Throughout the years, the 76-square-mile island of Santa Catalina has hosted Native-American tribes, European sailors, American tourists, and even the Chicago Cubs. The island has survived both ecologically and culturally, resisting the temptation of becoming a Coney Island of Los Angeles. Through the work of its residents along with chewing gum magnate William Wrigley Jr., Santa Catalina Island is as beautiful today as it was when it was discovered in 1542.

Throughout the years, the 76-square-mile island of Santa Catalina has hosted Native-American tribes, European sailors, American tourists, and even the Chicago Cubs. The island has survived both ecologically and culturally, resisting the temptation of becoming a Coney Island of Los Angeles. Through the work of its residents along with chewing gum magnate William Wrigley Jr., Santa Catalina Island is as beautiful today as it was when it was discovered in 1542.

Santa Catalina Island is one of the West Coast's great nearby escapes, an hour's boat ride from Los Angeles and Long Beach for one million annual tourists. The island's seventy-six square miles contain two communities--Avalon and Two Harbors--and extremely rugged seashores and interior wild lands. Here, the history has been carved by pirates, smugglers, prospectors and squatters and set down by seafaring scribes and Hollywood fabricators. The facts have been massaged by the ebb and flow of time and scattered like sun-baked rocks from a beachcomber's kick. Co-authors Patricia Maxwell, Bob Rhein and Jerry Roberts have collected Catalina's basic facts and lore into a quick reference that's as easily accessible as the most charming of California's Channel Islands.

Get off the beaten path and explore the hidden-gem destinations within a few hours of the Mother Road! Includes numerous photos and illustrations. Known as the Main Street of America and the Mother Road, US Route 66 is the nation’s best-known highway. This lavishly illustrated book steers you from Chicago to Los Angeles, traveling through the lowlands of the American Plains and the high plateaus of New Mexico and Arizona, from the Great Lakes to the mighty Pacific Ocean, and through major metropolises and remote country towns. Best of all, it lets you branch away from the Mother Road and encounter gems hidden beyond today’s standard motels and tourist traps—the quaint frontier communities that date back to the nation’s westward expansion; the legacy of ancient native cultures; and the awe-inspiring natural wonders that have graced these lands since time immemorial. State parks, wildlife refuges, museums, historic sites, literary landmarks, and much more are there to be explored within a few hours’ drive from the path of Route 66. The fifty trips included here offer new travel opportunities for the thousands of road-trippers who follow this legendary route, looking for something more. “The road and this book recall a time before franchise restaurants and chain motels choked America’s highways . . . the guide consists of 50 driving tours, which include plenty of side trips.” —Arizona Republic

It's not quite like today's spring training: one might find a rookie ballplayer (nicknamed Hack) uprooting trees with his bare hands or a future president of the United States getting into a barroom brawl with some grizzled sportswriters. The team was the Chicago Cubs, and the place was Santa Catalina Island-through the Roaring Twenties, Great Depression, and World War II. William Wrigley owned both island and ballclub; from 1921 to 1951, they came together. There were movie stars, like Betty Grable and Marilyn Monroe. There were grand steamships, big bands, hopes and dreams, and World Series rings. It's Chicago Cubs: Baseball on Catalina Island, and it's a trip like no other.

Unlike most Los Angeles County beach communities, the City of Hermosa Beach owns its own beach. But perhaps more than most coastal Southern California destination cities, Hermosa Beach represents shared experience, detailed on thousands of postcards over the decades. This greater square mile of sand, surf, and sun has conjured cherished memories for fishermen, surfers, and volleyball players as well as jazz fans, diners and tavern celebrants, and simply lovers of the beach who found lifelong or short-term happiness in Hermosa. These postcards recall many bygone landmarks and changing lifestyles and celebrate the Hermosa Beach century (1907-2007).