SoCal Outdoor Explorer

SoCal Outdoor Explorer 🌲 SoCal’s hidden places & lost history
🏚️ Abandoned sites, ruins & forgotten stories
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09/13/2026

Found deep in the San Gabriel Mountains at a gold mine that operated around 1939 to 1942. What’s a fancy car doing out here? And what kind of car do you think it was?

09/12/2026

Most people know Alcatraz as the famous prison, but before that, it was built for defense.

In the 1850s, the Army constructed a four-story citadel on the island to help protect San Francisco Bay. It was later torn down to its foundation in 1909 to make way for the prison.

And part of that original fortress still sits beneath the cellhouse today.

Credit: Moving Image Research Collections, University of South Carolina; Heritage Documentation Programs / Historic American Buildings Survey, National Park Service.

09/08/2026

Sailors didn’t just look for any light in the darkness. They could match the flash pattern to the official Light List, where each lighthouse was listed with its own light characteristic.

For Point Vicente Lighthouse, it’s listed today as Fl (2) W 20s, meaning two white flashes every 20 seconds. The U.S. Coast Guard publishes these Light Lists for navigational aids like lights, sound signals, buoys, and daybeacons.

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