Old-Fashioned Harvest

Learn two fascinating, yet obscure, California footnotes to World War II: a German-made crane which is the largest self-propelled floating crane berthed at Long Beach Naval Shipyard, and an incident involving a Japanese submarine that shelled the oil fields of Ellwood in Santa Barbara County in 1942.

The squeegee was such a simple invention, but like Kleenex and Jell-O, its name has become synonymous with all rubber-bladed window cleaners. Join Huell Howser as he visits the Ettore Corporation in Oakland to learn first-hand about squeegees developed in 1936 by Ettore Steccone.

Huell attends a lively recreation of an old-fashioned harvest near Modesto where the participants use vintage equipment and farming techniques while dressed in authentic attire.

Join in the centennial celebration of the arrival of the first steam train to this isolated mid-coastal town. As part of the celebrations, the town's citizens have recreated the events exactly as they happened a century before. Huell passes through the historic tunnels and tressels in a period steam engine as he descends into this festive town.

Before there was Disneyland and other large amusement parks, there was Busch Gardens. Huell goes to Pasadena where he literally uncovers the lost and largely forgotten original Busch Gardens, a botanical paradise, which amused visitors from 1905 to 1938.

Explore two of California's most interesting State Parks: the Providence Mountain State Recreation Area, located in the Eastern Mojave Desert, to see the famous Mitchell Caverns Nature Reserve; and the Indian Grinding Rock State Historic Park, in the Sierra Nevadas, where we see a Miwok Indians legacy in a vast rock covered with thousands of grinding pits.

A 1916 brochure called the town of Petaluma "The largest poultry center in the world" and up until the sixties, Petaluma was a major player in the world of chickens. In 1915, Petaluma shipped 11,681,134 dozen eggs. Huell travels to Petaluma to attend the annual Butter and Egg Days celebration, which ran from 1916 to 1928 and was brought back in the early eighties. Petaluma pulls out all the stops in this wonderful small town gathering. You won't want to miss the Cutest Chick costume contest.

Visit two unique outdoor California theaters with long traditions of their own. First stop is the Spreckles Organ in San Diego, the world's largest outdoor organ. Weekly summer concerts have been held there since 1915. Then we travel to the Pageant of the Masters in Laguna Beach, where the unique art form tableaux vivants, or "living pictures," is practiced to amazing effect.

California has a rich maritime history and has been at the forefront of naval warfare since the beginning. In this special one-hour adventure, Huell visits two aircraft carriers that are now museums in the waters of California.

Celebrate train travel at Railfair '91 at the California Railroad Museum in Sacramento, and ride the rails at Railtown State Historic Park in Jamestown in the scenic Mother Lode foothill country.

Huell travels to the Sacramento Delta to learn about California pears. We start our adventure with a family who has been farming in the Delta for five generations. The soil and climate have made the area a perfect place to grow agriculture since the Gold Rush. Huell ends up at the 26th annual Pear Fair in Courtland, where he eats everything from pear ice cream to pear vinegar.

Experience a recreation of everyday life in a 19th century Russian community at Fort Ross State Historic Park ; Sail aboard the state's official tall ship, the Californian, and see for yourself the site where Sir Francis Drake left a plate of brass when he landed on our California shore.

Founded along with the State of California itself, the California State Library houses precious artifacts from California's infancy. Huell gets a private tour of this rare collection which includes California's first newspaper, mirror images of the gold country from the 1850s, a 17th Century map of California and John Marshall's own hand-drawn map and sketch of gold discovery.

It's huge, metal and reaches across the Golden Gate, but it's not a bridge. Join Huell as he visits the site of the WWII antisubmarine net built to keep Japanese subs out of San Francisco. Long before the Tiburon Sub-Net Depot was there, this small piece of land across the bay from San Francisco had many incarnations. Among them were: home to Native Americans, an original Spanish Ranchero, the largest Codfish drying plant on the west coast, a coaling station for the Navy, and it was where the cables for the Golden Gate Bridge were spun.

Join Huell on this ancient adventure as he explores The Rosicrucian Egyptian Museum in San Jose. Architecturally inspired by the Temple of Amon at Karnak, it houses the largest collection of Egyptian artifacts on exhibit in the western United States -- including objects from pre-dynastic times through Egypt's early Christian era. Fascinated by the ancient culture, Dr. H. Spencer Lewis, began collecting Egyptian, Assyrian, and Babylonian artifacts over 65 years ago.

You all are probably wondering what a glass beach is? Well, as usual Huell discovers some of California's strangest gems, and on this trip Huell strolls two beaches that are a treasure hunters paradise. In the coastal town of Fort Bragg, Huell visits what the locals call, "Glass Beach," where you'll find a kaleidoscope of colored glass glittering in the Pacific surf: azure, scarlet, mauve, amber, amethyst and teal.

Travel to the sand dunes of El Centro where portions of a wooden plank road, which once stretched from Imperial County to Yuma, Arizona have been preserved; and attend a reunion at Camp Lockett, which brings together members of the last mounted unit in the Army.

Sit tight and watch the electrifying Annual Catalina Ski Race, a competition that has been ongoing for over 40 years, where "hot doggers" race in excess of 60 mph from Long Beach to Catalina Island and back; coast along to the serene and little-known San Nicolas Island-one of the Channel Islands off the California coast, a haven for wildlife and a sight for sore eyes.

Trace the lives of two men whose unique dreams in the early part of the century helped them to create two of our state's most amazing buried treasures. First, we visit the Underground Gardens of Baldasare Forestiere, an incredible labyrinth of tunnels, courtyards and vines. Next, we visit the Burro Schmidt Tunnel, where for 50 years an early pioneer of the Mojave dug a 2,000 foot tunnel through a mountain.

The largest island in San Francisco Bay is a heavenly sight to behold with its profusion of flora and fauna. But Angel Island also has a varied military history, including the detention of Chinese immigrants from 1910-1940. The episode examines this chapter of the island's past.

Before Disneyland, Walt Disney's enthusiasm for realistic model trains had evolved into an elaborate backyard live steam railroad. At the heart of his railroad was a quaint red barn, which was his center of operations. Now at home in Griffith Park in Los Angles, the barn is a gem in the collection of the Los Angeles Live Steamers, an organization of train enthusiasts dedicated to educating people in railroad history and lore, and to further the avocation of live steam, gas-mechanical and electronic railroad technology.

Many "Okies" fled the Dust Bowl in their jalopies with signs reading "California or Bust." Out of options, they often ended up at the " Weedpatch camp," a federal labor and living camp for migrant workers in Kern County. Huell visits this historic camp, later immortalized in John Steinbeck's "Grapes of Wrath," and talks with both the "Okies" who grew up there and the Latinos who now call it home.