After the Rancho San Rafael was divided, Benjamin Dreyfus was awarded the hilly area north of downtown Los Angeles known as Eagle Rock Valley. By 1911, this farming community had rapidly grown into a city. The Los Angeles Railway made downtown LA a trolley ride away, and continued growth led to Eagle Rock's consolidation with the city in 1923. Today, Eagle Rock is one of LA's most distinctive neighborhoods, and a pride instilled by early settlers remains here. These inspirational settlers include soldier and ranchero Jose Maria Verdugo, diarist and historian Elena Frackelton Murdock, farmer and amateur hydrologist Mayor Cromwell Galpin and publicist Ann Hare Harrison. Join editors Eric H. Warren and Frank F. Parrello as they profile the bedrock personalities who built Eagle Rock.

Eagle Rock grew as a small farming community just north of Los Angeles on Tongva ancestral lands that had become the great eastern pasture of the Rancho San Rafael. Eagle Rock enjoyed a geographic unity and a strong identity that revolved around its prominent namesake promontory. By 1906, trolleys made for an easy commute to Los Angeles, and Eagle Rock, which incorporated as a city in 1911, became increasingly integrated in the urban fabric yet remained defined by its residential nature and small-town character. Occidental College saw the quaint neighborhood at one end of York Valley as a place to grow. The annexation of Eagle Rock by Los Angeles in 1923 brought ample water supply as well as Eagle Rock High School, a center of town life into the 21st century. Freeway construction and shifts in business patterns affected Eagle Rock's growth in the post-World War II years, but the pleasant neighborhood identity remains despite its proximity to urban bustle.

This unusual, richly illustrated guidebook details Florida's historic pioneer and cracker villages, describing the homes, work-ways and folk-ways of the states early settlers, through preserved and tangible objects and structures. Across the state, dedicated local historians and community groups have carefully preserved and moved 19th- and early 20th-century structures, including both homes and workplaces, to specially created villages in order to display the lives of Florida pioneers. The tools, houses, farms, gardens, barns, sugar and turpentine mills, churches and schools that are gathered into twenty separate sites are described here, for the first time in a single volume. Through the rich collections of household utensils, mills, and structures, the visitor can appreciate the details of the everyday life, work, hardships, and recreation of past generations of Floridians. The book is an indispensable handbook and guide for the casual or dedicated historic tourist as well as for parents and teachers seeking to expose young people to the vanishing lifestyles of Florida's pioneers. Contact information, hours, special events, and detailed descriptions of each structure at the sites provide the casual or dedicated visitor with both practical facts for arranging trips, and the specific family histories of the pioneers who built and lived in the homes.