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Ho for California! The terminus of the first overland immigrant pack train destined for California was John Marshs adobe, Brentwood. Since 1841, East Contra Costa County has been a grain and fruit basket to the world, a recreational playground for resort living, and a home for health and family life. Its wheat was exported for brewing Guinness beer, and fresh apricots, peaches, and cherries still bring produce fanciers for summer harvest. Weekenders houseboat, wakeboard, and fish through the regions thousands of miles of delta waterways. This sentimental history of the communities of Brentwood, Bethel Island, Byron, Discovery Bay, Knightsen, and Oakley reveals the importance of these California Delta communities in settling and developing the Golden State.
The beautiful Brentwood area of Contra Costa County is the oldest continuously populated community in California inland from the great coastal centers. Californios eschewed this challenging portion of the Central Valley, so pioneering physician John Marsh established a permanent settlement here in 1837 at his Rancho Los Meganos. Soon, the burgeoning viniculture, wheat, orchard, and cattle operations attracted many Gold Rush miners back to their original agricultural callings, now in the California Delta. The 1860s arrival of British agribusiness concern Balfour Guthrie Investment Company soon established the largest grain-export and fruit-packing venture in the West. Brentwood Township, esta...
San Francisco's "opposite shore" is showcased for its maritime role in securing the city's financial preeminence. Located minutes from San Francisco by ferry or automobile, Contra Costa County provided deepwater ports for shipping agricultural, mineral, and manufactured goods around the world. Pacific commodity traders made use of these ports to ship products, ensuring California's unique global economic role. Immense wealth was created from goods shipped from maritime Contra Costa County, securing a vibrant economy from the Gaslight Era to the days of Haight-Ashbury.
Ho for California! The terminus of the first overland immigrant pack train destined for California was John Marsh's adobe, Brentwood. Since 1841, East Contra Costa County has been a grain and fruit basket to the world, a recreational playground for resort living, and a home for health and family life. Its wheat was exported for brewing Guinness beer, and fresh apricots, peaches, and cherries still bring produce fanciers for summer harvest. Weekenders houseboat, wakeboard, and fish through the region's thousands of miles of delta waterways. This sentimental history of the communities of Brentwood, Bethel Island, Byron, Discovery Bay, Knightsen, and Oakley reveals the importance of these California Delta communities in settling and developing the Golden State.
Today's Lafayette is a modern East Bay suburb with a long and intriguing history of people, agriculture, and commerce. The story began in the summer of 1846, when Elam Brown and 13 families left St. Joseph, Missouri, in wagon trains and embarked on a sixmonth journey west to establish new homes and lives. By February 1848, Brown and his family had purchased the Rancho Acalanes in Contra Costa County from a San Francisco financier and had established the settlement that would later became Lafayette. Gradually Brown sold his land to other settlers, and the community began to grow. Eventually homes, stores, roads, schools, and churches were built. In these pages, the genesis of Lafayette, along with the story of its creators and early residents, is revealed in stirring early imagery.
Byron Hot Springs is sometimes called the "Carlsbad of the West," after the famed European health spas. The resort hosted the famous, the wealthy, the infirm, and the curious alike during the early 20th century. The 160-acre property, in eastern Contra Costa County near the San Joaquin River, featured three grand hotels designed by renowned San Francisco architect James Reid. Amidst this stylish backdrop were prominent guests in 19th-century finery, early Hollywood royalty, Prohibition entertainments, mineral water "cures" for various ailments, and secret interrogations of World War II POWs (when it was known as "Camp Tracy"). Aside from the hot springs themselves, the resort boasts one of the oldest golf courses in the western United States.
A directory of contact information for organizations in genealogical research and how to find them.
Welcome to the delta--California style! Over 1,000 miles of waterways lure sportsmen, boaters, and outdoor enthusiasts to the largest estuary in the western United States, surpassed nationally only by the Mississippi River Delta. For generations, the promise of lazy summer days has beckoned travelers to cruise the mighty Sacramento and San Joaquin Rivers. Along with vacationers, however, agricultural users and commercial vessels from around the globe share in the California Delta's bounty. Over 23 million Californians rely on the delta watershed for drinking water, and diversions sustain the largest agricultural industry in the nation. The small towns dotting the sloughs from Collinsville to Stockton to Walnut Grove tell of a simpler time, while today's delta faces such challenges as wildlife-habitat restoration, water rights, housing development, and politics. Complicating these issues, aging levees throughout the low-lying region threaten a disaster of national proportions--and with that prospect, the very future of the California Delta.
TrunkWax: Delahunt at Large begins in the small Northern California town of Pylewood, when Jim Delahunt finds himself trapped by his wife at the bottom of an empty ten-thousand-gallon pickle barrel. Employing tricks acquired from over fifty years of experience as a merchant seaman, machinist, and cattle rancher, he frees himself and hooks up with two disgruntled buddies: a cowboy with two bad knees and a tightly wound organic farmer. Together, they hatch a plot aimed at getting him revenge, earning money for a double knee replacement for the cowboy, and commercializing TrunkWax, a microbial concoction that the organic farmer believes will revolutionize fruit cultivation. When Delahunts part of the plan takes him to China, he gets kidnapped in Inner Mongolia by a Manchurian ex-cop. He is subsequently rescued by a group of international polo players, flown back to the United States, and reunited with his wife. Over breakfast, they both realize his incarceration in the barrel was pretty much the result of poor marital communication.