FAN PALMS AND SEMI-TROPIC TREES FRINGE THE WALKS BEFORE LOS ANGELES HOMES
SQUABS BY THE MILLION, WAITING TO GO INTO PIE—A SIGHT NEAR LOS ANGELES
Away down in the southwest corner of this great nation of ours, behind mountain barriers, is the sun-kissed region that draws each year to it an army of tourists and seekers for that priceless joy that’s valued most when it’s lost health. It’s the great Land of Out-of-Doors here, with sunny skies and a climate that invigorates all the year around, all the way across the mesas and tablelands of the Painted desert region, across New Mexico and Arizona, across sandy wastes and cactus-spread plains into the Californian oasis country, where water and wisdom have helped make a paradise for all who believe that Nature is the best of doctors. It’s a sunshine orgy all the way. And Los Angeles, with its palms and olives, its crumbling adobes, side by side with thirteen-story fire-proof steel business blocks, electric railway cars whizzing everywhere—what a marvel of the Past, jostled by Progress! Here are hotels of all sorts and sizes, and homes that are marvels of luxury and elegance. Here you can study climatology and sociology, with variations; can view the simple life through the eyes of the man whose only home is a covered wagon; or, you can get a permit to enter the iron gateway of the park of some retired millionaire. Los Angeles, however, with all its charms, is only one small corner of Out-of-Door Land. The holy fathers of Mexico and old Spain found that out over a hundred years ago, when they started from Loreto, in Paja California, to make their mission pilgrimage up the Alta California coast. From San Diego and Los Angeles they headed northerly, establishing their mission stations a day’s journey apart. In sheltered valleys, on slopes that look far to seaward, by never-failing water courses, they planted the cross and marked out the boundaries of their holdings. No wide roadways could be thought of, but connecting these stations there soon was marked a broad trail—El Camino Real—the Highway of the King. Perhaps—who knows?—this name was given to do double honor—to the King of Kings, whose cross the padres bore, and to that monarch of Castile, whose bidding they were doing in aiding to carry his dominion into the newer world. Up the coast this old-time highway ran and to-day the steel highway of The Road of a Thousand Wonders follows it closely at many points, joining the missions of Los Angeles, San Gabriel, San Fernando, San Buenaventura, Santa Barbara, La Purisima, Santa Ynez, San Luis Obispo, San Miguel, San Antonio, Soledad, Carmel, San Juan, Santa Cruz, and others, just as musically named. The railway touches or runs close to all of these. At all these spots these wise men of the long ago found attractive sites, all under health-giving sun, and bathed by pure air, with a benign climate the year around. At Sonoma, a little north of San Francisco, the King’s Highway ended, but adventurous spirits pushed on northerly, up the headwaters of the Sacramento, and over the mountains into the Oregon wilderness, meeting before then trails of trappers and couriers du bois of the old Hudson’s Bay Company. And, over this trail of the trappers, runs the steel highway of to-day, bearing the traveler in comfort amid historic scenes. All of which—that well-worn Highway of the King, the missions, the trail of the trappers—sounds like romance with a liberal blend of realism. These twain are characteristic of all the big West—webs of romance and realism, lines of sentiment and science crossing and recrossing. It’s a garden land for poet or novelist.
THE SPHINX ROCKS IN CHATSWORTH PARK CAÑON WHICH HOLDS MANY CURIOUS ROCK FORMATIONS
A CORNER OF MISSION SAN FERNANDO REY
