SoCal Outdoor Explorer

SoCal Outdoor Explorer Exploring Southern California’s hidden history. Documenting forgotten places, lost infrastructure, and unsolved secrets hiding in plain sight.
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Some locations are shared, others are protected.

12/19/2025

So what was this thing everyone was searching for? Ambergris.
Formed in the digestive system of s***m whales to protect them from sharp squid beaks, this waxy substance is eventually expelled and can wash ashore years later. Along the Southern California coast and around the world, people once searched beaches for it, prized for its ability to make perfume scents last longer. Today, possessing or trading ambergris is illegal in many places.
🎥 Footage courtesy of British Pathé

12/16/2025

Spotted over the Mojave Desert: this is Roc, the world’s largest airplane by wingspan.
Built by Stratolaunch in the Mojave, it was designed to carry and launch hypersonic vehicles at high altitude.
Its wingspan stretches longer than a football field, making it the widest aircraft ever to fly.

12/06/2025

Alright, someone out there knows the story—how did this even happen?

In 1916 Cornelius Johnson was a quiet fruit farmer in Big Tujunga Canyon who killed the last known grizzly in Southern C...
12/06/2025

In 1916 Cornelius Johnson was a quiet fruit farmer in Big Tujunga Canyon who killed the last known grizzly in Southern California. He saved the hide and the skull and sent them to a local taxidermist, not realizing he had just taken one of the rarest animals left in the state. What happened next turned into one of the strangest museum scandals in California history. The taxidermist hid the real skull, tried to sell a polar bear skull as if it came from Johnson’s grizzly, and the true skull disappeared forever. A simple act meant to protect his orchard became a mystery that has never been solved, and he never realized he had ended the story of the last Southern California grizzly.

12/04/2025

In 1976, a school bus carrying 26 students and their driver vanished. Twenty-seven hours later, the search led to this Livermore quarry, where they were found underground and rescued alive.

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