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MEET THE ARTISTS
Steven Boyle
John Blanchard As a kid, the two things I enjoyed the most were riding bikes and drawing pictures. I still get to do both. Life is good. Illustrations on 4, 8, 26, 34, 44, 48
Steven Boyle has been a Chronicle features designer since 2013. Illustrations on 14, 18, 24, 28, 50
Paul De Leon
Tam Duong Jr.
Christina Rascon
Paul De Leon is a senior graphic designer in the marketing department. Illustration on 12
Tam Duong Jr. is a graphic designer for The San Francisco Chronicle. Illustrations on 36, 38, 42, 54
I’m a graphic designer in the marketing department. Hope you enjoy the coloring book. Illustration on 20
Todd Trumbull
George Russell
Todd Trumbull has been a graphic artist at The Chronicle since 1999. He specializes in informational graphics and news design. Illustrations on 10, 30, 40, 52
George Russell is a retired Chronicle page designer rockin’ the COVID-19 haircut. Illustrations on 6, 16, 22, 32, 46
COLORING NORTHERN CALIORNIA, A TO Z Creative Director Danielle Mollette-Parks Magazine Editor Deb Wandell
Copy Editor Andrea Behr Designer Maggie Creamer
San Francisco Chronicle A Hearst Newspaper
William Nagel Publisher and CEO Emilio Garcia-Ruiz Editor in Chief
Demian Bulwa, Michael Gray and Tim O’Rourke Managing Editors Ron Kitagawa Assistant Managing Editor
Sean Jacobsen Senior Vice President, Advertising Brad Nichols Vice President, Circulation
Sarah Morse Cooney Vice President, Marketing
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CELEBRATING OUR TRUE COLORS By John King
Even when rhetoricslinging opportunists attack us from beyond our borders, Northern Cali fornia looms large in the national psyche. For good reason. Our landscape is an infinitely varied collage of mountains and valleys, rivers and forests, supersized drama and intimate joy. The mark left by tens of millions of residents includes en gineering triumphs and cultural innovations. We’re blessed to be dynamic, whether it’s the natural turbulence of earthquakes or the so cial tumult of waves of migrants who often come here in pursuit of freedoms they did not have at home. None of this happens without discord and doubt — the California dream always has an apocalyptic edge. But in a year that has been John King is the longtime urban design trying in too many ways, we at The Chronicle critic for The Chronicle and an honorary feel it’s a good time to celebrate the place we member of the American Society of Landscape Architects. He grew up in the call home. Bay Area and fondly remembers his one Our chosen method? A Northern California trip to the Lost Coast. glossary from A to Z. Not an easy task, given all the treasures to choose from, so each en try includes a hint of what could have been selected instead. Enjoy!
Cover illustration by Daymond Gascon • John King portrait by Don Asmussen
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A ALCATRAZ
True story: When the American Institute of Architects was preparing its 2009 national conference in San Francisco, the local organizers at first didn’t think to include Alcatraz as one of the curated tours for design-savvy out-of-towners. They finally did so, grudgingly, and it was the first tour of the conference to be fully booked. Moral of the story? This rocky island that held a federal penitentiary for 29 years is not to be missed. Whether you’re drawn by history, which includes the 19-month occupation by Native Americans that began in 1969, or the seductive juxtaposition of battered jail blocks with native flowers in the middle of the bay, once you visit you’ll want to return — though maybe not for life without parole.
And then there’s: Berkeley is long in the tooth as a symbol of freewheeling liberalism. Not so with Arcata, home to Humboldt State University and by all accounts still a place where dreadlocks and tie-dye are everyday wear.
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BIG SUR
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Scenery as spectacle: the stretch of Highway 1 that extends roughly 100 miles from the Monterey Peninsula south to the fabled and truly bizarre Hearst Castle. And even though no more than a few thousand people live along it, the steep coastline is a case study in how Northern California casts a multifaceted spell. Scenery: Check! Unless you consider the sight of a waterfall spilling 80 feet onto a beach at Julia Pfeiffer Burns State Park to be no big deal. Cool structures: Check! The Bixby Creek Bridge’s 700-footlong concrete arch is lean, muscular infrastructure at its best. Boho cred: Check! Jack Kerouac wrote an entire novel set here. The title? Guess. Eye-rolling enchantment: Back when the New Age was the new thing, Esalen Institute was the place to go. Environmental foreboding: Heavy rains followed by a massive landslide closed Highway 1 for more than a year in 2017 and 2018. “All of the factors that have made it such a beautiful place also make it a challenging place to maintain a road,” one geologist told The Chronicle in 2018. Beautiful but challenging — California in a nutshell. There are also: Back roads. Every part of the country has them; until you’ve snaked through the remote terrain of Mendocino County, or traversed arrowstraight agricultural roads in the Central Valley, you can’t know how transportive they can be.
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CRISSY FIELD
Anybody who doubts that we can turn back the ecological clock should visit this enthralling, deceptively alluring 100-acre park just east of the Golden Gate. The tidal sloughs that once rustled here were filled in by the U.S. Army more than a century ago to hold everything from warehouses and barracks to a military airfield. That changed after the Army transferred the Presidio to the National Park System in 1994, and in 2001 the military landscape was replaced by a naturalistic one. Crissy Field now looks better than ever — and among its attractions is a 20-acre marsh that opens onto the bay and soon will connect to 7-acre Quartermaster Reach, a thread of tidal wetlands that will tie the marsh to the Presidio’s Tennessee Hollow watershed. Or what about: If our glossary included specific people, Steph Curry would be a slam dunk. Make that an eye-popping three-pointer, nothing but net.
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D DOLORES PARK
As recently as the 1980s, this green hillside had a dicey and sometimes violent reputation. It also had postcard-worthy views in a spot where the Mission, the Castro and Noe Valley overlap. Fast-forward to 2020, and the 16-acre space is a symbol of today’s San Francisco as much as Washington Square Park was synonymous with the beatnik heyday of North Beach. The current popularity isn’t all positive, as anyone who has seen the beer cans and Champagne bottles left behind by weekend revelers in pre-pandemic days can attest. But the park has provided a welcome relief valve for a city trying to shelter in place, and the social-distancing circles painted on portions of the grass testify to our shared need for public commons. Could have been: Though Devil’s Slide near Pacifica is no longer a threat to Highway 1, its periodic landslides signal that we can’t take our surroundings for granted.
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DOLORES PARK
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E EAST SPAN, BAY BRIDGE
Northern California has no shortage of fabled bridges, from a 330-foot-long covered bridge in Stanislaus County’s Knights Ferry to the cabled majesty of the Golden Gate Bridge. So when the new east span of the Bay Bridge finally opened in 2013, there was a collective shrug at the arrival of a $6.4 billion structure, which debuted nine
years behind schedule. But with each year that passes, its presence seems more right. When the piercing white tower glistens in the morning sun, its single looped cable cradling the roadway below, the bridge seems to engage in a call-and-response with Salesforce Tower and the Transamerica Pyramid, blurring the division between East Bay and the city. Or what about: Earthquakes? Hard to illustrate. Eucalyptus? Aromatic, evocative — and too ominous, given fire concerns.
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FARMERS’ MARKETS
Every self-respecting college town and bustling urban neighborhood these days has a farmers’ market offering fresh-grown produce. What sets Northern California’s apart is the month-in, month-out quality of what’s on display. Our dearth of harsh winters combined with a range of summer heat make for a nutritious bounty. There are the thrice-weekly offerings at the Ferry Plaza Farmers Market, where the stalls are operated by people who ever-wry New Yorker writer Calvin Trillin once mused are more likely to be the offspring of stockbrokers than farmers. If you find yourself in Redding on a Saturday or Weaverville on a Wednesday, the scene’s likely a lot more funky. That’s one of the joys of these markets: You get a taste of local character, not just pastries and potatoes. There’s also: If nothing else, Humboldt County’s Ferndale shows that you don’t need to visit San Francisco to see an array of Victorian homes.
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GOLD RUSH The event that determined California’s fate was the discovery of gold nuggets in January 1848 at Sutter’s Mill on the American River. No sooner did word start to spread than hordes of men headed our way — 80,000 the first year alone, from across the country and all over the globe. The mines were cleared out long ago, yet the crusty allure of a raucous past remains. It’s what brings families and schoolchildren to pan through sand and gravel at Columbia State Historic Park, or walk the weathered streets of aged towns like Jackson and Mokelumne Hill. They’re a reminder that we’ve faced unruly booms and busts more than once — a fact that can be reassuring in today’s grim haze. Could have been: Grace Cathedral, a knockout atop Nob Hill, whatever one’s religious beliefs.
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H HOOVER TOWER
No matter how deeply blue the Bay Area might be, conservatives can point with pride to one icon of Republican red — the 285-foot tower on the Stanford University campus that serves as the centerpiece of the Hoover Institution on War, Revolution and Peace. Construction began in 1939 on the design by Arthur Brown Jr. and was completed in 1941 to coincide with Stanford’s 50th
anniversary. The library in the tower at one point held Ronald Reagan’s presidential papers — they’ve moved on, alas — while current fellows at the institute include former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and a former secretary of defense, Gen. Jim “Mad Dog” Mattis. More trivia? The bell tower has been struck twice by lightning, most recently in August. You can decide whether that was an omen or not. Runners-up include: How’s this for an origin story? The Contra Costa suburb of Hercules began life as a powder plant that produced dynamite until 1964.
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IT’S IT
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Ever since French author Marcel Proust spun a bite from a madeleine into the seven-volume “Remembrance of Things Past,” the power of food to summon a sense of something larger has been unquestioned. But if you indeed still have your doubts, ponder the affection that many lifelong Bay Area residents feel for this machine-sliced slab of ice cream between two oatmeal cookies that are then cloaked in chocolate. Fact: It was conceived in 1928 by the operator of a food stand at Playland-atthe-Beach and sold only there until San Francisco’s fog-shrouded amusement park closed in 1972. Fact: It was first made in mass quantities at a small factory south of Market Street, before SoMa became a self-absorbed acronym. Fact: The most popular flavors remain plain vanilla, chocolate and mint. There you have it — a deep-rooted local hero strikes a cultural blow against corporatism and globalized novelty. Or, more to the point, what’s not to like about chocolate and ice cream? Could have been: On a meandering drive north through the delta, you encounter small levee-hugging towns like Isleton.
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JENNER Viewed strictly on its own terms, this snug hamlet of fewer than 200 people is most memorable as a place where you experience why those who encounter our northern coast on Highway 1 rarely forget the journey. Stay in the car and the easily navigated delights south of Jenner give way to a precarious ascent that combines joyous views with the need for wheelgripping concentration. Or you can linger at Goat Rock Beach, where the Russian River loops into the Pacific Ocean past Jenner and a protected beach where dozens of harbor seals might lounge. Pelicans also make the rounds, diving into the turbulent swirl of fresh and salty water to snag their next meal — we’re just lucky to catch the show.
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Or what about: If redwood trees didn’t have their own entry, Jedediah Smith Redwoods State Park would be an obvious choice.
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KAISER SHIPYARDS
Now remembered mainly for his huge health care company, Henry Kaiser also was an Oakland industrialist who revolutionized the craft of building ships quickly during World War II. The scene of his breakthrough? Richmond, where Kaiser in 1942 opened four shipyards within months of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. A total of 747 cargo ships were built in an average of 45 days by a workforce that grew to 90,000 people — not just men but also women, who in the past had been denied access to such jobs. By early 1943, a hit song celebrated how “All the day long whether rain or shine/ She’s part of the assembly line/ She’s making history/ Working for victory.” Her name was Rosie the Riveter, and a legend was born that’s memorialized in the beguiling Rosie the Riveter WWII Home Front National Historic Park on Richmond’s shoreline. Be sure to explore when we again get the chance. There’s also: The Klamath River meets the Pacific near Crescent City, but the real drama is upstream: Native Americans and environmentalists are working to remove four dams and restore salmon runs.
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LOST COAST
L You wouldn’t have known it by Stinson Beach on a pre-pandemic summer weekend, but there is a stretch of breathtaking Northern California shoreline so remote that it is called the Lost Coast. The easiest way to visit is via Highway 101 north to tiny Garberville, where you head west on two-lane roads that cross the Mottole River while passing through towns like Honeydew, Petrolia and Shelter Cove. Another option is the Lost Coast Trail, a 25-mile path that takes several days and includes stretches of beach that disappear at high tide. Or maybe you’ll never find time to get there. That’s OK as well. In our oversaturated age, just knowing such a place exists in our shared backyard is a joy unto itself. Could have been: If you haven’t checked out Lands End in San Francisco, do so. It’s a compact knockout — and easy to reach.
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MISSION DISTRICT Every prosperous city has a neighborhood that’s a flash point celebrated and contested in equal measure. San Francisco’s is the Mission. But what is today’s Mission, exactly? The obvious answer is the richly textured Latino community that is the district’s largest population bloc, with political leaders tenaciously fighting to slow gentrification. Valencia Street, which has morphed into a United Nations of stylish restaurants and bars, retains hints of when it was the spirited lesbian equivalent of Castro Street. Nor should we leave out the generations of Irish Americans who made their livings at the small factories close to home. All of these accents flavor today’s neighborhood — and the friction is forgotten at celebrations like Carnaval or the friendly bickering over which burrito joint is best.
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Runner-up: Sorry, Frank Lloyd Wright! Your futuristic Marin Civic Center didn’t make the final cut.
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N NUT TREE
If you’re scratching your head right now, you didn’t grow up in the decades when the Bay Area and Sacramento were two distinct regions separated by miles of orchards. Kids would climb into the backseat of the family car and stare out the window, bored, until their parents exited Highway 40 in Vacaville for a middle American wonderland where the 500-seat restaurant was secondary to such diversions as a toy store and miniature railroad amid black walnut trees. There’s still a Nut Tree in name, a strip shopping center whose saving grace is the only Fentons Creamery outside of Oakland. But the roadside attraction conceived in 1921 by Helen and “Bunny” Power closed in 1996. Highway 40 grew up to become Interstate 80. The orchards gave way to office parks and outlet malls. Inevitable, perhaps. But a loss, all the same. Could have been: Even by Gold Country standards, Nevada City is downright cool.
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NUT TREE NTRR
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O OHLONE
The people who inhabited the coastal land from modernday San Francisco south past Monterey until the arrival of Spanish expeditions left no built monuments in their wake, nothing along the lines of the cliff dwellings in New Mexico or the Mayan city of Chichen Itza. The 10,000 or so Ohlone men and women organized in small “tribelets� of 100 to 250 people passed along a different legacy. They demonstrated the virtues of living lightly on the land, moving from one small gathering place to another depending on the season and the proximity to the plants that provided food and materials for shelter or the canoes that crossed the bay. These traditions endure despite centuries of repression. They also show the wisdom of appreciating, and sustaining, our natural bounty close at hand. And then there’s: If this were a coloring book for structural engineers, Oroville Dam would be a shoo-in.
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PARKLETS
When San Francisco’s first parklet debuted in 2010, outside a now-closed “bicycle cafe,” it could have been mistaken for a precious affectation. Take out a parking space, put in some funky seating and, voila, a miniature public space is born! But parklets caught on in neighborhoods from North Beach to the Outer Sunset, guerrilla urbanism for the pop-up age, so much so that they’ve been called beachheads of gentrification (not the original intent, to be sure). Now, a decade later, they’re more relevant than ever — serving as cozy life rafts for restaurants trying to ride out the coronavirus. Our homegrown design innovation has been embraced across the nation, and American cities are better as a result. Let’s not forget: Point Reyes. Pixar. The Petrified Forest. No shortage of choices here.
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Q QUAIL
For starters, there’s the foppish flourish of feathers that doubles as memorable headgear and is guaranteed to bring a smile of recognition. The plump, rounded form is recognizable as well, goofy yet poised, with a chestnut sheen to the belly and rump. They don’t fly much, our California quail, preferring to skitter through scrub brush and chaparral with selfimportant bobs of the head. No wonder that the irresistibly eccentric Callipepla californica is as cherished a part of our natural landscape as the statuesque redwoods. May they continue to evade predators both large and small. Runner-up: Take a bow, Quincy — the county seat of Plumas County that makes a cameo appearance in more California glossaries than you might expect.
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CALIFORNIA QUAIL
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REDWOODS
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Where to begin? Alone, the coastal redwood is majestic, its straight trunk anchoring a narrow pyramid that can extend 300 feet into the air, the graygreen drapery a contrast to the reddish-brown trunk. En masse, they form groves of vast silence that are moist and cool even on summer days, where slivers of sunlight illuminate what can feel like natural sanctuaries. This year’s fire season reminded us of another glory of California’s state tree: Mature ones are tough. Among the survivors of the huge LNU Lightning Complex fire was the beloved Colonel Armstrong Tree in Armstrong Redwoods State Natural Reserve near Guerneville. Flames cleared the nearby forest floor but the colonel endured — as it has for 1,400 years. In the on-deck circle: Anyone who visited Dillon Beach in 1976 to see Christo’s “Running Fence” enter the Pacific will not forget the sight.
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SACRAMENTO Those of you who dismiss our state capital as little more than a confusing mash of overlapping freeways that veer off in all directions, think again. Lush, tree-lined streets provide natural air conditioning in older neighborhoods. Laid-back neighborhoods like Midtown show how to be hip without putting on ’tude. Then there’s the lavish extravagance of the state Capitol building — a classical concoction that took from 1860 to 1874 to build, during which time architect Reuben Clark died after a nervous breakdown. More recently, the Crocker Art Museum reopened in October with an exhibit celebrating Northern Californian treasure Wayne Thiebaud’s 100th birthday. Like the grand, flat Central Valley around it, there’s more to Sacramento than meets the eye. And then there are: The South Bay Salt Ponds are mesmerizing from the air. Sourdough bread is mesmerizing up close — and on your plate with a good dab of salty butter.
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SACRAMENTO
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T TAHOE
Lake Tahoe is a problematic treasure. The legendary clarity of its water has dimmed, from 102 feet in 1968 to 62.7 feet in 2019. The rugged serenity that sets it apart attracts 3 million annual visitors to a destination with 72 miles of shoreline tightly ringed by a single road. So why is this 191square-mile, 1,645-footdeep body of water so prominent in Northern Californian iconography? A place that families return to year after year, and
travelers are compelled to visit at least once? Because after you endure the traffic and are lounging on a deck with an endless vista of green and blue, or dipping your feet into cold but impossibly refreshing water, every care seems to dissolve. Could have been: If you’re bored by the Sierra and blase about the northern coast, check out Trinity County — 3,200 square miles of captivating natural extremes.
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LAKE TA H O E
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U UNION SQUARE
The centerpiece of San Francisco’s retail district rivals any other cosmopolitan address this side of New York. It has endured a procession of blows from earthquakes to the construction of the world’s first large underground parking garage, the rivalry of suburban malls in one era and online shopping in another. The 2.6-acre plaza itself has been remade three times since 1900, the one constant being the 97-foot Dewey Monument at its center. Now there’s a more insidious threat: a pandemic that had the economic effect of thinning the streams of tourists and local patrons who traditionally fill the surrounding boutiques, theaters and hotels. But Union Square remains a defining element of the city — don’t count it out just yet. Academic also-ran: The virtues of the University of California system are many. But our previous coloring book featured Berkeley’s Campanile, so ...
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VOLCANO Until Mount St. Helens blew its top in Washington state in 1980, Lassen Peak in Shasta County was by far the most famous volcano in the continental United States. The 8,512-footpeak erupted roughly 300 times between 1914 and 1917, with hot lava at one point in 1915 spilling from a notch in the crater to form what one guidebook described as a “1,000-footlong-tongue.” Things are more sedate these days, though bubbling mud pots and steaming ground remind us that the volcano is still alive. According to the website for Lassen Volcanic National Park, volcanoes can be dormant after eruptions “for periods lasting centuries or even millennia.” On the other hand, given 2020’s track record so far, who knows what might come next. And then there’s: San Francisco’s controversial clutter of concrete, Vallaincourt Fountain.
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WINCHESTER MYSTERY HOUSE Rich people have long been drawn to our region. None left a mark like Sarah Winchester did. The heiress to the Winchester Rifle fortune moved west from Connecticut and in 1886 purchased an eight-room farmhouse in then-rural San Jose. She proceeded to expand and expand and expand it until her death in 1922, a crazy quilt of construction that’s now a tourist mecca. When Sarah died, the farmhouse had grown to 160 rooms and the occasional stairway leading nowhere, as well as 52 skylights, 47 fireplaces and six kitchens. We’ll never know why — one theory is that she was trying to elude the ghosts of gunfire victims — but I can assure you of this: No planning commission today would give a green light to such a project.
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Could have been: Every serious Northern California hiker, I’ll reckon, has seen some great waterfalls along the way.
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X XERISCAPE
Full disclosure: The word was coined in Colorado. But no state has embraced the notion of drought-tolerant landscaping like California, and you can see its mark all around us. The aim is a selection of local native plants that need minimal water. In Northern California, this means plenty of mulch and plants like rosemary, lavender and salvia. Potato vines and honeysuckle. Friendly-looking California poppies and fierce-looking agaves. Yes, xeriscape sounds daunting. In practice, it’s an easy way to beautify a front yard while lowering your water bill. What could be more appropriate for California than that? And then there’s: We considered the Exploratorium, but decided not to bend the rules. If only the punk band X hailed from Los Altos, not Los Angeles.
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YOSEMITE
Frederick Law Olmsted, the designer of New York’s Central Park and America’s most important landscape architect, was hired in 1865 by the state of California to make recommendations as to what should be done with Yosemite Valley and its precipitous surroundings. He presented his verdict after repeated visits: Protection and careful management was necessary to preserve a then-remote realm that constituted, he wrote, “the greatest glory of nature.” History has proved Olmsted right. Whether you’re taking in the tranquil glories of Tuolumne Meadows or feeling the moist cascade where Yosemite Falls descends 2,245 feet into the valley, the memories are ones not likely to fade. The national park has now grown to 1,169 square miles. Its grandeur has faded not one bit. Could have been: Alas, Yerba Buena Island never gets the attention it deserves.
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Y O S E M I T E
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ZINFANDEL
Viticulturists have dispensed with the romantic notion that Zinfandel grapes are native to Californian soil. The red grapes in fact have a lineage that traces back to Croatia, and they apparently arrived here in the 1840s from Vienna by way of Massachusetts. No matter. The peppery nectar is a testament to our state’s agricultural legacy, grown by generations of immigrants for their own enjoyment — not just in the now-marquee locales of Sonoma and Napa but in the sandy soils of such workaday settings as Lodi and eastern Contra Costa County. Overwhelming or elegant, depending on the maker, Zinfandel is a Northern California icon to be savored. Yes, in more ways than one.
The runner-up: When it opened in 2003, the Alfred Zampa Memorial Bridge between Crockett and Vallejo was the nation’s first major suspension bridge built in 30 years. Zampa was an ironworker who almost died during construction of the Golden Gate Bridge, but lived to ply his trade until he retired in 1970. This 3,465-footspan is a fitting tribute.
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ZINFANDEL
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