A Photography Project
Built in the 1810s, Mission La Purísima Concepción, or La Purísima Mission, near Lompoc is the most completely restored of the California mission complexes and one of only two missions no longer governed by the Catholic Church.
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Alex Madonna started his construction company in 1935 while he was still in high school. The Madonna Inn, designed and built by Alex and decorated by his wife, Phyllis, opened as a motel inn with twelve rooms on December 24, 1958.
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Mission San Fernando Rey de España in Mission Hills was founded by Father Fermín Lasuén on September 8, 1797. It was the 17th of the 21 Spanish missions established in Alta California. Today the mission grounds function as a museum.
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The gap between So Cal’s two highest mountains, San Gorgonio Pass, is a natural wind tunnel. In 1982, wind energy development in the area was studied and approved. Since then, over 4000 wind turbines have become part of the landscape.
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Fr. José María de Zalvidea built El Molino Viejo, the Old Mill, in 1816 in the San Rafael Hills of present-day San Marino. The oldest commercial structure in So. California served as the grist mill for San Gabriel Mission until 1823.
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In 1911, three Danish immigrants from Iowa founded Solvang (Danish for ‘sunny field’) in the Santa Ynez valley to escape Midwestern winters. The 1947 Saturday Evening Post article “Little Denmark” sparked an ongoing tourism boom.
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In August 1919, Henry & Arabella Huntington signed a trust document that transformed their private estate in San Marino into a public institution that would become the Huntington Library, Art Museum & Botanical Gardens – The Huntington.
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