Roads & Routes

From its founding, K Street mirrored the entrepreneurial development of California's capital city. Initially the storefront for gold seekers trampling a path between the Sacramento River and Sutter's Fort, K Street soon became the hub of California's first stagecoach, railroad and riverboat networks. Over the years, K Street boasted saloons and vaudeville houses, the neon buzz of jazz clubs and movie theaters, as well as the finest hotels and department stores. For the postwar generation, K Street was synonymous with Christmas shopping and teenage cruising. From the Golden Eagle and Buddy Baer's to Weinstock's and the Alhambra Theatre, join historian William Burg as he chronicles the legacy of Sacramento's K Street, once a boulevard of aspirations and bustling commerce and now home to a spirit of renewal.

El mercado mexicano de Olvera Street y su plaza forman el hogar de la cultura Latina en la región de Los Angeles. En este sector de la ciudad donde se realizan muchas fiestas, incluyendo el Cinco de Mayo, todavia se mantienen en pie Avila Adobe, la iglesia de la plaza--La Iglesia de Nuestra Señora la Reina de Los Angeles, Pico House, Sepúlveda House y L.A. Firehouse No. 1. El Pueblo de la Reina de Los Angeles fue fundado en 1781. La plaza construida en los años 1820 fue gobernada por décadas por el magnánimo Juez Agust n Olvera. Wine Street fue renombrada en su honor después de su muerte y tomo una dureza de callejón representada en las primeras pel culas de Hollywood. En los años 1920, Christine Sterling hizo una campaña para salvar Avila Adobe de una demolición y transformar Olvera Street en un destino turstico reconocido internacionalmente, el cual se inauguró en 1930. Hoy la antigua plaza y las tiendas de Olvera Street, junto con sus restaurantes, museos y vendedores atraen a un millón de personas anualmente bajo el auspicio de El Pueblo de Los Angeles Historical Monument.

Escondido is the lilting Spanish name meaning hidden and was given to an irregular-shaped inland Southern California valley where an investment group planted 100 acres of grapes in the early 1880s.

The dry-farmed grapes grew unusually large and sweet, which prompted business leaders to envision an attraction similar to Pasadena's Tournament of Roses. The first Grape Day Festival in 1908 commemorated an auspicious occasion in Escondido's water history and celebrated the grape as a symbol of the agricultural abundance of the region. The event attracted thousands of guests who could view the valley, farm displays, a grand parade, and entertainment while eating their fill of free grapes. But by mid-century, Grape Day disappeared along with the grape in Escondido. With the memory of the grape remaining clear, the Escondido Historical Society began the revival of the celebration in the 1970s.

Lured by the promise of land and opportunity, miners, cowhands, laborers, settlers and fortune-seekers poured into Colorado during the mid-to-late 19th Century and into the 20th. To accommodate the population boom, industrious Coloradoans built scores of hotels some elaborate, some modest, all a touchstone to this critical era in Centennial State history. Join Alexandra Walker Clark on this tour through Colorado's historic hotels. Discover how the Oxford and Brown Palace Hotels have managed to maintain their elegance, while others such as the Timberline Hotel of Holy Cross City and the California Hotel of Independence have vanished. With timeless recipes from hotel kitchens, learn how hotels have adapted to eras like the Native American desertion and the Roaring Twenties.

The storm-tossed caravel ship San Salvador passed the coastline of Point Pinos in 1542 and propelled Portuguese shipwright and sailor Juan Rodriguez Cabrillo into history with the discovery of Alta California for the Spanish crown. An enduring legacy followed with Fr. Junipero Serra's landing in San Diego and the founding of his first mission in 1769. Into Alta California entered explorers, soldiers, and Franciscan missionaries bringing their culture, faith, and intent to colonize the New World. Father Serra's 1770 journey to Monterey, carefully planned in Mexico City, involved the arrival of a few hundred intrepid travelers over land and sea to secure Alta California's new capital. A small group consecrated Mission San Carlos de Borromeo in the pine-forested flat of New Spain's presidio. The momentum of the missions over the next 80 years resulted in California's statehood and in the raising of the American flag in Monterey by 1850.