11-28-2010, 03:48 PM
I think the California Northern is located closer to Sacramento than So. Cal. That would be about 400 miles north of Los Angeles. California has a number of climates that are partly cause by the change in latitude. The state is over 800 miles long. The biggest factor in our climates are the mountain ranges. Mt Shasta and Mt Lassen in the extreme north of the state are the southern tip of the Cascade range that runs through Oregon & Washington. There is what is called the Coast Range that runs the entire length of California along the coast from right overlooking the ocean to as much as 10 miles inland from the beach. The 10 miles is the western most part of the range, it may be 20 - 50 miles wide. The coast range is fairly low mountains, typically less than 3000 feet high, although there may be some individual peaks that are taller. To the east side of the state coming south from the Cascade range are the Sierra Nevada Mountains. They are the tallest mountains in the state. Mt Whitney is the tallest at just below 15,000 feet, but the average is probably 10,000-12,000 feet elevation. Just to the North of Los Angeles are the San Gabriel Mts. that continue East to the San Bernardino Mts. and the San Bernardinos turn South and continue almost to the Mexico border. They average 8,000-10,000 feet in elevation. The Sierras are snow covered year round, the rest of the mountains may not get snow. The San Bernardino &San Gabriels will get snow that all melts by the end of May or beginning of June. The Coast range is too close to the ocean and not high enough to get snow, but may get some in the extreme north part of the state. All of the mountains will block rainfall to some extent the higher ranges more than the low coast range. Everything east of the Mountains is dessert, getting less than 6 inches or so of rain in a year. Southern California south of the San Gabriel Mts. is semi arid averaging about 13 inches of rain per year. North of the San Gabriels and west of the Sierras, they receive a lot more rain, anywhere from 20-30 inches to over 200 inches per year. In addition the central Valley from Bakersfield to just south of Mt Lassen is the watershed from melting snows in the Sierras. There are three rivers in the central valley. The San Juaquin river flows North from around Bakersfield to the Delta while the Sacramento River and the American River flows south from the north end of the valley. These rivers meet in the delta area just west of Sacramento and flow into San Francisco Bay. The result is that the northern part of the state is much more green and lush than the southern part.
In terms of history, the Spanish established the missions about the same time as the English landed in Massachusetts. The Spanish never went very far inland except to go behind the mountains into the valley between San Luis Obispo and San Jose. The Spanish never found the gold in California because the gold was mostly in the Sierra Nevada Mountains at least 200 miles east of where the Spanish went. The farthest north that the Spanish went was San Rafael just north of San Francisco. The Russians came to the areas farther north, but they also didn't go inland, they just established fur trading posts on the coast. Architecturally, the two common styles in the early 1900s-WW2 were Spanish Mission & the craftsman style for houses. The state population exploded during the gold rush starting in 1849. The early towns in the inland part of the state were built of wood, but very early on they found out that a fire would wipe out an entire town or city, so after rebuilding some of the gold rush towns 2 or 3 times they switched to brick construction. It wasn't until later that it was discovered that brick was lousy material for earthquake survivability. Following the Long Beach earthquake in 1933, the building codes were changed to make buildings more earthquake proof. In the case of brick buildings, they would cut out a section of brick about 2-3 feet wide every 15 or 20 feet in a building and pour in reinforced concrete to stabilize the brick. There also continued to be wooden warehouses. Following WW2 they started using more concrete tilt-up buildings and steel "Butler" buildings were popular for smaller commercial buildings. Pike stuff buildings are good for modeling the metal buildings. I'm not sure who makes tilt-ups, but they are pretty easy to make with styrene. Old cities will have a lot of brick buildings like DPM mixed with Butler buildings and tilt-up where brick buildings were knocked down to be replaced with a larger concrete warehouse.
During WW2, most of the military personnel going to or from the Pacific theater came through California both ways. The result was a second building boom where many new cities were built up. Orange county (where Disneyland is located) received it's name from the orange groves that made up most of the county lands. If you went outside of any city in Southern & Central California, the farmland would begin at the city limits. In the foothills, they would be cattle ranches. Following WW2 as G.I.s came back from the war, many moved to California, and the farmlands were displaced by new housing tracts. Commercial buildings in these new cities would be concrete tilt-up, steel, or stucco construction. The biggest problem with most model structures is not getting the right kind of commercial buildings, it is the houses. We don't get extreme weather in California, so I've never seen a shutter on any house out here.
This has gotten kind of long, but I hope the information is a help to someone wanting to model California and get it right.
In terms of history, the Spanish established the missions about the same time as the English landed in Massachusetts. The Spanish never went very far inland except to go behind the mountains into the valley between San Luis Obispo and San Jose. The Spanish never found the gold in California because the gold was mostly in the Sierra Nevada Mountains at least 200 miles east of where the Spanish went. The farthest north that the Spanish went was San Rafael just north of San Francisco. The Russians came to the areas farther north, but they also didn't go inland, they just established fur trading posts on the coast. Architecturally, the two common styles in the early 1900s-WW2 were Spanish Mission & the craftsman style for houses. The state population exploded during the gold rush starting in 1849. The early towns in the inland part of the state were built of wood, but very early on they found out that a fire would wipe out an entire town or city, so after rebuilding some of the gold rush towns 2 or 3 times they switched to brick construction. It wasn't until later that it was discovered that brick was lousy material for earthquake survivability. Following the Long Beach earthquake in 1933, the building codes were changed to make buildings more earthquake proof. In the case of brick buildings, they would cut out a section of brick about 2-3 feet wide every 15 or 20 feet in a building and pour in reinforced concrete to stabilize the brick. There also continued to be wooden warehouses. Following WW2 they started using more concrete tilt-up buildings and steel "Butler" buildings were popular for smaller commercial buildings. Pike stuff buildings are good for modeling the metal buildings. I'm not sure who makes tilt-ups, but they are pretty easy to make with styrene. Old cities will have a lot of brick buildings like DPM mixed with Butler buildings and tilt-up where brick buildings were knocked down to be replaced with a larger concrete warehouse.
During WW2, most of the military personnel going to or from the Pacific theater came through California both ways. The result was a second building boom where many new cities were built up. Orange county (where Disneyland is located) received it's name from the orange groves that made up most of the county lands. If you went outside of any city in Southern & Central California, the farmland would begin at the city limits. In the foothills, they would be cattle ranches. Following WW2 as G.I.s came back from the war, many moved to California, and the farmlands were displaced by new housing tracts. Commercial buildings in these new cities would be concrete tilt-up, steel, or stucco construction. The biggest problem with most model structures is not getting the right kind of commercial buildings, it is the houses. We don't get extreme weather in California, so I've never seen a shutter on any house out here.
This has gotten kind of long, but I hope the information is a help to someone wanting to model California and get it right.
