Historic Sites

We've heard of historic houses, historic battlefields, even entire neighborhoods that inspire preservationists. But are we ready for historic freeways? Los Angeles this week is hosting the nation's first conference about saving historic roads across America while still ensuring driving safety.

For nearly half a century, this town just north of Berlin was notable for little besides its sprawling East German National People's Army base, its badly polluted soil and its memorial to the victims of the Nazis, laid out in a small triangular yard where the barracks of the Sachsenhausen concentration camp once stood.

For a generation, you could get Pasadena preservationists sputtering mad with two words: Plaza Pasadena. Opposition to the shopping mall, which commands three blocks along Colorado Boulevard in the heart of downtown, helped ignite the city's modern preservation movement when it was built in the 1970s. Foes view the mall as a behemoth that stole the soul from their historic downtown. To this day, critics consider it a point of pride never to have set foot in the place.

It took 28 years, $13.7-million and hundreds of volunteers, but the hills and sandstone ramparts south of Santa Susana Pass finally became a state historic park Tuesday. With loud cheers from the audience, the California State Park and Recreation Commission voted unanimously to recognize the 670-acre tract's storied past, where Native Americans once performed sacred rituals and stagecoaches trundled across steep rock roads.

Lining the shelves of this doctor's office are Doan's pills for aches, hair milk for dandruff, and a swamp root laxative. No one at the Howe-Waffle House is prescribing those long-expired medicines, which date to the late 1800s and are still in their original containers. Nor is anyone using the antique medical instruments. Rather, they are part of a newly expanded display at the historic house in downtown Santa Ana to re-create the working conditions of Dr.

Native Americans once built a thriving village in the shadow of the jutting boulders here. Later, Mexican settlers raised adobe homes. Then came the stagecoaches, rattling across steep and rocky roads. Now, the 670-acre site of grassy trails and sandstone bluffs tucked in the hills above Chatsworth is set to take on its next role: the state's newest historic park.

Native Americans once built a thriving village in the shadow of the jutting boulders in what is now Chatsworth. Later, Californios raised adobe homes. Then came the stagecoaches, rattling across steep and rocky roads. Now, about 670 acres of grassy trails and sandstone bluffs tucked in the hills above Chatsworth are set to take on their next role: the state's newest historic park.

They circled the Wal-Mart shipping trailers Friday for President Clinton's homecoming--his first post-election trip beyond Washington's Beltway. "This is where I started," he reflected. The president flew to Arkansas, where he attended an airport dedication, after stoking more home state memories in a White House ceremony with the "Little Rock Nine"--the black students who integrated Central High School in 1957.

The place where Civil War Gen. Stonewall Jackson launched his famous flank attack against Union troops during the Battle of Chancellorsville has been preserved by the National Park Service. The Park Service paid $775,000 for 40 acres of private land to be included in the Fredricksburg-Spotsylvania National Military Park. Vast fields and dense woods that were Civil War battlefields blanket much of Spotsylvania County, and large chunks of land remain in the hands of private owners or developers.

The sound-and-light show in the ruins of this ancient Mayan city was about to begin when the plaza lights suddenly dimmed and the stars came out--and I do mean out. I have looked into the night sky in countless corners of the world, and I have never seen as many stars as over Chichen Itza.