San Diego to Los Angeles

You're beginning a hundred-and-twenty-mile drive from San Diego to Los Angeles.

The Santa Fe Depot you're passing was designed by the architectural firm Bakewell and Brown, who later designed San Francisco's City Hall.

The hill visible just west of the freeway is where California as we know it began.

You're driving through La Jolla, which sits on a series of raised marine terraces carved by wave action over the last hundred thousand years.

The Torrey Pine is the rarest pine species in North America, with fewer than ten thousand trees in existence.

The Del Mar Thoroughbred Club just west of the freeway was co-founded by Bing Crosby in 1937. On opening day, Crosby personally greeted guests at the gate.

Batiquitos Lagoon, the body of water you're passing now, was the site of one of the largest coastal wetland restorations ever attempted in California.

The hillside east of the freeway here is the site of The Flower Fields, fifty acres of giant Tecolote ranunculus grown commercially since the 1920s.

You're entering Oceanside, a city of about 180,000 that exists largely because of the military but has a history that predates Camp Pendleton by centuries.

You're entering Camp Pendleton, one hundred and twenty-five thousand acres of Marine Corps training land established in 1942 to prepare troops for Pacific island combat…

The terrain you're crossing right now sits on a series of marine terraces — ancient seafloors lifted above the ocean by tectonic forces over the last few million years.

Those twin concrete domes ahead are the containment structures of the San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station, decommissioned in 2013 after a botched steam generator…

San Clemente was where Richard Nixon went to ground. He purchased La Casa Pacifica on the coastal bluffs in 1969, and it became known as the Western White House.

Mission San Juan Capistrano was founded on November first, 1776, making it the seventh of California's twenty-one missions.

The city around you, Irvine, is one of the largest master-planned communities ever built in the United States.

That massive illuminated halo atop a giant letter A marks Angel Stadium, built in 1966 for the expansion California Angels franchise.

That cluster of spires and the pointed Matterhorn peak rising above the roofline belong to Disneyland, which opened July 17, 1955, in a live television broadcast that…

Knott's Berry Farm, just west of the freeway, became America's first theme park — and it started with berries and fried chicken. In 1920, Walter Knott began farming here.

You're driving through Downey, which played a critical role in the Space Shuttle program.

You're approaching the East Los Angeles Interchange, the busiest freeway interchange on the planet. Over 550,000 vehicles pass through here every single day.

Los Angeles City Hall, completed in 1928, was specifically exempted from the city's own 150-foot height limit, rising to 454 feet with its distinctive tower.