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"Following Los Angeles' winning the right to be the western terminus of the transcontinental railroad, San Diego's civic leaders proposed the Plank Road to ensure their city became the hub of Southern California's road network rather than Los Angeles.

Among those promoters was businessman and road builder "Colonel" Ed Fletcher who accepted a challenge from the Los Angeles Examiner to run a road race in October 1912 to determine the best route between Southern California and Phoenix. A reporter with the paper was given a 24-hour head start in Los Angeles; Fletcher would proceed from San Diego. Fletcher elected to traverse the constantly shifting sand dunes using a team of horses to pull his automobile through the sand, and won the race in a seemingly impossible 19.5 hours.

Buoyed by the success of the race and with the backing of local newspapers, Fletcher raised the money to pay for 13,000 planks shipped from San Diego to Holtville, California. The first planks were l...

I first became obsessed with photography and motion pictures while growing up in post WW2 Manila in the Philippine Islands in the late 1940's/early 1950's. Film noirs were a particular influence. But my first love remains the theater. I acted in numerous amateur productions from 1958 to 1978. In 1979 I earned a MA in drama from the University of Arizona; earlier getting a BA in English from the University of Minnesota, where I co-founded the first film society on campus and ran it for four years. While at the U of A, I studied with the master black and white photo essayist W. Eugene Smith (1918-1978) the last year of his life. I am the last person cited in Jim Hughes' definitive biography of Gene, as I wrote about attending his final...