California
One of the Army's largest and busiest training ranges, infantry live and train in real battle-like conditions here. Tanks, personnel carriers, and helicopters are used in full-scale simulated battles, where the home force, known as the Krashnovians, act as...
The Four Aces is a film set on a public road in the desert north of Los Angeles. It is a lonely desert gas station/cafe/motel, and appears in film, television, and advertising. It is one of a few of these romantic desert gas station oasis type places,...
A chemical plant that manufactures sulfuric acid from waste acid and sulfur. Several incidents over the years have caused alarm in the surrounding community. In 1993, the plant emitted a cloud of sulfuric acid that covered an eight square mile area, and sent...
A large museum and research center of some repute, located on a graded hillside above the Sepulveda Pass in Brentwood.
Several people are known to have lived in a cavity, hollowed out, in and under this giant rock. In 1942, one occupant, an alleged German spy, blew himself up with dynamite as deputies were questioning him (the deputies survived, miraculously). Five years...
Productions filmed at this 700-acre movie and television ranch include "Zorro," "Little House on the Prairie," and "Swiss Family Robinson." It has been owned by the Disney company since the 1950's, and is one of several movie ranches in the Santa Clarita...
Goldstone is the largest tracking station in the Deep Space Network, which is composed of three installations located at roughly 120-degree intervals around the globe (with one at Madrid, Spain, and another at Canberra, Australia) for a continuous view of...
Gray Butte is probably the largest private unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) airport in the USA. It is General Atomic’s main test center, where the company’s Predator and Reaper UAVs are regularly flown. The company has operated for years out of the nearby El...
Graystone Mansion is probably the most-filmed mansion in the world, largely because it is vacant, and owned by the City of Beverly Hills, which encourages shooting there. It is also a rare case of an "authentic-looking" old world English mansion, unlike so...
Hamilton Field is the oldest of the recent base closure and conversion sites around the Bay, and an indication, perhaps, of the decades it can take for such redevelopment projects to come to fruition. Constructed in 1931 as a bomber base, it became a refugee...
For nearly 20 years this is the largest, in output, commercial solar power plant in the world, generating around 160 megawatts at its peak. It is one of three separately owned sites within 40 miles of one another, that make up the nine solar fields in the...
A radio astronomy observatory located in northern California, consisting of a series of six radio dishes spread out in a T formation. Operated by BIMA, a consortium of state universities (Berkeley, Illinois, Maryland). A major SETI (search for...
Hawes Auxiliary Field is a former World War II training field that became a communications facility, then a rave site, and is now mostly flat land. From the 1960's to the 1980's the site was part of the military's SLFCS and GWEN emergency communication...
In 1893, California Powder Works moved its black powder production from Santa Cruz to this then remote area, up the shore from the new Giant Powder Works plant. The company was later renamed Hercules, one of the first companies to be formed by judicial decree...
Hinds is the last of five major pumping plants along the Colorado River Aqueduct, which is one of the three major aqueducts that bring water to Los Angeles. The aqueduct was completed in 1941, and carries water 242 miles from Lake Havasu, on the Colorado...
Hunters Point, a heavily industrialized and contaminated Navy shipyard, is in the midst of the slow conversion to civilian use. It operated as a military shipyard from 1941 to 1974, servicing ships of all kinds, from submarines to aircraft carriers. After...
The Hyperion Wastewater Treatment Plant is the last stop for the liquid wastes flowing out of the City of Los Angeles. From the 4 inch pipes that connect to the homes of the city, to the 30 foot diameter trunk lines that connect to the plant, the city's...