Russ Leadabrand (1920–1994)

Sprinkled with vintage photos of visitors, mining, military, and industry, this historic summary of development and communities with short lives -- cut off by highways or railroads, and the collapse of mining, there are plenty of ghostly stops described in this guidebook.

The Mojave, Great Basin, and Colorado deserts in California are a sort of "arrowhead" with the point north of Death Valley National Monument, and the widest part where it stretches from Needles to the western Antelope Valley. This volume takes you on 12 trips, stretching from the border with Mexico and the Anza Borrego Desert State Park to the mountains east of the Sierra Nevada, and west of Death Valley. The trips were first published in Westways, the publication of the Automobile Club of show more Southern California. show less

Ten trips, from Indian villages in San Diego County to the redwoods on the north Coast, and the gold mining areas scoured by the '49 ers, California history is the star of the series. To find it, you need to leave the main roads and hit the byways.

Eight "trips for a day or a weekend" are described for Owens Valley, east of Mt. Whitney. The emphasis is on finding historic artifacts, ghost towns, using carefully written route descriptions, to get you to the locale. Histories are interspersed with local legends of "curb size" veins of gold. The trips were originally published in Westways, the monthly magazine of the Automobile Club of Southern California.