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From
Los Angeles you can head south to the smaller, up-and-coming city of San Diego, with its broad, welcoming beaches and easy access to Mexico; or
push inland to the desert areas, most notably Death Valley,
a barren and inhospitable landscape of volcanic craters and salt pans that
in summer becomes the hottest place on earth.
Most people, though, follow the shoreline north
up the Central Coast: a gorgeous run that takes in lively small
towns like Santa Barbara and Santa Cruz. California’s
second city, San Francisco, at the top end, is about as different
from LA as it’s possible to get: the oldest, most European-looking city
in the state, set on a series of steep hills, its wooden houses tumbling
down to water on both sides. It is also well placed for the national parks
to the east, such as Yosemite, where waterfalls cascade into a
sheer glacial valley, and Sequoia & Kings Canyon with its gigantic
trees, as well as the ghost towns of the Gold Country. North
of San Francisco the countryside becomes wilder, wetter and greener,
approaching Oregon through spectacular and almost deserted volcanic
tablelands.
The climate in southern California
consists of endless days of sunshine, and warm dry nights – though
LA’s notorious smog is at its worst when the temperatures are highest,
from July through September. All along the coast mornings can be
hazily overcast, especially in May and June; in exposed San Francisco it
can be chilly all year, and fog rolls in to ruin many a sunny day. In
winter it can rain for weeks on end, causing massive mudslides that wipe
out roads and hillside homes. Most hiking trails in the mountains
are blocked between October and June by the snow that keeps California’s
ski slopes among the busiest in the nation.
History |
| Around
half a million people – almost half the population of what is now the US
– were living in tribal villages along the West Coast when the Spaniard Juan
Cabrillo first sighted San Diego harbor in 1542, and named California
after an imaginary island (inhabited by Amazons) from a Spanish novel. Sir
Francis Drake landed near Point Reyes, north of San Francisco, in
1579, where the “white bancks and cliffes” reminded him of Dover. In
1602 Sebastián Vizcáino bestowed most of the place-names that
still survive; his exaggerated description of Monterey as a perfect
harbor led later colonizers to make it the region’s military and
administrative center. The Spanish occupation began in earnest in 1769,
combining military expediency with missionary zeal. Father Junipero
Serra first established a small mission and presidio (fort) at
San Diego, before arriving in June 1770 at Monterey. By 1804 a chain of 21
missions, each a long day’s walk from the next along the dirt path of El
Camino Real (The Royal Road), ran from San Diego to San Francisco. The
labor of the Native American converts was co-opted; though not all gave up
without a fight, disease ensured that they were soon wiped out.
When Mexico gained its independence in 1821, in
theory it also acquired control of California. However, Americans
were already starting to arrive, despite the immense difficulty of getting
to California – three months by sea via Cape Horn, or four months
overland in a covered wagon. Though the non-Native American population was
a mere ten thousand in 1846, the growing belief that it was the Manifest
Destiny of the United States to cover the continent from coast to
coast soon led to the Mexican–American War. Virtually all the
fighting took place in Texas; Monterey was captured by the US Navy without
a shot being fired, and by January 1847 the Americans controlled the
entire West Coast. In 1850 California became the 31st US state.
By chance, a mere nine days before the signing of
the treaty that ended the war, flakes of gold were discovered in
the Sierra Nevada. Prospectors flooded west, in the most madcap migration
in history; it took just fifteen years to pick the goldfields clean. The
completion of the transcontinental railroad in 1869, built using
Chinese laborers, was a major turning point. The crossing from New York
now took just five days, and a railroad rate war brought fares down to as
little as $1 for a one-way ticket.
California was perceived as immune to the worst
effects of the Great Depression of the 1930s – thanks in part to
the images of prosperity promulgated by its now-established film
industry. From the Dust Bowl Midwest, entire families of “Okies”
packed up everything they owned and set off for the farms of the Central
Valley. Heavy industry came during World War II, in the form of
shipyards and airplane factories, and many workers and military personnel
stayed on afterwards.
As home to the Beats in the Fifties and
the hippies in the Sixties, and a host of radical political and
ecological movements since, California was at the cutting edge of cultural
change. The illusions of the Flower Power days were shattered by Charles
Manson, however, and once the anti-war struggle was over, popular culture
seemed to withdraw into self-satisfaction. The easy-money boom of the
Eighties, however, crash-landed in a tangled mess of scandal, and for
California the Nineties kicked off with a stagnant property market, rising
unemployment, escalating gang violence and racial tensions in LA, and an
appalling death toll from AIDS in San Francisco – compounded by
earthquakes, drought and flooding. At a time when native Californians are
fleeing the state in droves, some see the Golden State’s golden years as
past, others wait for it to reinvent itself.
Getting there and Around |
| If
you want to explore and enjoy California to the full, you’ll be glad of
a car. A city such as Los Angeles couldn’t exist without the
automobile, and in any case to drive down the coastal freeways invites
irresistible mental images of Beach-Boys-style cruising. Car rental
in California is some of the cheapest in the country and the savings made
by easy access to campgrounds and out-of-center chain motels can easily
offset the initial cost.
Frequent Amtrak trains connect LA
and San Diego, with a stop at Fullerton for buses to Disneyland,
and one daily service runs up the coast from LA, calling at Oakland
and Emeryville, the nearest stations to San Francisco, and
continuing via Sacramento to Seattle. Another line from Oakland runs along
the Central Valley, but only connects with LA by bus. Cross-country
routes leave LA for Florida (via Tucson, Houston and New Orleans) and for
Chicago (one daily via Flagstaff, Albuquerque and Kansas City). Oakland
has its own direct service to Chicago. Foreign visitors can cut fares
greatly by using the Far West Rail Pass. Greyhound and Green
Tortoise buses link all the main cities.
For quick hops between the major cities –
especially LA and San Francisco – you can’t beat flying.
Services are extremely frequent, and prices competitive – if your plans
are flexible enough to take advantage of off-peak deals. Regular scheduled
fares are high.
If you plan to do any long-distance cycling,
traveling from north to south can make all the difference – the wind
blows this way in the summer, and besides, you’re on the right side of
the road for the best views. Be careful if you cycle along the coast on
Hwy-1: it has heavy traffic, tight curves and is prone to fog.
Factsheet: |
