Historic Places Archives

Participating In The Annual Sacramento Historic Archives Crawl

October 26, 2019

For my dual enrollment U.S. History class, my teacher offered an awesome extra credit opportunity; participating in the free annual Sacramento Archives Crawl in October. This year’s theme was “Preserving the Struggle: Archives and Activism,” so displays in each location focused on activism and social change in the area, along with additional Sacramento and California history.

My family and I love learning about history wherever we travel to, especially when it’s interactive and hands-on! Naturally, we had to attend this event (not just for extra credit), but we had no idea how spectacular it would turn out being.

Cave of the Winds Mountain Park

August 2, 2018

I had so much fun in Manitou Springs at Cave of the Winds Mountain Park doing all kinds of activities. A lot of people just come for the cave or only know about the cave, but there’s so much to do when visiting. There are various rides, a ropes course and rock wall, and the different cave tours where you learn a lot about the different aspects of the cave. Inside the cave tour building there’s also food and a gift shop.

The nice thing was that we bought the wristbands so we could do the rides and course as many times as we wanted. We spent so much time here doing all the activities, but it did get cut short when it began to rain like crazy along with insane winds. Luckily since it’s a cave tour, you don’t notice the rain!

Petrified Forest National Park in Less Than Two Days

June 4, 2018

We had just been at Grand Canyon National Park which was insanely crowded, so we were very happy to come to Petrified Forest National Park for some much smaller crowds. Petrified Forest is one of the smaller national parks in he United States. Most people overlook it, but it was actually way cooler than I thought it was going to be. This national park is a must see because of its uniqueness and factor of surprise. Because of its size, you can do the whole park in less than two days and still see everything the park has to offer. What’s really cool is that the park has two very different sides to it; the petrified side and painted desert side.

Desert View Drive in Grand Canyon National Park

April 3, 2018

One of the first thing we did in Grand Canyon National Park was the lookouts and activities along the Desert View Drive. This road has 6 official lookouts, a bunch of other pull outs for spectacular views, the Tusayan Ruins and museum, and at the end is the Desert View Watchtower. We explored everything the road has to offer in just over half a day.

The road is 100% accessible with your own vehicle which allowed us to have our ice chest and lunch at some pretty awesome lookouts. In addition to the pullouts and other sites, there are some picnic spots to stop at too.

Explore Point Bonita Lighthouse

February 26, 2018

Point Bonita was the 3rd lighthouse on the West Coast and it’s still in use today! The lighthouse is small with only two tiny rooms, but it’s still worth checking out. The lighthouse itself, views, and hike out are awesome and can be a quick or lengthy depending on how long you want to stay.

From the lighthouse and before the bridge, you can see seals below and a small sea arch. Across the way, is the Golden Gate Bridge and from this advantage point, you can see the whole city behind it. The scenery and picturesque views are one of the best parts of this stop.

Historic Fort Point in San Francisco

February 20, 2018

As one thing on our San Francisco weekend trip, we walked to Fort Point (you can drive too) at the end of the Bay Trail at Crissy Field. For the longest time, we had no idea what this building under the Golden Gate Bridge was. Was it a part of the bridge? Was it a old closed down building? We had no idea until we went a little further past Warming Point and discovered it’s an old war fort that’s FREE to explore.

In Fort Point, you can explore everything because nothing is blocked off. There are three floors of cannon storage, a little museum, and old rooms, plus you can go to the roof for some incredible views. Getting deep into the fort, it’s gets kind of dark and creepy, but it’s really cool to see the historic building.

Road Trip Through Death Valley

November 27, 2017

Death Valley National Park is a lot different than what people typically picture in their minds when told it’s a desert. At least for me, I thought it was going to flat, dry, plain, and very sandy. Some parts are like that, but there’s a lot of variety throughout the massive park. There’s even a waterfall surrounded with greenery.

Death Valley Historic Mines

In Death Valley National Park and the small parts of Nevada close to the park, there are an abundance of abandoned mines. You can explore any of the mine holes you see, but be careful because we saw a sign that warned tourists about dangerous ruins, left over land mines, and more things like that. Throughout the park, if you look around on the mountains, there are a ton of holes all over the place. Those are the mine holes.

Black Chasm Cavern

April 1, 2017

Today, my family and I got to go and walk through Black Chasm Cavern in the city of Volcano, California. This cavern was a more vertical cavern and we had to climb a lot of stairs, but it was worth it to see this awesome cavern.

This cave was 225 feet, or 69 meters, including the clear blue lake at the very bottom of the cave. Black Chasm is mostly known for the millions of the helictites protruding from the walls, ceilings, and cracks in the cave. Helictites, unlike stalagmites or stalactites, can grow in any direction and are curly, wavy-like crystals formed from water pressure that bursts our and hardens. These make Black Chasm especially unique because it’s one of the very few caves that has helictites, and even fewer have this many.

Exploring Hearst Castle

November 25, 2013

Over Thanksgiving break, my family and I went to Pismo Beach and San Luis Obispo. While we were there, we spent one day exploring the famous Hearst Castle with Melanie, who is as close to a cousin as you can be without actually being related! When touring this 125 room mansion, we saw beautiful pools, rooms, furniture, gardens, and so much more.

Just before we reached Hearst Castle, we saw a bunch of cars pulled over on the side of the freeway, so we pulled over to see what they were looking at. When we hopped out of the car, THERE WERE ZEBRAS BY THE FENCE! It turns out that William Randolph Hearst at one point had his own private zoo. When it was getting shut down and the animals were being sent to zoos, his daughter let the zebras out and they have let them roam ever since!

We first stopped at the visitor’s center, browsed through the museum and store, and watched a movie about Hearst. Then we hopped on a bus that took us all the way to the top of the mountain where the extraordinary castle is built.

Get That Gold: Empire Mine Tour

May 18, 2013

My school doesn’t do any field trips, so we do them as a family on the weekends.

On one of our historical family day trips, we drove to Empire Mine. Empire Mine was one of the richest hard-rock mines in California, making 5.8 million ounces of gold from 1850-1956! People estimate that this is only 20% of the gold in the park and that 80% of the gold still remains in mountains, old mines, and under the park!

George Roberts was the original owner and discoverer of the mine, but he sold his mine to William Bourn Sr. in 1869. The Bourn family had control of the mine until they sold it to Newmont Mining in 1956. The Bourn cottage grounds include extensive lawns with fountains, a reflection pool, and gardens with a greenhouse! The Bourn gardens have about 13 acres and the roses have been restored with more than 950 bushes of 56 types. We even got to meet one of the living descendents of William Bourn! The park includes tours of the Bourn Cottage, the mineyard and living history events.

We got to see all of the different tools used for mining gold! The park has different mining tools and machines that we got to see when the mine was in action. We also got to check out the old mine shafts and mine carts. Mules sometimes pulled the mine carts full of gold back up and through the mines.

Death Valley Historic Mines

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