MISSION LA PURISMA CONCEPCION. IN THE BEAUTIFUL VALLEY OF LOMPOC—THE OLD RAFTERS, WITH THEIR RAWHIDE LASHINGS, STILL REMAIN AND KINDLY HANDS ARE PRESERVING AND RESTORING THE BUILDING
From far away the traveler approaching San Luis Obispo—the city whose mission was named by the Franciscans to honor the memory of their beloved bishop of Tolosa—sees a series of mountains that make him wonder if he is in the land of the Ptolemys. There are few more interesting or stranger formations than these pyramids that form the setting of San Luis Obispo; one that is peculiarly cleft, suggests a bishop’s miter, and this quaint freak of nature is said to have inspired the Padre Lasuen to give the city its name. The well laid out city is finely built, with many shade trees, well made roads, excellent water system, electric light and gas. In location it resembles Los Angeles, though it is nearer the ocean. The summer temperature has a maximum of ninety-four degrees; the winter minimum is thirty-two degrees. Lemon and orange trees thrive and roses bloom the year around. The many drives include a twelve-mile ride to El Pizmo, already described, a seven-mile trip to the famous San Luis Hot Springs with its sulphur plunge and baths located amid a beautiful sycamore grove, a nine-mile journey to Avila beach, near Port Harford, a fourteen-mile excursion to the famous Morro, with its singular rock towering above the ocean, and a seven-mile ride up Reservoir Cañon. In the heart of the town is the old mission, founded in 1772.
ON THE GRADE TO SAN LUIS OBISPO HOT SPRINGS
FISHERMAN’S COVE NEAR SAN LUIS OBISPO—A FAMOUS RESORT FOR ANGLERS, AMATEUR AND PROFESSIONAL
A SECTION OF MISSION SAN LUIS OBISPO TO-DAY, SHOWING THE SUBSTANTIAL CONSTRUCTION
From San Luis Obispo northerly, the railway climbs the Santa Lucia mountains, spurs of the Coast Range, noted for the beauty of their cañons, their oak-clad hillsides, their trout streams, their wild flowers in springtime, with marvelous bits of highland scenery at every curve of the road. The train comes close to playing crack-the-whip at several points over the Santa Lucia grade, and one may see at frequent intervals, far below, the track which the train has just covered. Down the upper or northern slope of the Santa Lucias the train enters the Salinas valley, producer of wheat, of fruit, of stock—one of the oldest settled and best known of the paradise valleys of the state. It is narrow here at this upper end, with heavily wooded slopes and hundreds of streams that come tumbling down to the Salinas river which flows in a northerly direction to the beautiful bay of Monterey.
