Charles Beebe Turrill (1854-1927) was a California historian and promoter. California notes (1876) is a guide for travellers, offering details of the state's weather, geology, and vegetation as well as recommended travel routes, historical notes, business statistics, and sightseeing tips for visitors to San Francisco, Stockton, Calaveras County and its mammoth trees and caves, the gold mining district, and the Yosemite Valley.

Detachable, pull-out color map attached to page [3] of cover.

Beautifully crafted, high quality, sewn, 4 color guidebook. Part of a multiple book series of books on travel through America's beautiful and historic backcountry. Directions and maps to 2,970 miles of routes that travel through the beautiful mountain regions of Big Sur, across the arid Mojave Desert, and straight into the heart of the aptly named Death Valley. Trail history comes alive through the accounts of Spanish Missionaries; eager prospectors looking to cash in during California's gold rush; and legends of lost mines. Includes wildlife information and photographs to help readers identify the great variety of native birds, plants, and animal they are likely to see. Contains 153 trails, 640 pages, and 645 photos.

This national bestseller chronicles one man’s 650–mile trek on foot from San Diego to San Francisco—sure to appeal to readers of naturalist works like Edward Abbey’s Desert Solitaire, Paul Thoreau’s On the Plain of Snakes, and Mark Kenyon’s That Wild Country. In 1769, an expedition led by Gaspar de Portolá sketched a route that would become, in part, the famous El Camino Real. It laid the foundation for the Golden State we know today, a place that remains as mythical and captivating as any in the world. Despite having grown up in California, Nick Neely realized how little he knew about its history. So he set off to learn it bodily, with just a backpack and a tent, trekking through stretches of California both lonely and urban. For twelve weeks, following the journal of expedition missionary Father Juan Crespí, Neely kept pace with the ghosts of the Portolá expedition—nearly 250 years later. Weaving natural and human history, Alta California relives Neely’s adventure, while telling a story of Native cultures and the Spanish missions that soon devastated them, and exploring the evolution of California and its landscape. The result is a collage of historical and contemporary California, of lyricism and pedestrian serendipity, and of the biggest issues facing California today—water, agriculture, oil and gas, immigration, and development—all of it one step at a time. “Rich in little–known history . . . Up the Santa Barbara and San Luis Obispo county coasts, then inland into the Salinas Valley to Monterey Bay. Somewhere along here, the owl moons and woodpeckers do something you might not have thought possible in 2019: they make you fall, or refall, in love with California, ungrudgingly, wildfires and insane housing prices and all . . . What a journey, you think. What a state." —San Francisco Chronicle

Published in 1845, this guidebook for pioneers is a reproduction of one of the most collectible books about California and the Western movement. It was the guidebook used by the Donner Party on their fateful journey. In addition, because Hastings' shortcut route through the Rockies produced such tragedy, the War Department commissioned The Prairie Traveler.