Meet the Toughest Mountains in California

The Tehachapi Range May Intimidate High-Speed Rail Builders, but This Stubborn Barrier Actually Ties the State Together

Don’t mess with the Tehachapis.

California has taller mountain ranges, more famous mountain ranges, even more beautiful mountain ranges. But no mountains here are tougher—or more important—than the Tehachapis.

A mishmash of mid-sized peaks that extend some 40 miles across southern Kern County and north Los Angeles County, the Tehachapis effectively form the wall that defines our state. This is their paradox: The Tehachapis at once separate and connect California’s regions—north and south, valley and desert, Sierra Nevada and coastal range.

As a barrier, the Tehachapis—the name is often attributed to the …

The Fall Gusts That Bring Out L.A.’s Crazy

Why Are We So Fascinated By the Santa Ana Winds?

If you reside in Los Angeles, you’ve felt the heat of autumn and perhaps cursed the “devil winds,” the hot gusts that blow through the mountain passes in southern California …

Wet and Wild

The Chlorinated Water and Scantily Clad Bodies of Backyard Oasis: The Swimming Pool in Southern California Photography 1945-1982

 

No dream of Southern California is complete without a swimming pool. What started as a totem of status and privacy became, in the postwar years, an affordable luxury for middle-class …

But Who Gets Hemet?

Splitting California in Two Would Be Great, If It Made Any Sense

“Marriage is hard,” proclaimed New America Foundation Irvine Senior Fellow Joe Mathews. Schwarzenegger and Shriver couldn’t make it; Kim Kardashian and Kris Humphries survived just 72 days. But California has …

My Miracle-Mile-Adjacent Reverie

Memories of a Place That Was Almost Home

When my now-husband, Matt, and I started hunting for our first apartment together in Los Angeles, we looked at places that were, in L.A. real estate-speak, “adjacent”-as in Culver City-adjacent, …

Maybe It’s Time to Hate Riverside

A Zócalo Panel Contemplates California’s Newest Divides

What was traditionally California’s most heated rivalry–that of north versus south–may soon give way to a different divide. At an event co-presented by the Huntington-USC Institute on California and the …