2012-01-01T01:01:00.000-08:00

California History Worth Remembering, Preserving, and Visiting

California may not be rich in British colonial history, but it is home to some really old things, the most prominent being the Spanish missions and presidios. The following attractions serve to highlight the state’s cultural history and maritime location. As author James Loewen would say, we’re here to discuss some things your old history textbooks overlooked. An asterisk indicates San Francisco Bay Area destination. We’d also like to point out the landmark status for historic sites: CHL means California Historical Landmark and NRHP for National Register of Historic Places. The national directory recognizes extant sites only whereas California’s register includes places that no longer exist.

The search functions at the national register’s official Web site (cr.nps.gov/nr/) don’t seem to work properly; you may have better luck with nationalregisterofhistoricplaces.com, which provides a straight listing by state and county. You’ll find all of California’s registered landmarks (over 1,030 as of 2004) at the state’s Office of Historic Preservation (ohp.parks.ca.gov); this site also has information on how to obtain landmark designation. Refer to our History Resources section for books on California landmarks.

Bay Area History Tour welcomes your comments. Send your e-mail to bayblog at the domain lycos.com. Please specify “Bayhistory” in your subject line when you e-mail your recommendations and corrections. Or you can click on Suggestion Box if your browser is set up to work with e-mail links.

When we refer to an attraction’s Web sites, we try to list the most relevant one first, which is not always the “official” site. Lest you run into dead links in the future, we have opted to provide third-party sites with no links. Instead of listing certain long and cryptic Web addresses, we give you directions to get to the desired pages. Since documents change addresses sometimes, you can always locate them again by limiting your search to a specific Web site. For example, specify:

“five views” site:cr.nps.gov

and you will be able to find this document’s location regardless of where National Park Service places it on its Web site in the future. The site operator works with the top three search engines from Google, Yahoo, and Microsoft. We have also made the decision to dispense with secondary details such as addresses, directions, hours, and fees because this information is already maintained on the Internet.

[Historical Missions and Temples]
[Military History]
[Vintage Adobes and Lighthouses]
[Cities, Neighborhoods, and Islands]
[More Historical Sites]
[Educating California]
[American Indian History]
[Gold Rush and Silicon Valley]
[Historic Mission Trail]
[Historical Settlements]
[History Resources]

[Our Mission and Call to Action]

If you cannot personally visit some of the historical sites described on these Web pages, do yourself a favor and watch “California’s Gold” (calgold.com/calgold/) and its spin-off shows on your local PBS station. It’s the next best thing to being there. These shows provide the only video records of fast-disappearing sites in some cases, not to mention the ones that are inaccessible to the general public. All California libraries should have copies of the shows’ videos. Another video source is KRON San Francisco’s long-running “Bay Area Backroads” (bayareabackroads.com). Check your TV listings.

Copyright © 2004-2012 Booyabay.blogspot.com. All rights reserved.