History has not been kind to the Owens Valley.
Indigenous people called the Owens Valley “Payahuunadü,” or the land of flowing water, and settled along the banks of its river, creeks and springs more than 150 years ago. In the early 1900s, the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power took control of the valley’s rich natural resource, which streamed through the plains at the foothills of the Eastern Sierra, to sustain an expanding megalopolis 200 miles south.
In 1942, the now dry, dusty valley became the infamous site for the Manzanar concentration camp, where more than 11,000 Japanese Americans were incarcerated until 1945.
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A sign marks the location where Block 26 barracks were located at Manzanar National Historic Site in California on December 9, 2015.
For the Amache site, in Colorado, effort on the federal level officially began in late 2019 with the John D. Dingell Jr. Conservation, Management, and Recreation Act, but the COVID-19 crisis stifled the normal schedule of public comment and wreaked havoc on the prescribed timeline.
(Justin Sullivan/Getty Images)
At first, the trip unfolded as just an academic tracing of family history.
John Tonai had for years heard the stories from his father, Minoru, about the Amache internment camp in southeastern Colorado, where the U.S. government transported thousands of Japanese Americans from California and held them behind barbed wire and guard posts for three years during World War II. The family lore became a constant soundtrack that, over time, receded to a kind of background noise always heard, seldom absorbed.
Jan 30, 2021
Sixteen notable writers have created a combined list of places that they believe helped shape and define America, from coastal Oregon and Solvang, California, to Ellis Island and New Hampshire’s Black Heritage Trail.
The resulting collection of mini-essays, including contributions from memoirist Cheryl Strayed, novelist Jodi Picoult, humorist David Sedaris and activist Gloria Steinem, was organized by Frommer’s, the travel guidebook company. The collection can be read for free online.
The compilation is designed to be food for thought rather than an invitation to hit the road.
With COVID-19 cases surging in many parts of the country, “we don’t want people to use these essays as the basis for travel until doing so is safe once again,” Pauline Frommer, who heads the guidebook company, told the AP. “We hope this list will be a spur to future travel, but we also just wanted it to be great reading right now.”