Niche Museums

The Panama–Pacific International Exposition of 1915 was a world's fair that celebrated the completion of the Panama canal - but also served to showcase San Francisco's recovery from the 1906 earthquake.

Eleven palaces were built for the exposition. All but one of them were torn down afterwards when the exposition site became San Francisco's residental Marina District.

The Palace of Fine Arts was the survivor, thanks to a campaign by the Palace Preservation League founded by Phoebe Apperson Hearst (mother of William Randolph Hearst).

The palace was designed by Bernard Ralph Maybeck, who created it as a fictional Roman and Ancient Greek ruin constructed around a small artificial lagoon.

The weeping women who top the colonnade were sculpted by Ulric Ellerhusen, modeled after Audrey Munson. Audrey served as the model for an enormous number of sculptures, initially in New York and then across the United States. She earned the nickname "Panama–Pacific Girl" after posing for three-fifths of the sculptures created for the 1915 Expo.

The palace was not built to last, and the wood and plaster structure seriously degraded over time. In 1964 it was entirely replaced by a direct copy, built using steel beams and light-weight concrete. This was further seismically retrofitted in 2010.

Anja Community Reserve is home to the world's highest concentration of ring-tailed lemurs - roughly 350 individuals divided into troops that range in size up to 30 members.

Development of the reserve started in 1996 when the government enacted legislation to transfer responsibility for land management to local communities. A group of twenty youths from the Anja area worked to create a reserve, and the reserve received formal recognition in 1999.

In 2001 the Anja Miray Association was formed to manage the reserve and nearby land, and by 2011 the reserve had created more than 450 jobs and had become one of the most-visited community managed sites in all of Madagascar. Today it serves as a model for other community-based tourism projects throughout Madagascar and the world.

Visitors must be accompanied by a local guide. The lemurs are plentiful and extremely photogenic.

The Donner Party is notorious as the single greatest tragedy to occur during the American westward migration of the early 19th century.

32 members of the Donner and Reed families, plus their employees, set out west from Independence Missouri on the 12th of May 1846, in nine wagons at the rear of a train of almost 500.

On July 19, 1846 their group made the fateful decision to form the Donner Party under the leadership of George Donner, and split off to take the newly declared Hastings Cutoff. This new route promised to shave 350 miles off the journey to California.

Unexpected delays on the route caused them to miss the short window of time for an easy crossing of the Sierra mountains, and the party (now numbering 89) was trapped snowbound around Truckee Lake (now Donner Lake).

Most of the Californian military were involved in the Mexican–American War at the time, which greatly hampered relief efforts. Of several attempted rescues, the first arrived four months after the party had become trapped. It took three relief efforts to complete the rescue.

Of the 89 people trapped near Donner Lake, 41 died and 48 survived.

Did the survivors turn to cannibalism? Although some denied it, consensus among historians is that up to 19 of the party were indeed cannibalized.

The Donner Memorial State Park was established in 1928, around the original Pioneer Monument which was constructed between 1901 and 1918.

The visitor center has numerous well designed displays explaining the story of the Donner Party and the context of westbound migration in the 19th century.

The state park has some excellent hiking trails. We found something’s spine on one of them!

Constructed by the US Army Corp of Engineers between 1853 and 1861 at the height of the gold rush, Fort Point was designed to protect the San Francisco Bay from foreign attack.

Cannons were mounted close to the waterline so that cannonballs could ricochet off the water and hit enemy ships hear the waterline.

The fort has never seen battle, but is historically significant due to its military architecture. It is the only "Third System" fort to be constructed west of the Mississippi.

Following the civil war, the fort's cannons became obsolete. It was used intermittently by the army, mainly as barracks, and then served as defense against potential submarine attacks during the Second World War.

A campaign in the 1930s saved the fort from demolition during the construction of the Golden Gate Bridge, which was redesigned to arch over the fort instead. It became a National Historic Site in 1970.

The town of Loreto was founded in 1697 at the Monqui Native American settlement of Conchó. Jesuit missionaries founded the town as the first Spanish colonial settlement on the Baja California Peninsula.

The Mission of our Lady of Loreto that they built there formed the start of El Camino Real ("The Royal Road"), a historic chain of missions that stretched all the way up to Sonoma in California, 1069 miles to the North.

The Museo de las Misiones is a small museum that documents the history of the missions. It includes archeological remains, weapons, paintings and historic sacred documents. It also features a church bell that fell into the sea in 1875 and was retrieved by fishermen a hundred years later.

The museum celebrates the Jesuits as "men of extraordinary intellectual and moral character", but in places it does hint at their contribution to the demise of indigenous cultures.

Bevolo is a family business founded in 1945 in the New Orleans French Quarter who today are the largest manufacturer of handmade copper lanterns in the United States.

Their lamps are hand-riveted (as opposed to soldered) which they claim gives them improved longevity.

Their workshop and museum offers the chance to watch the lamp makers in action, and see examples of historic street lamps from the French Quarter.

The Jelly Belly factory in Fairfield, California has an extensive collection of Ronald Reagan memorabilia. Most impressive are their portraits of Reagan constructed entirely from jelly beans. Why so much love for the Gipper?

In 1965 the Herman Goelitz Candy Company created a new, small and flavorful jelly bean. In 1966, having switched to candy as an alternative to cigarettes, California governor Ronald Reagan first tried one and became a massive fan.

In 1974 Reagan wrote to a letter to the company stating "They have become such a tradition of this administration that it has gotten to the point where we can hardly start a meeting or make a decision without passing around a jar of jelly beans."

The product was rebranded Jelly Belly in 1976, and in 1980 a Time photographer snapped a photo during Reagan's presidential campaign that revealed his preference to the public. Sales doubled over the next year and the company shipped 3.5 tons of red, white and blue jelly beans to Washington DC for the inauguration. Reagan even had a standing order of 720 bags per month during his presidency.

The factory tour is worthwhile: you get to see how jelly beans are made, and there are several exciting robot arms. But the highlight are the jelly bean portraits, covering Reagan and many other historical figures.

The Cohen Bray House in Oakland was built in 1882-1884 as a wedding present for Emma Bray and Alfred H. Cohen. The house is a relatively rare example of the Stick-Eastlake style of the late 19th century, but what really sets it apart is its interior, which maintains the aesthetic style popular when it was built. The house has remained in the same family for its entire history, and today that family preserve it as an Oakland Historical Landmark with the assistance of volunteers.

Tours are offered on the fourth Sunday of every month, and twice a year the house offers a tour with High Tea in the formal dining room. We did this in January 2020 and the tea was most excellent.

The Griffith Observatory opened in 1935 using funds bequeathed to the city of Los Angeles for the purpose of making astronomy accessible to the public.

Griffith Jenkins Griffith was a Welsh-American who made money through mining syndicates during the California gold rush, trading on his expertise as a journalist covering mining for the Alta California newspaper.

After moving to Los Angeles in 1882 he married Tina Mesmer, the heir to the quarter million dollar Briswalter fortune... but only after ensuring that the entire fortune would be transferred to his name.

He used his wife's money to climb the ranks of LA society, building a reputation as a philanthropist through the donation in 1896 of 3,015 acres of ranch land to the city for use as a public park - Griffith Park.

A teetotaler in public, Griffith was secretly a drunk. He grew increasingly paranoid and in 1903 forced his wife Tina at gunpoint to swear on a prayer book that she was faithful to the marriage and was not involved in a perceived attempt to poison him.

Despite her attestations, he shot her in the head. She survived but was blinded in her right eye. Griffith was arrested three days later and was sentenced to just two years in San Quentin. His lawyer had blamed the incident on “alcoholic insanity”.

In 1908, upon visiting Mount Wilson Observatory Griffith declared "If all mankind could look through that telescope, it would change the world." He offered the city money to build an observatory in 1912, but they refused, wary of further association with an attempted murderer.

Griffith died in 1919 and the city accepted the money he left in trust for both the observatory and the nearby Greek Theater. They have since become respected landmarks of Los Angeles.

Today the observatory hosts several exhibit areas, an astronomical telescope and a Tesla coil. Their Zeiss 12-inch refracting telescope has been looked through by 8 million people - more people than any other telescope on earth.

Shortly before the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake, sea lions started to haul out onto K dock at Pier 39 in San Francisco. Their numbers steadily increased, and their protected status lead to a quandary for the pier’s management team. They decided to relinquish the dock to the pinnipeds, and thirty years later the sea lions have established themselves as a San Francisco fixture.

There are usually between 150 and 600 sea lions at the pier, mostly male and weighing up to 850lb (390kg). Their numbers drop in June and July when most of them head south to the Channel Islands for breeding season. The highest recorded count was 1,701 in November 2009.

The Aquarium of the Bay operates a Sea Lion Center upstairs from the sea lions themselves which has interactive displays and educational videos.

The Beat Museum was founded as an Airstream trailer in Monterey in 2003, and relocated to permanent premises in the North Beach neighborhood of San Francisco in 2006.

The museum collects memorabilia of the Beat Generation - a literary movement founded in the 1950s who rejected economic materialism and explored psychedelic drugs and sexual liberation.

Leading figures in the movement included Allen Ginsberg, William S. Burroughs and Jack Kerouac. The museum features typewriters, jackets, letters and other memorabilia for these artists and many others.

In the early 19th century North Devon started to establish itself as a destination for seaside resorts, with travelers arriving by ship and by railway. In the 1820s the Ilfracombe Sea Bathing Company formed, and a team of hundreds of Welsh miners were hired to spend two years carving six tunnels through the Ilfracombe hillside, providing access to the coastline by foot or by carriage.

In 1836 a new bath-house was erected, offering hot and cold-water sea baths as an aid to health. Outdoor bathing pools were organized, segregated by gender to protect the modesty of the ladies. A bugler was positioned between the male and female pools who would blow an alarm if any man attempted to spy on the ladies, resulting in his arrest.

Today four of the six tunnels are still in operation, and the remains of the pools themselves are open to visitors.

The Black Diamond Mines Regional Preserve in the East Bay is a 6,000 acre regional park incorporating 60 miles of trails, 3 deserted mining towns, a 19th century cemetery and a former sand mine, which today is open for guided tours.

The mine opened in the 1920s to produce silica sandstone for the glass industry. Their top customer was the Hazel-Atlas Glass Company plant in Oakland, who later purchased the mine and operated it until 1945.

Tours take 90 minutes and cover 1300 feet of the old sand mine. Reservations are recommended as they frequently sell out. The Greathouse Visitor Center is located underground in a large chamber excavated in the 1920s and features a small museum with displays about the history and geology of the area.

As ski resorts developed in the 1950s, Japanese macaques (often referred to as snow monkeys) were forced to migrate to the lower mountain regions including the human occupied areas of Yamanouchi.

A guesthouse there called Korakukan featured an outdoor onsen - a hot spring bath - and the monkeys imitated human bathers and started enjoying the hot baths themselves.

Since the human population didn't particularly want to share their baths with the monkeys, a compromise was reached: in 1964 a set of hot spring baths were constructed for the monkeys to enjoy by themselves.

Guides make food available to the monkeys, encouraging them to stay in the area all year round. They are still very much wild creatures though, and they return to the safety of the forests in the evenings.

We stayed at the nearby Kokuya ryokan - a 400 year old guesthouse with eight of its own private hot spring baths - and it was absolutely magical.

The Donkey Sanctuary in Sidmouth, Devon is an extraordinarily successful charity. Frequently ranked in the top 50 UK charities by funds raised, in 2018 it spent £40M and pulled in £42.3M - more than half of which was from legacies in people’s wills. The sanctuary is responsible for more than 6,000 donkeys worldwide and the headquarters in Sidmouth usually hosts a population of several hundred. The British public really likes donkeys.

Founded by Elisabeth Svendsen in 1969, the sanctuary moved to its present location in 1974 when she was bequeathed a legacy of 204 donkeys by the estate of Violet Philpin - joining Elisabeth’s existing herd of 38. The charity continued to grow over the years, and today operates in 35 countries worldwide.

Visits to the sanctuary are free, and it opens 365 days a year.