Valley'scape

California's heartland is one, big, relatively flat, open expanse. It's home to several million people, mostly clustered in the handful of bigger cities - Redding and Red Bluff to the far north, Chico, Oroville, and Marysville/Yuba City to the not-so-far north, Sacramento, Stockton, and Modesto at its core, Fresno and Bakersfield, to the far south. In between, there may be a hundred small cities and even smaller towns and placenames.


Many of the communities have histories going back to the mid 1800s, especially those that grew up along railroads or were already located at crossroads of trails and natural trading routes.


The residents either grow something for a living - farming, crops, orchards of fruits and nuts, dairy and ranching - or those who commute into the larger cities to spend their workday. Central Valley...Great Valley...Big Valley. The long way across, it's well over 400 miles long. The short way, side to side, it's 60 miles wide. Growing up, it was this gap between "here" in the SF East Bay Area, and "there" in the Mother Lode foothills and the grand Sierra Nevada beyond. At some point, after we moved out here, I realized there were some worthwhile scenes and settings out here in the flatlands.








Old farmsteads... Orchards...



Backroads...