Newsletter: The Lay of the Land: Archives: Winter 2000"Modern industries are
handling the forces of nature on a stupendous scale . . Woe to the
people who trust those powers in the hands of fools." - John
Wesley Powell
|
|||||
INDEX In the Gallery: Nellis Range Complex: Landscape of Conjecture CLUI Conducts Tour As Part of Route 126 Program 4 Busloads of Students Forced Into CLUI Vortex The Nellis
Range Perimeter: Nellis
Range Clickable Map Boron:
The Element of Place
|
CLUI Conducts Tour As
Part of Route 126 Program
|
||||
 |
The old adobe at Rancho
Camulos remains much as it was in 1882 when Helen Hunt
Jackson visited for a few hours, and was inspired to use
it as a setting for her influential novel Ramona. CLUI photo |
The CLUI has been working on a self-guided audio tour for a remarkable stretch of roadway in Southern California, along Route 126 between Valencia and Ventura, and the organization was able to try out some of its research on a group of students recently. The Center was invited to conduct a tour for nearly 160 students from the California Institute of the Arts, to examine the region around the school, which includes a portion of Route 126.
Four tour buses were hired for the four hour tour. Given space and time constraints at the stops, each bus followed the same route but in a different order, so as not to overwhelm the local hosts. Each bus was led by one of four CLUI guides: Melinda Stone, Erik Knutzen, Lize Mogel, and Matthew Coolidge.
The tour examined the many
fictions layered on this landscape. To represent the early
fables, the group toured the Rancho Camulos, known as the
"Home of Ramona," after the character in the 19th
Century novel Ramona which became a popular tool of the boosters
and developers of southern California, and where tourists
of the Victorian era made pilgrimages.
 |
Training props and
structures at the Del Valle training center. CLUI photo |
Passing through the film-location town of Piru, and past the postal-carrier training route at the US Post Office Sorting Center, the tour buses each made a stop at the Del Valle Training Center, where mock industrial sites and accident props help train emergency response personnel in how to prepare for the disasters of the future that will someday come to Los Angeles and beyond.