Posts by Mike McPhate

Every few weeks or so, the crackle of musket fire echoes across the golden fields of California as men clad in uniforms of the Union and Confederate armies face off in pretend battles. Never mind that the state is located more than 150 years and a world away from the main theaters of the conflict:…

Rebellions have been quashed through bloodshed, blockades, and subterfuge. Rough and Ready fretted over its liquor supply. Nestled in the foothills northeast of Sacramento, The Great Republic of Rough and Ready was established on this day in 1850 by gold miners fed up with taxation and lawlessness. The tiny new nation — whose peculiar name was borrowed from…

Basketball is an obsession in Lithuania, and in 1991 the newly independent nation wanted nothing more than to showcase its talents on the world stage at the 1992 Barcelona Olympics. But the Baltic nation of fewer than 3 million people, still recovering from Soviet efforts to crush its rebellion, had no money. Then, in an…

We’ve been through shutdowns like this before. In September of 1918, a global flu pandemic made entry into California. As with the coronavirus, the first cases were detected among travelers — a man who had returned to San Francisco from a trip to Chicago and seamen aboard a vessel that arrived to the harbor in…

Earl Warren was born in Los Angeles on this day in 1891. As a Bay Area prosecutor, California attorney general, California governor, and Chief Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court, Warren was the rare sort of public official who was broadly admired across the political spectrum. But he had his enemies, notable among them another…

The British artist George Townley creates gorgeous illustrations of Southern California’s architectural gems, work that was highlighted in the California Sun a couple years ago. Townley, 23, became enamored of California while attending Cal State San Marcos on a study abroad program a few years back. Using a stylus in Photoshop, he created drawings of…

The Sutro Baths, a glass palace of swimming pools to rival those of ancient Rome, opened in San Francisco on this week in 1896. The recreation center was dreamt up by Adolph Sutro, a silver mining magnate and San Francisco mayor who was inspired by the idea that the finer things in life should be available…

Sutro Baths, a glass palace of swimming pools to rival those of ancient Rome, opened in San Francisco on this week in 1896. The recreation center was dreamt up by Adolph Sutro, a silver mining magnate and San Francisco mayor who was inspired by the idea that the finer things in life should be available…

About 11,700 years ago, the last Ice Age was petering out, woolly mammoths still roamed the earth, and a tenacious little shrub sprouted in the Mojave Desert. Known as King Clone, the plant is still alive today and is regarded as one of the oldest living things on Earth. A creosote, the desert shrub achieved…

Theodor Geisel was born on this day in 1904. Better known as Dr. Seuss, the creator of Sam-I-Am, the Grinch, and the Cat in the Hat spent most of his adult life in La Jolla. Nearly 30 years after death, his work remains a juggernaut of juvenile fiction. His 45 books have amassed well more than half…

John Steinbeck, born in Salinas on Feb. 27, 1902, wrote a series of articles as a young man for the San Francisco News about labor unrest in his hometown. A bloody crackdown on striking lettuce workers in 1936 inspired in Steinbeck a quest to give voice to the oppressed and resulted three years later with his masterwork…

It was only three months after the attack on Pearl Harbor, and the West Coast was gripped by fears that the Japanese would storm the beaches at any moment. Then, on Feb. 24, 1942, an alarm was issued: Something strange had been spotted over the skies of Los Angeles. A total blackout was ordered. As…

Pictured above is a rare contemporaneous depiction of a pivotal event in California history. Painted by Chumash Indians in the Santa Monica Mountains, the imagination-stirring scene is widely believed to tell the story of the first meeting between the tribe and Spanish settlers led by either Juan Bautista de Anza or Gaspar de Portola in…

“I knew that to have a prayer, to survive, I had to hit the water feet first.”— Slim Lambert In the 1930s, it was pretty much expected that any major construction project would result in a handful of deaths. But with the country in the clenches of the Great Depression, men eagerly lined up for jobs…

“Never treat a war like a skirmish. Treat all skirmishes like wars.”— L. Ron Hubbard Scientology was established in Los Angeles in February of 1954. A religion started by a science fiction author-turned-prophet who taught that humans are infested by brainwashed alien spirits banished to earth by a galactic dictator named Lord Xenu 75 million years ago,…

Paul Williams, the trailblazing Black architect, was born in Los Angeles on Feb. 18, 1894. Orphaned young, he was raised by a family friend who marveled at the boy’s intelligence, telling him he could do anything. When he announced his ambition to become an architect, however, there was skepticism. Black people won’t be able to afford…

On Feb. 12, 2004, Gavin Newsom, then mayor of San Francisco, directed city clerks to issue the nation’s first marriage licenses to same-sex couples. His stand was a lonely one. A mere four years earlier, Californians had voted by a resounding margin to restrict marriage to one man and one woman. Some in the 36-year-old mayor’s inner…

East Coast — ivy-covered brick, formal spaces, brownstone stoops. West Coast — walls of windows, pergolas, outdoor rooms. California not only thinks different than other places, it looks different. While the state’s design aesthetic is no one thing — formed as it is by a diverse collection of actors — certain themes appear. Simon Sadler, a…