California is the most populous of the fifty United States. It’s also arguably the most diverse— so diverse that plans to split it into two (or more) states have been proposed (and rejected) over 220 times since statehood in 1850*. The natural wonders of California include coastal views as beautiful as any in the world, mountain ranges, vast deserts, pristine lakes, and a plethora of national parks. California has the lowest point in North America (in Death Valley), 128 kilometers from the highest point in the continental United States (Mount Whitney). And there are numerous man-made attractions, permanent and otherwise.
It’s no exaggeration to say that California offers enough photographic and travel opportunities for several lifetimes— much of which could be wasted negotiating urban traffic and shortened by smog, for which California is also famous. Since I’ve lived my entire life in Southern California, a large proportion of this Web site is devoted to places in my home state. In addition to these travel essays, I took many of the pictures on the Scenery and Fine Art pages in California.
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NORTH COAST 
Rugged Coastline, Redwoods, and Victorian Houses Larger version of picture |
Authentic Historical Reconstruction Larger version of picture |
*The most recent proposal for splitting the state, advocated by Riverside County Supervisor Jeff Stone in 2011, would carve out thirteen specially-selected counties into a new state of South California. Eleven of those counties are inland, rural, and agricultural; but the other two are the coastal and heavily urban San Diego and Orange Counties. What these seemingly strange bedfellows have in common is their overwhelmingly Republican voter registration.
Not surprisingly, this proposal mainly appeals to “tea party” Republicans, who believe that the liberals in the Democratic-dominated Legislature (and the liberals who vote for them) are entirely to blame for all of California’s problems. Presumably, South California would offer an ideologically-pure conservative utopia, free of welfare recipients and illegal aliens, where corporations unencumbered by regulation and taxes would at last be able to trickle down their prosperity to every nook and cranny of the state (though maybe not to the many migrant farmworkers). And two more conservative Republican Senators would be nice as well. Although Mr. Stone’s concerns about California being “ungovernable” have extensive historical precedents (and even some validity), his proposal seems primarily motivated by opportunism and partisan politics. I don’t think it has any more chance of succeeding than the more than 220 previous attempts to split California.
One secession proposal did show some early promise. Residents of counties in the Far North of California, along with several Oregon counties, were upset that the legislatures in Sacramento and Salem consistently ignored their requests for road improvements. They issued a somewhat tongue-in-cheek “Proclamation of Independence” as the new State of Jefferson at the end of November 1941. Unfortunately, the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor on 7 December pre-empted any news coverage of their proclamation. The war suspended any further efforts toward establishing the new state; and new roads built after the war made the reason for secession moot. But vestiges of the proposed State of Jefferson remain. The State of Jefferson Scenic Byway runs 175 kilometers from Yreka (the proposed state capital) to O’Brien, Oregon. And the Jefferson Public Radio network serves the state’s proposed territory.
From a travel perspective, California effectively is two states. That’s due to geography rather than politics. Los Angeles is 560 kilometers from San Francisco. That’s an hour by air— which in reality means at least four hours if you include getting to and from the airport and allowing sufficient time to play your obligatory shoeless walk-on role in the TSA’s Security Theatre production. Or it’s a six-hour drive, if you travel continuously on boring Interstates at top speed and don’t need to stop.
It’s theoretically possible to travel between the two cities on Amtrak. Rail fans who have lots of time might find this appealing, but I doubt anyone else would consider it a practical option. The closest thing to a direct train is the notoriously tardy Coast Starlight, which crawls once a day in each direction between Downtown Los Angeles and Emeryville, on the way to and from Seattle. A bus ride across the Bay completes the twelve-hour trip. Amtrak also offers several risible alternatives involving various combinations of trains and buses, which take between nine and a half and twelve hours. A project to build a high-speed train link between Southern California and the Bay Area is in the early planning stages. But this very costly scheme is so mired in politics, bureaucracy, and NIMBYism that I would bet against it becoming operational in the lifetime of most people reading this.
So where is the dividing line between the “two Californias”? There isn’t one! San Francisco is clearly in Northern California, Los Angeles and San Diego are clearly in Southern California. But that distinction gets very blurry in the central part of the state. Travel authors draw the boundary arbitrarily and inconsistently, based on what they consider most convenient for organizing or dividing up their books. So I’ve arbitrarily bisected the state along a rather fuzzy imaginary line that runs from the north end of the Monterey Peninsula on the coast to the northern boundary of Death Valley on the Nevada border.
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