California Trivia & Tidbits

The town of San Clemente (pop. 49,936), named after nearby San Clemente Island, was a slow-growing community for years after its incorporation in 1928. However, when President Richard Nixon purchased a mansion-which many called "the western White House"-there in 1969, the town gained worldwide fame, accelerating its growth and reputation.

Beach movies, surfer flicks and Beach Boys music were inspired by the 450 beaches along the Golden State's more than 1,000 miles of coastline. The beaches range from course to fine sand, rocks to pebbles, and long, straight shorelines to hidden, sandy coves.

Leo Carrillo State Park north of Santa Monica was named after actor, preservationist and conservationist Leo Carrillo (1880-1961), who served on the California Beach and Parks commission for 18 years. Though Carrillo acted in some 15 stage plays and more than 90 movies, he is best known for his portrayal of Pancho, the sidekick to Duncan Renaldo's Cisco Kid, an early 1950s TV series.

Gen. James H. Doolittle, the famed commander who, during World War II, led the first aircraft carrier-based bomber attack on Japan on April 18, 1942, was born in 1896 in Alameda (pop. 72,259). He attended Los Angeles Junior College and the University of California before enlisting as a flying cadet in the Army Signal Corps during World War I. For his famous raid on Japan, Doolittle was awarded the Medal of Honor. He died in 1993 in California.

Charles Fey (1862-1944) invented the first three-reel slot machine in the late-19th century in San Francisco. Born August Fey in Bavaria, he changed his name after coming to America and settling in California. His first machine was nicknamed the Liberty Bell because the top prize or "jackpot" hit when the spinning wheels stopped on three bells.

The town of Malibu (pop. 12,575) once was part of the territory of the Chumash tribe of American Indians. They called the area Humawilo, which has been variously translated as "where the surf sounds loudly" or "it makes a loud noise all the time over there."

Lake Shasta Caverns, north of Shasta Lake (pop. 9,008), are unusual because the only convenient way to reach them is by ferry across Lake Shasta on a catamaran, followed by a bus ride to the cave entrance. The caverns, which began forming millions of years ago, were opened to the public in 1964.

Established as a primitive area in 1931, the 242,500-acre Marble Mountain area in Northern California's Siskiyou County (pop. 44,301) received a wilderness designation in 1953, becoming one of the earliest wilderness areas in the state. Located in the heart of Klamath National Forest, the Marble Mountain Wilderness Area is home to some 89 lakes stocked with trout.

—Placer County and Nevada County (pop. 92,033) seem to be the winter storm centers of the Sierra Nevada Mountains. According to the National Weather Service, the two counties have been the site of the five biggest Sierra Nevada snowstorms since 1950, ranging from 12 feet in January 1952 to 8 feet in a four-day storm in March 1995. Mineral King Valley, part of Sequoia National Park, is hemmed in by the peaks of the Great Western Divide and only accessible by a single road turning off state Route 198, near Three Rivers (pop. 2,248). The drive is steep and winding, with an elevation increase of nearly 7,000 feet over its 24-mile distance. Due to heavy snow and the backcountry nature of the area, the road is closed in winter.

—At one time, the area north of San Francisco was claimed as a possession of England. When Sir Francis Drake and his crew in The Golden Hind landed on the Pacific Coast on June 17, 1579, Drake named his discovery Nova Albion (New England) and claimed it for Queen Elizabeth I. Today, a Francis Drake Boulevard runs through Marin County, and a high school in San Anselmo (pop. 12,378) is named after the famous seafarer.

—NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), in Pasadena, has been involved in hundreds of space missions, including several that are currently operating on or in the vicinity of Mars. JPL's accomplishments include the 1958 launch of Explorer 1, America's first satellite, and Voyager 1, which, since its launch in 1977, has traveled farther from earth than any other man-made object. The Ladybird Johnson Grove of redwood trees in northern California was dedicated on Aug. 27, 1969. Distinguished guests attending the affair included President Richard Nixon, who was the keynote speaker; former President Lyndon B. Johnson and wife Ladybird; then-governor of California Ronald Reagan; and the Rev. Billy Graham, who gave the invocation. The grove named after the former first lady is part of more 110,000 acres protected within the boundaries of Redwood National Park.

—The Mendocino tree, a giant coastal redwood (Sequoia sempervirens), is believed to be the tallest living tree in the world. Found in Montgomery State Reserve, near Ukiah (pop. 15,497), it officially has been measured at 367 feet, 5 inches, and has a diameter of 10 feet.

—The Mojave Road, a 138-mile dirt track suitable for four-wheel drive vehicles, runs east to west through the Mojave National Preserve. A favorite among modern-day desert excursionists, the old Indian trade route is in much the same condition as American pioneers would have found it on the way to southern California in the mid-1800s.

—Ray Bradbury, author of the novel The Martian Chronicles, longtime Los Angeles resident and graduate of Los Angeles High School, has a place on the moon named in his honor. In 1971, the Apollo 15 astronauts gave the name Dandelion Crater to a moon feature, borrowing the name, they said, from Bradbury's 1957 novel, Dandelion Wine.

–The Jedediah Smith Redwood State Park is named after the first European to explore the interior of northern California. His journey through the coastal redwood belt was part of a remarkable two–year trapping expedition beginning in 1826. Smith pioneered a trail southwest from the Great Salt Lake across the Mojave Desert and through the San Bernardino Mountains into California. The park is bisected by the last major free–flowing river in California, the Smith River.

—Of all the volcanic formations found in Lava Beds National Monument, just south of Tulelake (pop. 1,020) in northern California, among the most striking are the lava tube caves. Formed during the last half million years, the caves were created when lava flows cooled from the outside and the hot, inner cores drained, leaving the caves, or tubes, behind. The park features several hundred of these formations. Soledad Canyon in Los Angeles County has been the site of two "Golden Spike" ceremonies. The first, on Sept. 5, 1876, marked completion of the original Southern Pacific's main line into Los Angeles, the first north-south rail line in California. The second spike was driven on June 5, 1993, to mark completion of the 2,650-mile Pacific Crest hiking trail.

—Sequoia National Park, just east of Visalia (pop. 91,565), shelters more than half of the giant sequoia trees in existence and is the second-oldest national park in the United States. It was created by Congress in September 1890. The adjacent General Grant National Park (now Kings Canyon National Park), was designated soon after. Only Yellowstone National Park, created in 1872, is older.

—At 20 feet tall and 12 feet across, the concrete and rebar sculpture in front of the Giant Artichoke restaurant in Castroville (pop. 6,724) is reported to be the world’s largest “artichoke.” The vegetable, which grows particularly well in the area, is served in a variety of ways in the restaurant, including frozen, fried, quiched and steamed.

—Though born in Albany, N.Y., writer Bret Harte produced most of his stories of the American West, including “The Luck of Roaring Camp,” in California. While in San Francisco writing for the newspaper The Californian, he worked with Mark Twain and later became the founding editor of The Overland Monthly, one of California’s earliest literary magazines.

—Although many early explorers and cartographers recognized California as part of the North American mainland, some 17th-century maps, including America Septentrionalis, produced in 1638 by an Amsterdam map-making company, depicted the state as an island.

The ground beneath San Francisco is a graveyard of ships, many of them abandoned by gold-seeking crews during the gold rush beginning in 1849. One, the whaler Candace, built in Boston in 1818, was discovered 20 feet below Folsom Street in 2005. Hundreds of abandoned ships rotted at the wharfs and were buried when the city’s old waterfront was later landfilled.