California

Plan all your California getaways with our Golden State catalog. Whip up the coast on the PCH to old San Francisco, where Gold Rush fever is slow to fade. Leave some flowers for Cecil B. DeMille and Johnny Ramone at Hollywood Forever Cemetery. Get a progress report on the receding waters of the Salton Sea and the expanding minds in Northridge. From the fertile fields of Nevada County to the Venice Beach Boardwalk, experience the largesse and diversity of California's history with our California history books. [View all California books]
7 products
Hollywood on the Santa Monica Beach
Hollywood on the Santa Monica Beach
Rincon Point
Rincon Point
Surfing in Santa Cruz
Surfing in Santa Cruz
Surfing in Huntington Beach
Surfing in Huntington Beach
Surfing in San Diego
Surfing in San Diego
Surfing Newport Beach:
Surfing Newport Beach:
Ocean Beach
Ocean Beach

Hollywood on the Santa Monica Beach

9781467160735

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Since pioneer filmmakers arrived on its shoreline in the early 20th century, the Santa Monica beach has been a popular location for the making of movies and television productions. Its enchanting beauty led studio moguls, producers, and celebrities to build beach houses there, creating what became known as "Hollywood's Playground." The sand and shore of the Santa Monica beach became a favored site for the likes of Charlie Chaplin, Marion Davies, William Randolph Hearst, and Cary Grant. It was on this beach that the Academy Awards were conceived, the movie The Wizard of Oz sprang forth, and a young Pres. John F. Kennedy stunned beachgoers with a surprise ocean swim without the protection of Secret Service agents. In 1962, the beach became the center of the universe as the site of President Kennedy's "Western White House," where the visitors included Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin, Sammy Davis Jr., Marilyn Monroe, and--famously--"anyone who was anyone."
Hollywood on the Santa Monica Beach

Rincon Point

9781467108706

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Rincon Point is renowned as the Queen of the Coast, one of the premier surfing spots in the world, but that is only a fragment of its rich history. Before the arrival of Europeans, it was a Chumash village called Shuku. In the 19th century, it was part of Rancho El Rincon, whose owners included a rich but illiterate Californio rancher, an English physician who made house calls by bicycle, and a Chilean pharmacist who dispensed drugs out of an old ship's cabin. It was the site of a scandalous love-triangle murder in the 1870s, a rickety highway on stilts in the 1910s, and a raunchy honky-tonk in the 1920s. Banditos, nudists, movie stars, long-boarders--they have all shaped Rincon Point, a place immortalized by novelists, poets, painters, photographers, and the Beach Boys.
Rincon Point

Surfing in Santa Cruz

9780738570761

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Santa Cruz is located on the northern tip of Monterey Bay on California's central coast. Surfing was first introduced to the U.S. mainland in Santa Cruz by three visiting Hawaiian princes in the late 1880s. Since those early days, the Santa Cruz surfing culture has blossomed into a thriving lifestyle. Many of the world's most highly regarded surfers hail from Santa Cruz. In fact, Santa Cruz, or "Surf City" as its known, has become a popular destination for surfing aficionados of all ages. Surfing in Santa Cruz is a concise historical overview of the diverse and colorful surfing culture inhabiting the area.
Surfing in Santa Cruz

Surfing in Huntington Beach

9781467102773

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Officially known as Surf City USA®, Huntington Beach is a surf town like no other. Ever since Hawaiian transplant George Freeth "walked on water" beside the famous Huntington Beach Pier in 1914, the city has had a storied relationship with surf culture that endures to this day. Combining a rough-and-tumble working-class spirit leftover from the city's epic oil boom with its role as a popular beach resort destination, Huntington Beach has produced some of surfing's most memorable personalities and moments. From legendary surfing heroes to long-standing competitions and titans of industry, these vintage photographs trace the evolution of this once small seaside settlement into a West Coast surf mecca, where surfing truly is a way of life.
Surfing in Huntington Beach

Surfing in San Diego

9780738547565

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San Diego County has nearly 75 miles of picturesque coastline on the mighty Pacific Ocean, and for decades, San Diego has boasted of producing some of the world's finest surfers. But here surfing is more
than a sport--it is a Southern California lifestyle--and as such has heavily influenced the beach towns throughout the county. Much research points to surfing having come to Southern California in 1907,
and it may have taken hold in San Diego as early as 1910. Join with us in this wonderful pictorial journey through San Diego's little-known surfing past.
Surfing in San Diego

Surfing Newport Beach:

9781609498405

$21.99 Save Liquid error (snippets/product-template line 248): Computation results in '-Infinity'%
Corona del Mar was once California's premier surfing spot, holding the sport's first Pacific Coast competition in 1928. Attempts to tame Corona and to make the Newport Beach harbor mouth safe for watercraft drastically altered board riding, destroying the great wave-making machine" of Corona and creating the surf giant of today known as the "Wedge." Read about Newport before World War II: experience the Great Rescue of 1925 by Duke Kahanamoku and others, the rum runners of Balboa and the evolution of Newport Bay. Pioneering surfers such as George Freeth, Tom Blake, the Vultee brothers and Pete Peterson helped make a name for the city in surf culture. Authors Claudine Burnett and her surfer husband, Paul, have delved deeply into the past, sharing stories that will give readers never-before-revealed facts not only about surfing but Newport Beach and Corona del Mar history as well."
Surfing Newport Beach:

Ocean Beach

9781467128025

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Water defines Ocean Beach by its unique location where the Pacific Ocean meets the mouth of the San Diego River, alongside Mission Bay, formerly known as False Bay, which connected to tidal marsh areas. The beach town's natural attractions and new prospects brought early settlers to Ocean Beach when it was established in 1887 by William "Billy" Carlson and Frank Huggins. Ocean Beach's landmass history is shaped and reshaped by major storms, wave and tidal surges, and droughts, which in turn transform the community's natural habitat, culture, and development. For example, the Ocean Beach Woman's Club's (OBWC) Flatiron Building, constructed on the shoreline, was destroyed by several storms from 1939 through 1941 and later removed, and the area where it once stood was turned into a park. The OBWC later moved its permanent headquarters away from the beach. The history and fabric of this unique ocean community is made up of an assortment of characters and spirited generations of individuals who have left their loving marks through their homes, gardens, businesses, stories, achievements, and community activities.
Ocean Beach