Aerial.America.S01E01.California
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00:00The Pacific Coast Highway of California tracks along the planet's largest ocean.
00:11Drivers get a seaward gaze unblocked by land for thousands of miles.
00:16But Highway 1 also travels along the edge of American culture.
00:23It cuts through land transformed by humans, and land that hasn't changed for millennia.
00:32In some parts of California, Highway 1 is the only way through.
00:37And some days, nature tries its hardest to keep you from passing at all.
00:44The road heads straight into the heart of America's left coast, a city born overnight
00:49with the gold rush, that boasts America's most iconic bridge, and most notorious prison.
01:02The Pacific Coast Highway is one of the world's most scenic drives.
01:07But the road is more than that.
01:09It's a pilgrimage, a reconnection to California's history.
01:13It's nature.
01:14It's mythology.
01:17Today, we're going to take that journey from the air.
01:22A journey through the spirit of California, through the spirit of America.
01:46Some call it the most beautiful drive in the world.
02:07California's Highway 1, also called the Pacific Coast Highway, runs nearly the length of the
02:12state.
02:14Some of the most stunning stretches of the road wind from San Simeon in the south, up
02:20through Big Sur, to San Francisco, and to Point Reyes, one of the most dangerous sections
02:29on the San Andreas Fault.
02:34We start our journey along the Pacific Coast Highway in San Simeon.
02:40It was here, thousands of feet above the Pacific, that a young boy with dreams larger
02:46than life spent his summer's camping.
02:50And it was here that he returned, 50 years later, a newspaper magnate, to build a palace
02:56to rival the greatest in Europe, Hearst Castle.
03:04William Randolph Hearst owned all of this land.
03:09His estate covered an area half the size of Rhode Island.
03:22Hearst was the Rupert Murdoch of the early 20th century.
03:27Through his three dozen newspapers, he tried to control the country's political agenda.
03:34And at Hearst Castle, he entertained the powerful and luminous.
03:41Before Highway 1 was built, his guests had to arrive by boat.
03:46Once on the castle's private drive, they'd see Hearst's zoo loose upon the hills.
03:52Antelopes, zebras, bison, camels, kangaroos, even giraffes.
04:00Guests included Hollywood's elite, Charlie Chaplin, Clark Gable, Joan Crawford, Cary
04:05Grant.
04:07Stars came to Hearst Castle.
04:09They had little choice.
04:12Turn down an invitation from Hearst, and your career could be over.
04:19Hollywood director Orson Welles found the tycoon in his castle an irresistible target.
04:26His 1941 film Citizen Kane was set at a palace called Xanadu, where a ruthless tyrant lived
04:33with his talentless second wife.
04:36Hearst retaliated by nearly ruining Welles' career.
04:41The castle itself is modeled after a medieval cathedral Hearst had admired in Spain.
04:48George Bernard Shaw said, it was the place God would have built if he had the money.
04:56Hearst's guests stayed in chateaux surrounding the main house.
05:02Hearst's bedroom was at the front of the castle, between the two towers and overlooking the
05:06Pacific.
05:08His mistress' bedroom was just next door.
05:14Altogether, the estate is a hodgepodge of European styles, a mosaic of Hearst's memories
05:21and obsessions.
05:23He spent 30 years and millions of dollars building this estate.
05:29Hearst died before it was completed.
05:34And after his death in 1951, the castle was donated to the state of California.
05:41Now more than one million people visit every year.
05:46You can even throw your own private party for $16,000.
05:56Behind San Simeon, Lake Nacimiento and the wine country of Paso Robles offer a refuge
06:02from big city life.
06:08This winding waterway is actually one of the state's top recreational lakes.
06:16Engineers dammed the Nacimiento River in the 1960s, creating a reservoir with 165 miles
06:23of shoreline and countless coves.
06:28Its calm, temperate waters make it ideal for water skiing.
06:35There's no speed limit on the lake, making it slightly dangerous, but heaven for anything
06:41that revs.
06:48The greatest attraction might be the feisty white bass.
06:53These voracious fish aren't native to California, making it unlawful to introduce them to most
06:59of California's waters.
07:01But white bass are allowed at Lake Nacimiento, where there's no way out except on a fisherman's
07:08line.
07:22A little further inland, the oak-covered foothills give way to the farmland of Paso Robles.
07:29Once covered in cattle and vegetables, acre after acre in Paso Robles is increasingly
07:35staked with grapevines.
07:41The region just south of Paso was featured in the 2004 movie Sideways.
07:47That film turned vineyards growing Pinot Noir into stars overnight.
07:53Sales of the wine shot up 70 percent across the country.
07:58But Paso itself is the new star of the Central Coast wine explosion.
08:04It's the fastest-growing region in California's $3 billion wine industry.
08:10Vineyards have been in production here since the late 19th century, but most often, grapes
08:15were shipped north to the wineries of Sonoma and Napa Valley.
08:22But in the 1980s, more vineyards in Paso started making their own wine.
08:29And within the last decade alone, the number of winemakers has tripled here.
08:35Some 26,000 acres of vineyards now feed 170 local wineries.
08:45It takes six to eight clusters of grapes to produce a bottle of wine.
08:50That's about 200 grapes a glass.
08:55Big reds are Paso's signature.
08:58Cabernet Sauvignon, Merlot, Syrah, and Zinfandel.
09:06Heat and limestone are the keys.
09:08A long growing season with vines fed by limestone-rich hills makes for muscular, powerful wines.
09:18Music
09:30Farmers have transformed the land and economy of California.
09:34But nature hasn't entirely surrendered the coast.
09:39Fog is never far from the Pacific Coast Highway.
09:44On summer days, it shrouds the road.
09:48Sometimes the fog devours it.
09:53It sweeps in from the Pacific as warm summer air from the west hits the cold coastal waters.
10:01These waters cool the air flowing over.
10:04It condenses into a dense mist and creeps inland, up over the mountains.
10:13It's a local pastime to talk about all the different sizes and shapes the fog forms.
10:20The fog can sneak up on you, like the American poet Carl Sandburg once described, on little
10:26cat feet.
10:33Other times, it hits like a dump truck.
10:45But you don't need fog to make the drive along Big Sur treacherous.
10:58Some of the most dangerous twists on Highway 1 are here, where the Santa Lucia Mountains
11:05crash into the sea.
11:08This 90-mile coastline is a rocky world of cliffs and waterfalls.
11:14Millions of years of seismic action have shaped Big Sur.
11:20Tectonic plates under tremendous pressure are grinding against each other here, constantly
11:25pushing the mountains toward the sky.
11:29Highway 1 is the only way through Big Sur.
11:32In some places, the road was blasted out of the mountainside.
11:38In other places, Highway 1's engineers made old roads obsolete, casting bridges across
11:45canyons.
11:48The most famous is Bixby Creek Bridge.
11:52The location of an untold number of car commercials, Bixby is one of the world's highest single
11:58arch bridges.
12:00It rises 260 feet above the canyon floor and stretches more than 700 feet across.
12:07It's a feat of engineering, built into walls of crumbling granite.
12:15Highway 1 opened here in 1937, but Big Sur remains relatively uninhabited.
12:23Just a few thousand people live here.
12:27And its shoreline looks much like it did when the first Spanish explorers set sight on it
12:31hundreds of years ago.
12:37It's a fearful-looking coast from the sea.
12:51One of the most dangerous spots is Point Sur.
12:54But since the late 19th century, this lighthouse has helped protect mariners.
13:01It sits on volcanic rock, and until Highway 1 was built, it was a pretty isolated existence
13:07for the lighthouse keepers.
13:10They were more likely to get a visit from a prehistoric animal than the mailman.
13:20Once upon a time, California condors made terrifying descents down these cliffs.
13:26They flew on huge black wings 10 feet wide from tip to tip.
13:31And at the bottom, swarms of condors would rip into the carcasses of whales.
13:39Condors flew these hills for millions of years, until they disappeared in the 1950s.
13:46But a zoo breeding program has brought the condor back.
13:51Breedings are still extremely rare, yet every so often, a driver along Highway 1 can peer
13:57down and see North America's largest bird once again feasting at the shore.
14:09Just up the coast from Big Sur is Carmel.
14:13It was here that an 18th century priest ended a journey that took him through hundreds of
14:18miles of wilderness.
14:21In 1771, Father Junipero Serra chose Carmel as the headquarters for what would become
14:27a string of 21 Spanish missions.
14:31These missions cemented Catholic Spain's control over California.
14:39Carmel is far from wild these days.
14:43The town laws are strict.
14:50If you hit a tree with a car and leave the scene, you could be charged with hit and run.
14:57Hollywood tough guy Clint Eastwood loosened things up a bit during a brief stint as mayor
15:01in the 1980s.
15:05Eastwood overturned a town rule forbidding people to eat ice cream cones on the street.
15:14Outside of Carmel, a community of nuns with traditions stretching back to medieval times
15:20has built a house of worship.
15:22They petitioned to build the monastery here after a nun in their order was made a saint
15:27in 1925.
15:29Although Highway 1 passes right in front of it, the monastery remains a quiet home for
15:35these nuns living in seclusion.
15:47North of Carmel, a two-lane road veers off from the Pacific Coast Highway and out toward
15:52the sea.
15:53For 17 miles, the road winds around cypress trees and golf courses of the Monterey Peninsula.
16:00Some say it was this rugged coastline that inspired Robert Louis Stevenson's 19th century
16:05pirate tale, Treasure Island.
16:08Whatever pirates there may have been have long since vacated.
16:13These days, the peninsula is rich with golfer's gold.
16:2117-mile drive is home to several top courses.
16:26Their draw is due in part to their varied terrain, sand dunes, marshes, and thick forests.
16:33But the real treasure here is at the southern end of the peninsula, Pebble Beach.
16:40Opened in 1919, it takes the best elements from courses around the world.
16:47Every inch of Pebble Beach is said to be perfect.
16:50There are no ordinary holes here, and the holes along the mighty Pacific are standouts.
16:58At 106 yards, the downhill 7th is one of the shortest holes.
17:04But don't be misled, it's also one of the most difficult in golf.
17:11With bunkers all around and a fierce ocean wind, it takes a sensitive touch on this tightly
17:17trapped green.
17:21Anyone can play these fabled links, it's a public course.
17:25Just make reservations a year in advance and be ready to pay $500 a round.
17:34Golfers playing at the northern end of the peninsula have a perfect view of Monterey
17:38Bay.
17:42These tranquil surface waters hide an astounding world.
17:47Just offshore, the ocean floor abruptly drops off.
17:52It's the head of an underwater chasm as deep as the Grand Canyon.
17:57The canyon snakes for nearly 300 miles out to sea.
18:01At its deepest, it reaches down 2 miles.
18:06Ocean currents send nutrient-rich waters through the canyon and right into the bay, making
18:11it one of the richest ocean feasting grounds in the world.
18:18So a good long stop at Monterey Bay is a must for migrating animals.
18:26The world's largest mammals spend their summers here, blue whales.
18:35Hundreds start showing up late June to gorge on krill.
18:40These Rizzo's dolphins come for the squid.
18:48They're large compared to other dolphins.
18:52They like to swim in groups of about 30 and rarely come close to shore.
18:58And unlike blue whales, these dolphins stick around here all year round.
19:13These waters offer no shortage of mysteries for scientists at the world-renowned Monterey
19:18Bay Aquarium.
19:22Its gray buildings sit on the end of Cannery Row, a strip made famous by John Steinbeck.
19:31For Steinbeck, Cannery Row was bursting with character.
19:36He described the strip in his novel as a grating noise, a poem, a habit, a nostalgia, and a
19:44stink.
19:47Stink was the smell of sardines, millions of them caught in the bay and slapping down
19:53chutes into the canneries in the 1930s.
19:57The sardine industry here collapsed by the end of the 1940s, and Steinbeck's short strip
20:03of honky-tonks and whorehouses has long since cleaned up.
20:08In their place, much sought after oceanfront property.
20:17Behind Monterey Bay, a blanket of farms stretches for a hundred miles.
20:24It's Salinas Valley, the salad bowl of America.
20:38In the late 1940s, an aspiring actress came through here, having just been dumped from
20:43a movie contract.
20:46She took a job modeling for a local jewelry store.
20:49The local Artichoke Association thought that was a waste of her talents.
20:56So they decided on the spot to crown her Miss Artichoke Queen.
21:03That actress was Marilyn Monroe.
21:24Agriculture is California's biggest industry, and Salinas is the heart of it.
21:33Almost all of America's artichokes are grown here.
21:36This valley also boasts over 80% of America's lettuce, and half of the nation's cauliflower,
21:42mushrooms and broccoli.
21:45Salinas alone is a $3.5 billion farm economy.
21:50But this valley has seen its share of hard times.
21:54Steinbeck wrote about it in his epic, The Grapes of Wrath.
21:58After the book was published, he was vilified in his hometown for taking the side of Dust
22:03Bowl-era migrant workers.
22:07Salinas eventually forgave Steinbeck.
22:11And few people here would disagree with him when he said Salinas was the most beautiful
22:16place on Earth.
22:21He called its land the Pastures of Heaven.
22:33Up the bay from Salinas, Highway 1 drives you straight into quintessential California
22:38beach culture, starting with the classic surf town, Santa Cruz.
22:45The counterculture moved into the town in 1965 when the new University of California
22:50campus opened its doors.
22:54The school's mascot is a local resident, the banana slug.
23:01Santa Cruz has always had a laid-back attitude and a focus on fun.
23:07Developers wanted this to be the Coney Island of the West.
23:13The Santa Cruz Beach Boardwalk is the oldest seaside amusement park on the West Coast.
23:19It's 100 years old and counting.
23:27California beach bums love the sands of Santa Cruz.
23:30And at first glance, these northern elephant seals at Anunuevo seem to share the laid-back
23:35attitude.
23:37During the molting season, they nap all day.
23:41But appearances can be deceiving.
23:44These seals are resting before an epic voyage.
23:47For eight straight months, some will swim halfway across the Pacific and back in search
23:52of food.
23:53Molting season is R&R time.
23:59Construction of the Pacific Coast Highway in the 1930s and 40s changed the fortunes
24:04of many towns.
24:07The scenic route detoured traffic around some, ending their booms overnight.
24:15For others, it runs right through.
24:18It transformed the isolated coastal town of Half Moon Bay into a destination spot worthy
24:24of a Ritz-Carlton and the Half Moon Bay golf links.
24:36For hundreds of years, European explorers searched this coastline for California's
24:40fabled cities of gold.
24:45And yet, the treasure hunters kept missing the entrance to one of the world's finest
24:50natural harbors, the Golden Gate.
24:56It was hidden for so long because this is what explorers would see, a rocky shoreline,
25:02turbulent waters, and no hint of an opening.
25:06The bay opens up three miles back from the Pacific.
25:10Its entrance is only a mile wide, hard to spy from the sea.
25:15In fact, it was a land expedition that finally spotted the entrance from nearby hills, 230
25:22years after the first Spanish ship sailed by.
25:26A 19th century army captain gave the passage its name, Golden Gate.
25:36Today, anyone entering the bay by sea must pass under San Francisco's most iconic structure,
25:44the Golden Gate Bridge.
25:47It's hard to imagine now, but before the bridge was built, the only way across the bay was
25:53by ferry.
25:55Boats carried 50,000 commuters a week.
25:59It's no wonder the biggest opposition to the bridge came from ferry boat operators.
26:06But at last, in 1930, the voters of San Francisco gave engineer Joseph Strauss the green light.
26:14Strauss said he dreamed of building the biggest thing of its kind that a man could build.
26:21His design ranks with the Empire State Building and Brooklyn Bridge as a symbol of American
26:26progress and ingenuity.
26:31The entire bridge is 1.7 miles long.
26:37Its towers rise 746 feet above the bay.
26:45To build a similar bridge today, it would cost over a billion dollars.
26:53In 1937, the Golden Gate made its debut as the world's longest suspension span.
26:59Its two main cables reach 4,200 feet from one tower to the other.
27:05It's called a suspension bridge because the roadway hangs from the cables.
27:10The cables are held up by the two towers and anchored at either end of the bridge.
27:16And while most bridges at the time were painted black, the Art Deco Golden Gate was painted
27:22a reddish-orange to catch the light and make it stand out in fog.
27:36But there's a dark side to the Golden Gate.
27:39It's the world's leading suicide spot.
27:42Some call it a monument to death.
27:46More than 1,200 people have jumped from the bridge, the first jump three months after
27:50it opened.
27:55It's a four-second fall, with jumpers hitting the water at 75 miles per hour.
28:02The few people who survived hit the water feet-first at a slight angle.
28:09And survivors say they regretted the jump the second they left the bridge.
28:17Tragedy and greatness go hand-in-hand in San Francisco, a young city perched on the edge
28:26of a continent, the edge of a frontier.
28:34When gold was found in the nearby hills in 1848, San Francisco exploded.
28:41Before, only 10,000 people of European descent lived in all of California.
28:48But the gold rush brought hundreds of thousands of people here, all in search of a golden
28:53dream.
28:56Freedom of spirit, freedom of thought, a freedom to experiment.
29:02No American city embodies that more than San Francisco.
29:07It's a city that traffics in dissent.
29:12Demonstrators have filled its parks, streets, and docks to protest working conditions, civil
29:19rights, and war.
29:22Its live-and-let-live attitude made it a natural home for the sexual revolution of the 1960s.
29:28And soon after, word went out to gay America that this was the place to be.
29:37It's also a city of money, with many fortunes won and lost.
29:45The late 20th century saw a new surge of pioneers around San Francisco, technology speculators.
29:57But when the dot-com bubble collapsed in 2001, hundreds of thousands of people lost their
30:04jobs, and investors lost trillions of dollars.
30:11The city's fortunes are again on the rise, as money pours back into the high-tech industry.
30:19As far as great cities go, San Francisco is relatively small, with 750,000 residents
30:26snuggled onto a 46-mile tip of land.
30:31That small size also makes for some of the most expensive real estate in the country.
30:37San Francisco has contributed the words beatnik and hippie to the dictionary, but it also
30:43gave us yuppie.
30:47Despite its international reputation for peace, love, and understanding, the coast of San
30:52Francisco for centuries was armored with formidable defenses.
31:00More than a dozen military posts surround the mouth of the bay, now preserved in the
31:05Golden Gate National Recreation Area.
31:09They're the largest collection of military installations in the country, many built to
31:14defend the city during World War II.
31:19Fort Point is at the base of the Golden Gate Bridge.
31:23It's a pre-Civil War structure, but soldiers stood watch here up through World War II.
31:29At its greatest strength, the fort had 100 cannons.
31:33The most powerful had a two-mile range.
31:38Preparations for World War II were massive in San Francisco.
31:42The coast was set up with a vast network of anti-aircraft guns, underwater mines, observation
31:48posts, and air patrols.
31:52A historian called the city, one giant cannon aimed at the Pacific.
31:59But no attacking force ever came close to San Francisco.
32:05In the end, World War II left behind another legacy in San Francisco.
32:13Soldiers came home feeling disconnected, alienated.
32:22After the war, they gathered in the coffee shops and bars around Coit Tower.
32:27This neighborhood became a beacon for pacifists, anarchists, and experimental poets.
32:34One group became known as the Beats.
32:38Allen Ginsberg, Jack Kerouac, Neil Cassidy, Gary Snyder.
32:43They rejected consumerism, corporate culture, and conventional poetry.
32:50In 1956, Ginsberg read on these streets what would become the Beat Movement's manifesto,
32:57Howl.
32:58I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness, starving, hysterical, naked, dragging
33:07themselves through Negro streets at dawn, looking for an angry fix, angel-headed hipsters
33:14burning for the ancient heavenly connection to the starry dynamo in the machinery of night.
33:23The Beat poets laid the groundwork for San Francisco's next cultural revolution, the
33:30Summer of Love.
33:35Golden Gate Park and Haight-Ashbury were the epicenter of America's youth culture in 1967.
33:42The Grateful Dead, Janis Joplin, and the Hells Angels lived here.
33:48And tens of thousands of hippies came from all over, shacking up in communal pads around
33:53the park.
33:55They gathered here to follow psychedelic guru Timothy Leary's advice, turn on, tune in,
34:01drop out.
34:04All summer long, the park was filled with music and hippies dancing naked.
34:09One recalled, every day was a celebration of life.
34:15With flowers in their hair, they were protesting Vietnam and rebelling against the repression
34:21of the 1950s.
34:25Golden Gate Park and the Haight are still a cultural magnet.
34:30The park is also home to a museum at the forefront of California's green movement.
34:37The new California Academy of Sciences building is made with recycled materials and powered
34:43by sunlight.
34:45Its undulating roof will be covered with plants to soak up pollution.
34:55It's part of a new generation of buildings that seek to blend in rather than stick out.
35:02These giants dwarf the city's Victorian neighborhoods.
35:06But even some of these buildings can't stray far from their wild roots.
35:10The Transamerica Pyramid sits on top of what used to be a Turkish bath.
35:17Here Mark Twain met a local fireman with a name that later proved useful, Tom Sawyer.
35:27The city still has the crookedest street in the world.
35:30A resident came up with the idea to help pedestrians and drivers navigate down Lombard Street's
35:36dangerously steep hill.
35:41Cars are forced to slow to a crawl as they navigate down the eight turns.
35:48Some of the most expensive and distinctive real estate in the city is along this street.
35:58This street also caught Alfred Hitchcock's eye.
36:01He chose one of the houses on Lombard for Jimmy Stewart's home in Vertigo.
36:07While the city's port is no longer commercially important on the West Coast, its Fisherman's
36:12Wharf and Pier 39 remain an international magnet.
36:18Tourism is now San Francisco's biggest industry, bringing in $7 billion a year.
36:27Tourists also make a beeline for the Ghirardelli Chocolate Factory.
36:31Italian Domingo Ghirardelli struck out panning gold in 1849, but hit it big supplying miners
36:38with chocolate.
36:44One of the city's most crowded ferries leaves from these wharves.
36:49Every day, thousands of people head out on a 15-minute ride to a small island in the
36:55middle of the harbor, Alcatraz.
37:03The federal penitentiary was 22 acres of barren rock.
37:08Life here was some of the hardest time prisoners ever did.
37:14Many spent their days in isolation.
37:18And a look out of their cell windows toward San Francisco's skyline only reminded them
37:23of the freedom they'd lost.
37:26It drove some prisoners nearly insane.
37:34A guard who worked at Alcatraz in the 50s recalled, yachts circled the island and men
37:40could see girls in bikinis drinking cocktails.
37:43It was so near and yet so far.
37:51Alcatraz was a federal experiment.
37:54Its criminals weren't America's most murderous.
37:57They were the ones the prison system couldn't control, prisoners most likely to escape.
38:06Mobster Al Capone, George Machine Gun Kelly, Robert Birdman Stroud, Doc Barker, they were
38:13all locked up here.
38:21Surrounded by treacherous waters and outfitted with state-of-the-art technology, Alcatraz
38:27was supposed to be escape-proof.
38:33Thirty-six inmates tried.
38:35Of those, 23 were captured.
38:39Seven were shot dead.
38:41At least three drowned.
38:44That leaves three other prisoners.
38:46In 1962, they bored holes through their cell walls using crude electric drills made from
38:52stolen parts.
38:59With makeshift rafts, they plunged into the water.
39:05No trace of the three has ever been found.
39:09So officially, no one ever escaped from Alcatraz.
39:15Alcatraz closed forever as a prison in the 1960s.
39:19The site was too expensive to maintain.
39:23But the island is busier than ever.
39:25Over a million and a half tourists visit every year.
39:31Around the same time the last prisoner was shipped off Alcatraz, San Francisco lost its
39:35place as a major world commercial port.
39:42In the 1960s, containers revolutionized shipping.
39:48But they required vast new loading docks.
39:57And San Francisco had run out of room.
39:59So its neighbor across the bay, Oakland, took over.
40:05Cargo used to be loaded into containers of all kinds, crates, barrels, and bags, and
40:11stowed loosely into a ship's hold.
40:14These odd sizes meant cargo had to be unloaded by hand.
40:19With standardized containers, huge cranes could lift the boxes off ships and put them
40:25directly onto trucks.
40:30Shipping became faster, cheaper, and far more efficient.
40:35Port companies are building ever bigger ships to carry ever more containers.
40:40The largest are over 1,200 feet long, the length of four football fields.
40:45They carry more than 10,000 containers.
40:49Ports like Oakland have to keep up by digging deeper waterways to hold these mega ships.
40:56Oakland also has to keep up with a torrent of goods arriving from Asia.
41:01More than half of the trade at the US's fourth busiest port comes from across the Pacific.
41:08About 2,000 container ships pass through Oakland every year, carrying nearly 10 million tons
41:14of cargo in one million containers.
41:27The port's three dozen cranes have also left a mark on popular culture.
41:32They inspired the Imperial Walkers in the movie, The Empire Strikes Back.
41:43Back out over the bay, over the Golden Gate Bridge, and over the houseboat communities
41:49of Sausalito, the Pacific Coast Highway gets wild again.
41:54It skirts past the 1,000-year-old redwoods of Muir Woods and travels along the edge of
42:01the Point Reyes National Seashore.
42:05Point Reyes is a major sanctuary for birds.
42:09Nearly half the bird species of North America have been spotted on this triangle of land.
42:30But one of the most powerful and dangerous places in the world starts underneath the
42:36peninsula.
42:38The San Andreas Fault.
42:42Here two giants meet.
42:45It's where the Pacific tectonic plate grinds up against North America.
42:51On April 18, 1906, the plates suddenly sprang against each other at the fault, unleashing
42:57the most damaging earthquake in American history.
43:01The fault ripped apart here, at the shoreline of Stinson Beach, and tore north through the
43:06center of Tomales Bay.
43:09The shaking lasted less than a minute, time enough for this entire peninsula to jump 20
43:14feet north.
43:17The lighthouse survived intact, the quake had only knocked the lens off.
43:23But in San Francisco, 3,000 people would die.
43:29The epicenter of the 7.8 magnitude quake was right outside San Francisco's Golden Gate.
43:43The quake triggered a fire that raged for three days, destroying some 30,000 buildings.
43:53More than 200,000 people were left homeless, nearly half of San Francisco's population.
44:00Many who couldn't escape the city camped out in tents at army posts along the headlands.
44:12There's a good reason why the number one fear among San Franciscans is crossing bridges.
44:18A 1989 quake collapsed a section of the Bay Bridge.
44:26The threat of another massive earthquake here is very much real.
44:33It's only a matter of time.
44:38Millions of years of tectonic shifts and centuries of pioneers have shaped this land.
44:44In just 250 miles from San Simeon to Point Reyes, we've seen the incredible range of
44:50California's glories.
44:53One of the most spectacular private homes ever built in America.
44:58The fabled links of Pebble Beach.
45:01Rare glimpses of an underwater world so rich and so deep that it feeds the largest mammals
45:08on the planet.
45:19In just a four-hour drive, Highway 1 moves from the ruins of Spanish glory to the haunts
45:26of 60s hippies.
45:29To landscapes that seem eternal.
45:33And ports utterly transformed by 21st century commerce.
45:39Past, present, future.
45:43They're all here in the place that has so often set the pace for the country.
45:50The heart and soul of California.