Historic Sites

Thousands of drivers pass over them every day as they cross the Los Angeles River -- 11 iconic bridges that link downtown to the neighborhoods and freeways lying east. Unless traffic is bumper to bumper, it's hard to appreciate their ornate splendor, the graceful Greek columns on the Olympic Boulevard Bridge or the Classical towers along the span at 4th Street.

The dining room of the Sunbury Plantation great house, its varnished mahogany table glittering with china, crystal, candles and silver, looks to be awaiting a banquet to celebrate a man of letters who has sailed in from the English mainland. In the cellar of the stately 300-year-old home, hand-tooled leather saddles, wrought iron carriages, horseshoes and buggy whips speak to yesteryears of wealthy white planters being squired about the island.

Disneyland's "Small World" will soon be getting a little more crowded. The Anaheim amusement park is planning to add iconic Disney characters to the anonymous international cast of the beloved 'round-the-globe boat ride. The idea has sparked outrage among the family of the attraction's original designer and prompted a preservation campaign for the ride, which opened in 1966 and closed for renovations in January. Walt Disney Co.

Randal Kleiser, director of the film "Grease," descended Sunday into a dark tunnel underneath the Sixth Street Viaduct strewn with garbage and covered in graffiti. On the other end was a downtown section of the Los Angeles River he last visited 31 years ago to film the movie's climatic drag-racing scene. "This is very surreal," Kleiser said, stepping on shards of glass. "It was clean and sparkly when we were here." As he exited the tunnel, Kleiser was struck with a rush of nostalgia.

After years of false starts and construction delays, the fabled Malibu Pier -- or at least part of it -- will reopen today. Built in 1905, the structure has been the scene of TV and movie filming ("The Rockford Files," "Gidget," "Beach Blanket Bingo") and celebrity sportfishing. It was used as a World War II lookout post. Later, Alice's Restaurant (inspired by the Arlo Guthrie song) served its famous B-52 cocktail to droves of visitors.

So much for Barack Obama's Kennedyesque moment in Berlin. Obama campaign officials say that the Democratic candidate has decided not to speak at the city's historic Brandenburg Gate, where President John F. Kennedy visited before famously declaring in June 1963, "Ich bin ein Berliner!" ("I am a Berliner!"

There's a ghost in my wine. I haven't always believed in ghosts. That's a recent development. In the spring, my wife, Jenn, and I headed to the Napa Valley for a seance, of sorts -- an attempt to summon the spirits of winemaking past. I'm not talking about ghouls, goblins or apparitions in flowing gowns. I'm talking about the ghost wineries that dot the valleys, mountains and benchlands of America's most famous winemaking region. So what exactly is a ghost winery?

At Badaling, the Great Wall rides the ridgelines like a dragon, its gray brick scales glinting and its crenelated spine writhing. Built at a strategic pass in the mountains north of Beijing, it crosses stout gates, plunges into narrow defiles, climbs back up to the heights and seems to go on forever. Long after this month's Olympic Games end in Beijing, people will flock to Badaling, where seeing is believing in the Ten Thousand Li Long Wall of ancient annals and legend.

When the bulldozers come to Ft. MacArthur next spring, Joe Janesic will take it personally. For more than two decades, the 40-year-old has been a mainstay of the historic military site in San Pedro that was built in 1914 and served as an Army post until 1974. He organizes events, conducts tours, handles media and even restores vintage phones -- all as a volunteer. A founding member of the Ft. MacArthur Museum, he has dedicated his life to preserving every relic on the grounds.

The place called Lumpkin's Slave Jail was indeed a jail, but it was much more than that. It was a holding pen for human chattel. In Richmond's Shockoe Bottom river district, the notorious slave trader Robert Lumpkin ran the city's largest slave-holding facility in the 1840s and 1850s. Tens of thousands of blacks were held in the cramped brick building while they waited to be sold. Those who resisted were publicly whipped.