There are several things to consider that help explain what may seem like errors. This database has been compiled from a great many sources. Some, but not all of the sources, include old newspapers, old maps, contemporary data, books, railroad data, military data, etc. You will notice that some of the places have similar but different spellings because they have been, at one time or another, mentioned or recorded this way. Many of these places no longer exist or have been absorbed into larger towns or renamed or even flooded by the building of a dam. For example Talbert, in Orange County, is now the name of a street but at one time it was a community that was absorbed into Huntington Beach, as that city grew and annexed areas. Many places will appear to be in the wrong county or in multiple counties. This is due to their time in history. As counties were named or added there were many places that left one county to become part of a new county. Also some changes are due to redrawing of county lines. And it is also noteworthy that many cities and towns have been renamed, often more than once.
The advantage of this database is that when you are looking for a historical area you need to be able to locate where it was and also where it is now. The significance of this can change the area that you are looking in by miles. For example in the early to mid 1850's Palm Springs was named Twenty-nine Palms and contemporaneously Twenty-nine Palms was named Palm Springs. This could make a big difference in where you are looking. It is always important to research dates and to find out as much about a place as you can. It is my goal, for this database, to be able to make these searches more accurate. I have been researching facts about hundreds of legends and stories in California over the years and this database includes the results of this research.
As you are going through these pages please let me know if you find anything that I have omitted. I will be adding sites and locations as time goes by so please check back from time to time to see how it is progressing. The other interesting areas include: cemetery sites, graveyards, mines, prospect sites, ghost towns, railroad sidings, Indian camps, military sites, trading posts, lots of desert stuff from the Patton days, verifiable sites from stories and tales, plus a lot of miscellaneous items
Noteworthy is the fact that I have not included, for the most part, churches, schools, auditoriums, amusement parks, heliports, most buildings and some ocean or harbor related sites or a few other unrelated locations. I have included, from this list, any locations that are of historical interest.
Latitude is in the format DD/MM/SS and longitude
is in the format DDD/MM/SS.
(Degrees/Minutes/Seconds) This format was chosen since the primary markings on
USGS topographic maps is also in this format.
For those that use GPS units for recreation, please note: most contemporary uses of the GPS are using the WGS 84 datum while this database uses the NAD 27 CONUS datum as this is what is primarily used on USGS topographic maps. For most GPS units it is quite easy to change between datums. Consult your owners manual.
Press here to continue on to the database.