Four Points Bulletin

Travels north, east, south, and west of our Oceanside home base.

The Alabama Hills are situated in Owens Valley at about 5,000 feet elevation. It is one of twelve wildflower hotspots in the Eastern Sierras. More information can be found on page six in this great wildflower guide to the area.

Rancho Guajome is a super well preserved 19th century hacienda. It is a California Historical Landmark and is listed on the National Register of Historic Places, yet it is almost always completely empty. I don’t think there is a better location nearby for a quiet picnic.

In 1845, Jose Maria Orozco, a customs agent, boarded a horse-drawn wagon and headed north from Old Town to what is now Valley Center. There he took claim to 13,298 acres of land, a gift from the Mexican Governor of California, Pio Pico, who had handed out 800 similar land grants to other friends and …

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In 1915 a large claim of gold was found in Oatman, and so begun a quest to find more. Within fifteen years it was estimated that 36 million dollars worth of gold had been mined in the area. It became a ghost town, however, when the interstate was built, and Route 66 that runs through …

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Jerome is an old copper mining town, perched on the edge of the Black Hills of Arizona, one hour from Prescott. Jerome was founded in 1876, and was once known as the wickedest town in the west. I guess that’s what three million pounds of copper per month does to a town. There were 15,000 …

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Watson Lake was created in the early 1900s, one or two man made reservoirs at the Granite Dells (about four miles from Prescott). The Granite Dells is a 1.4 billion year old geologic feature of intriguing rounded boulders, rock layers shedding off over time like the layers of an onion. There is a 4.8 mile …

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The museum name is a mouthful, but very descriptive. The Miniature Engineering Craftsmanship Museum is a nonprofit organization dedicated to displaying and giving tribute to skillful work created by underrated craftsmen (and craftswomen). These craftspeople are artisans who have built something intriguing on a small scale. The museum opened in 2011, and since has grown …

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Indian monk and guru Paramahansa Yogananda founded the self-realization fellowship in Los Angeles in 1920. Through the fellowship he introduced millions of people to meditation and kriya yoga. He taught that the universe is “God’s cosmic motion picture”. The Encinitas retreat and gardens was opened almost two decades later, in 1937. The gardens, which are …

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