I was walking alone a couple of years ago in Yosemite Valley, on a surprisingly lonely trail between the visitor center complex and Yosemite Falls. Yes, I know all that about not hiking alone, but I thought it was a busy trail and a short distance....

Giant Sequoia(Sequoiadendron gigantea) Coast Redwood (Sequoia sempervirens) at Muir Woods National Monument California is a landscape of superlatives and extremes: the highest and the lowest points in the lower 48 states (Alaska: why do they leave...

The Sierra Nevada of California are enigmatic: a great deal of conflict has existed over the origin, uplift, and erosion of the range. Did the mountains rise in the Cretaceous, and only slowly erode as the Basin and Range sank off to the east? Did the...

Gold was the obvious choice for the state mineral of California, but at the time, no other state had actually selected a state mineral, or rock for that matter. California was the first in each category, making it official in 1965. More than 100...

It occurred to me while looking over my postcard post on the "usual" places of California that a discussion of places in California that are overlooked could also include a discussion of overlooked state symbols, especially in the context of geological...