In 1906 promoter Fred Swanton transformed his dance hall by the sand into a duplicate of Brooklyn's Coney Island, holding the first Miss America Pageant there in 1920. Sadly, video games replace antique arcade games. National Historic Landmarks:
1911 carousel with 73 of Charles I D Looff's hand-carved horses and an 1894 342-pipe Ruth and Sohn organ. You can still grab a brass ring and get a free ride.
1924 Giant Dipper Roller Coaster Looff's son built, with tall wood-frame arches.
Monterey Bay, designated a National Marine Sanctuary in 1992, including Moss Landing and Ano Nuevo State Park as well as its aquarium and offshore kelp forests, is larger than Yosemite. 90 miles south of San Francisco's airport, Santa Cruz also hosts the red brick Mark Abbott Memorial Lighthouse and Surfing Museum. Surfing arrived in California around 1900 when Hawaiian princes attended California's private schools. A local surfers' culture quickly evolved in Santa Cruz, where surfing is strongest perhaps due to colder water and higher waves. Inland, second-growth trees of 2 state parks replace coast redwoods, world's tallest trees, extensively logged in the 1880s.
Hearing The Desert's Call
MOJAVE NATIONAL PRESERVE - With only lazy Joshua trees and hovering buzzards bearing witness, this isolated expanse of high-desert plain is one of Earth's quietest places. By day the heat hammers hard, whistling wind the only discernible noise, nightfall's eerie silence pierced by a wandering burro's woeful bleat. But wait. There's another sound. Along a line of wooden power poles running to the horizon in both directions, 14 miles from the nearest paved road a pay phone beckons with the shrill sound of impatient civilization. It rings again. And again. And yet again, dozens of times a day. A bored New Zealand housewife. A German high school student. A Seattle stockbroker. A trucker dialing from the road. A San Bernardino pizza deliveryman. A Denver bill collector given a bum steer while tracing a debt. At all hours of day and night they call this forlorn desert outpost, the Mojave Phone Booth. Here's a curious caller now:
"Hello? Hello? Mojave Phone Booth?" asks an unemployed South Carolina computer worker. Told by a reporter answering the line he's indeed reached the world's loneliest phone booth he exclaims: "I can't believe it! Somebody answered! Somebody's out there!" Callers everywhere connect with the innocuous booth located not far from the California-Nevada border, along a winding treacherous dirt road accessible only by 4-wheel-drive vehicles. Out here where summer temperatures soar to 115 degrees and cattle wander by toward a nearby watering hole, there's rarely anyone on hand to answer calls. Persistent callers don't care. If someone does pick up, so much the better. Some answerers are previous callers who, for reasons sensible only to them, feel compelled to visit the booth.
Internet craze
We drive to nowhere for no reason, meeting fellow Netizens sharing childish glee over a phone booth in the middle of nowhere. The phone, installed in the 1960s and once operated with a hand crank by nearby volcanic-cinder miners and other desert denizens, is popularized by the Internet. The craze began when a desert wanderer noticed a phone icon on a Mojave road map. Curious he drove from Los Angeles to investigate and wrote to a counterculture magazine describing his exploits and including the phone number. A computer entrepreneur created the first of several Web sites dedicated to the battered booth, beaming word to computers everywhere. Web sites multiplied when creators saw the phone on other sites and after calling numerous times documented their own pilgrimages. Phone booth callers, Web site owners and Internet intellectuals try to figure out why this far-flung phone grips the imagination of those coming across it. New York City concert pianist Mark Thomas' website lists thousands of pay phone numbers worldwide, including the Mojave Desert phone.
Listening post
The phone booth's windows were long ago blasted out by desert gunslingers desperate for something to shoot at, its coin box deactivated so only incoming calls and outgoing credit card calls are possible. Fans take the neglected old booth under their wing. Signs read "Mojave Phone Booth - you could shoot it, but why would you want to?" and "If you call it, they will come." It evolved into a worldwide Rod Serling listening post, captivating countless callers. A San Bernardino man's wife reluctantly let him take a long-distance shot at reaching someone at the phone to see what happens. An Atlantan heard of the phone by e-mail. The Holy Spirit instructed a spiritual wanderer to visit the desert and answer the phone. The Texas native camped 32 days at the booth, fielding over 500 calls from people like Bubba in Phoenix and Ian in Newfoundland and repeated calls from Sgt Zeno at the Pentagon. The phone keeps ringing. Not providing statistics, Pacific Bell said the phone has low outgoing use. Locals sometimes use the booth for business or messages. Some say calling the booth attempts to create community in a disconnected world. Others view it as phone fetish, long-distance voyeurism, reaching out and touching anonymous strangers. Other calls are from sheer get-a-life boredom. What most interesting thing could happen by calling a pay phone? Someone you have absolutely no connection with answers. You exchange names and the weather. One calling from work to wake up the coyotes was shocked anyone was there to answer. Modern times pass us by. It's romantic, the idea it's out there.