Shoshone Indians

The U.S. Bureau of Land Management began rounding up hundreds of horses owned by two Western Shoshone sisters Thursday in the latest salvo in a decades-old treaty and land dispute. Temporary corrals were set up and livestock trailers were hauled to remote central Nevada as a crew in a helicopter searched for horses owned by Mary and Carrie Dann. BLM spokeswoman Jo Simpson described the animals as "scattered all across Crescent Valley and Pine Valley."

An anti-nuclear activist who smashed a crystal sculpture presented to former President Ronald Reagan in Las Vegas last year has been on the lam since June 2, when he was to surrender for a jail sentence in Northern California. Rick Paul Springer, whose last known address was in the North Coast city of Arcata, failed to turn himself in to begin serving four months at the Shasta County Jail in Redding, authorities confirmed Thursday.

Once called Three Flags Highway because it runs from Canada to Mexico, U.S. 395 at this time of year becomes a skiers' expressway. Southlanders crowd it to reach the slopes at Mammoth and June mountains and Lake Tahoe. Few travelers bother to pause en route at such Owens Valley towns as Bishop, Independence or Lone Pine. As a result, they bypass a number of interesting attractions. Along with the always spectacular views of Mt.

The Gold Rush may have begun up north at Sutter's Mill, but it was in Los Angeles that the first discovery of California gold was made, six years earlier in 1842. Another little-known fact: The speed of light was first measured from Mt. Wilson to Mt. Baldy in an experiment that Albert Einstein described as one of the most significant of this century.

At the edge of Mammoth Lakes, near the rental office of Snowcreek Condominiums, stand the rusty remains of a six-foot waterwheel. In 1878, in the hills just two miles to the west, this wheel powered the mill at the highly touted Mammoth Mining Co., from which Mammoth Lakes took its name. Predictions that Mammoth would yield even more gold than nearby Bodie, however, proved false, and within two years the wheel was idle. By the early 1900s the crowds were back, drawn not by gold but by trout.

Shirley Harding stood outside the remains of the old Harmony Borax Works holding a decorated teapot dug up from the nearby 1880s Chinese labor camp. It is one of 100,000 museum objects now carefully catalogued in a computer at the monument office, said Harding, the curator.

Larry Blackhair has spent three years encouraging more than 250 Indian tribes across the country to showcase their culture and commerce at the 2002 Winter Olympics. But when the world tunes into the Games next week, only the five tribes of Utah will be participating. Blackhair said no other tribes expressed interest in the Olympics. Some tribal leaders, however, said they were interested but never received effective guidance on how to participate.

Historic Anaheim offers tourists turrets, vintage lore and more. 11 to 11:40 a.m.: The Mother Colony House was the first house built in Anaheim and the first historic museum in Orange County. Out front of the modest residence, which dates to 1857, is a time capsule containing a recap of Anaheim's first 100 years; the capsule was buried in 1957 and (though 2057 would make infinitely more sense) will be opened in 2007. A plaque on the porch says that Madame Helena Modjeska and "Quo Vadis?"

In Leona Valley, a town with no sidewalks and no stoplights, a stray goat boarding a school bus makes news, schoolchildren walk sheep along the streets, and locals wave at strangers. "If you give a smile out, you get a smile back in return," said Carolyn Meramble, who has lived here seven years. "It's like Wavetown USA."