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Greetings from Camp Cady, California! Armistice Day (later to be named Veterans Day) is still about 60 years away, but here we are, taking you back in time to the loneliest, meanest U.S. Army outpost in the United States, a year before the Civil War went hot. It is a day in 1860, and
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Cabazon Dinosaurs: Tripping the Light Jurassic
The creation of the Cabazon dinosaurs began in the 1960s by Knott’s Berry Farm sculptor and portrait artist Claude K. Bell (1897–1988) to attract customers to his Wheel Inn Restaurant, which opened in 1958 and closed in 2013.
“The dinosaurs aren’t dead and they never will be,” Bell’s daughter, Wendy Murphy of Costa Mesa, said. “He wanted to build a monument that would withstand the sands of time, and he has done that…”
It takes a LOT to get us to go to the city.
The Reel Cowboys honors those who resonate the qualities of the Silver Spur to deserving individuals and organizations. Reel Cowboys works to preserve Hollywood’s history by honoring Western film and television stars.
The 21st Annual Silver Spurs Award Show took place recently at the Sportsmen’s Lodge in Studio City, California. Luminaries such as Patrick Wayne, Dawn Wells, Johnny Crawford, Billy Zane, R.L. Tolbert, Robert Carradine received awards.
One of our favorites being Johnny Crawford, of course. We even made a short video of Johnny accepting this prestigious award from Steve Connors, son of Chuck Connors…
No one can deny that Southern California’s 2018 Monsoon Season has been one heck of a lalapalooza. When retired school principal Tom left his home in the high desert on July 12, 2018 to visit his adult son at his other home in Big Bear City, he had no idea he would soon face nature’s fury on State Highway 18.
It was cloudy, especially towards the top of the mountain, but Tom wasn’t concerned as it wasn’t raining yet where he was. However, a stationary thunderstorm cell was dumping over Big Bear City and Baldwin Lake for over an hour.
After Tom passed by the Mitsubishi Cement Plant on his right at about 12:30 p.m. and followed his well-beaten path, he was suddenly confronted with an astonishing sight. A surreal wall of mud and debris careened down the road toward him…
Corn Spring: Gateway to Petroglyphs, Miner’s Cabin and More!
Corn Spring is in the Chuckwalla Mountains of the Colorado Desert seventeen miles southeast of Desert Center. Native Americans relied on the springs, and they engraved many petroglyphs on the rocks in the area.
The Chemehuevi, Desert Cahuilla and Yuma bands frequented the spring and carved elaborate petroglyphs in the nearby rocks. Some of the oldest rock art is over 10,000 years old…
Bluff Lake Reserve: A Road Less Taken
Bluff Lake is a reservoir located just 3.8 miles from Big Bear Lake, California. Located at 7,600 feet, Bluff Lake Reserve has towering pines, a 20-acre lake and meadow, and majestic outcrops of quartz monzonite.
Once a stopover resort for pack burro trains and stages bringing tourists to Big Bear in the late 1800s, it is home to several species of rare plants and is a thriving animal habitat…
There are currently 649 Cracker Barrel locations across the United States. But California was not one of them.
If you lived in California’s high desert, and got a craving for Cracker Barrel’s Southern specialties, you had to plan for a long road trip. The closest ones were in Kingman and in Yuma, Arizona, both respectfully over 200 miles away.
We know, because we’ve done it. More than once. Until now…
When Roy’s Hotel is not ground zero for multiple thriller film shoots or welcoming the throngs of dusty tourists getting their fair share of the Route 66 experience, the quiet of Amboy settles in all around.
The solitude is so profound it’s almost deafening. The peace of the ghost town with its long-abandoned St. Raymond Church and nearby pioneer graveyard consumes you. It invites you to explore and renew.
Give yourself time to absorb this little time capsule of a town and its cemetery just a bit east on Route 66…
Deputy Will Smithson and men like Ed Silver lived in Daggett at a time when the west was supposed to have been tamed, when it had become civilized, you might say.
Unfortunately, the news of civilization seemed to have bypassed Daggett, and to locals and drifters alike, the Wild West was doing just fine the way it was, thank you.
Justice was going to be meted out in the tradition of the west if the angry mob caught up with Silver.
A rope and a tree waited for the former Buffalo Soldier, unless the sheriff could catch him first…
Doble, California: The Boom Town That Refused to Live
Take a short walk on this quiet mountain trail, surrounded by pines and open spaces, and you see it up ahead. White crosses in a semi-circle, around the gnarled truck of a tree. So, what have you stumbled into here? Well, give us a minute or two and we’ll tell you about the mountain town that refused to live.
Here, just above the highway, are about 25 marked graves in the little cemetery that served the town mining town known as Doble. The names of those interred here, except for one child, are a mystery. crosses were placed here by Boy Scouts during the 1940s.
Before it was Doble, the place was known as “Bairdstown.” It came to life after the brothers Carter filed four gold mining claims in 1873, on the mountainside that now wears their name. The utterance of the word ‘gold’ was usually all it took, and the rush was on, probably before the brothers finished unpacking their picks and shovels…