific Ocean, which demarcated the United States-Mexico boundary line. Tourists flocked to the region alongside land speculators who envisioned upscale hotels, resorts, and spas. Two decades later, an East Coast journalist, William Smythe, established a utopian agricultural colony in what is today San Ysidro. Tourists began to cross the border in droves when Tijuana earned the reputation as "vice city." Racetrack, saloon, and gambling house employees settled in San Ysidro, while ranchers in the Tijuana River Valley bred horses for the racetracks. Dairy and vegetable farmers also moved in, taking advantage of the year-round mild weather. By the 1970s, suburban development and greater restrictions to the flow of people at the border meant the area became a predominantly Spanish-speaking community. The Port of Entry at San Ysidro also became the largest in the world, accommodating over 47 million people annually.

Quest for Flight

Quest for Flight PDF

Author: Gary B. Fogel

Publisher: University of Oklahoma Press

Published: 2012-10-11

Total Pages: 258

ISBN-13: 0806187816

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The Wright brothers have long received the lion’s share of credit for inventing the airplane. But a California scientist succeeded in flying gliders twenty years before the Wright’s powered flights at Kitty Hawk in 1903. Quest for Flight reveals the amazing accomplishments of John J. Montgomery, a prolific inventor who piloted the glider he designed in 1883 in the first controlled flights of a heavier-than-air craft in the Western Hemisphere. Re-examining the history of American aviation, Craig S. Harwood and Gary B. Fogel present the story of human efforts to take to the skies. They show that history’s nearly exclusive focus on two brothers resulted from a lengthy public campaign the Wrights waged to profit from their aeroplane patent and create a monopoly in aviation. Countering the aspersions cast on Montgomery and his work, Harwood and Fogel build a solidly documented case for Montgomery’s pioneering role in aeronautical innovation. As a scientist researching the laws of flight, Montgomery invented basic methods of aircraft control and stability, refined his theories in aerodynamics over decades of research, and brought widespread attention to aviation by staging public demonstrations of his gliders. After his first flights near San Diego in the 1880s, his pursuit continued through a series of glider designs. These experiments culminated in 1905 with controlled flights in Northern California using tandem-wing Montgomery gliders launched from balloons. These flights reached the highest altitudes yet attained, demonstrated the effectiveness of Montgomery’s designs, and helped change society’s attitude toward what was considered “the impossible art” of aerial navigation. Inventors and aviators working west of the Mississippi at the turn of the twentieth century have not received the recognition they deserve. Harwood and Fogel place Montgomery’s story and his exploits in the broader context of western aviation and science, shedding new light on the reasons that California was the epicenter of the American aviation industry from the very beginning.