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California

Arborists are reforesting Detroit's Poletown East neighborhood with giant sequoias and other species of trees.

Giant Sequoias Are Taking Root in an Unexpected Place: Detroit

Arborists are planting urban groves of the world’s largest trees in one of the city’s most blighted neighborhoods

Ronan the California sea lion sits in front of a pool at UC Santa Cruz’s Long Marine Laboratory.

This Sea Lion Can Headbang Better Than You—Watch Her Out-Perform Humans at Keeping a Beat

A new study of Ronan, a sea lion famous for her dancing skills, challenges the idea that only vocal learners can match a tempo

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There's More to That

Looking Back on the L.A. Wildfires Through the Lens of Two Photographers

As wildfire becomes an increasingly lethal force that’s remaking broad swaths of California, people and animals alike are in the hot seat

Birds glide above the forests that surround Anacapa Island, California.

What Free Diving in a Kelp Forest Taught Me About an Overlooked but Incredibly Valuable Ecosystem

A photographer shares the epiphanies she has had while chronicling underwater jungles off the California coast

People gather on Kaanapali Beach, a popular tourist destination near Lahaina, Hawaii, in August 2024.

Destinations Hit by Natural Disasters Need Tourists Back—but Maybe Not in the Same Way as Before

Places like Maui and Asheville, North Carolina, rebuilding after wildfires and hurricanes, are doing so with a mind to sustainable tourism

Also known as by-the-wind sailors, the free-floating Velella velella are coating California beaches once again.

Odd-Looking Blue Creatures Are Washing Up in Large Groups on California’s Beaches Once Again

Strandings of these jellyfish-like animals, sometimes called “by-the-wind sailors,” usually mean spring is coming

Volunteers with the Channel Islands Marine & Wildlife Institute in Santa Barbara, California, rescue a sick sea lion that's likely suffering from domoic acid poisoning.

Sea Lion Bites Surfer Amid One of the Worst Outbreaks of Domoic Acid Poisoning That California Wildlife Rescuers Can Remember

Sea lions, dolphins and birds are sick and dying because of a toxic algae bloom in Southern California—and animal care organizations are overwhelmed by the scale

Visitors to Manzanar National Historic Site will be able to run the bases around the restored baseball field, sit on the bleachers and look out into the looming mountain range from home plate.

The Moving Story of Bringing Baseball Back to Manzanar, Where Thousands of Japanese Americans Were Incarcerated During World War II

In honor of his mother and others imprisoned at the internment camp, baseball player Dan Kwong has restored a diamond in the California desert

Stephen Tabor with the Huntington Library's copy of the Gutenberg Bible

Gutenberg Bible Reunited With Rare 15th-Century Devotional Print Once Tucked Inside Its Pages

Two centuries after they were separated, the print and the Bible are on display together at the Huntington Library in California

After a trolley conductor accused Alice Stebbins Wells of using her husband's police badge to avoid paying for public transit, the Los Angeles Police Department allowed her to wear a more feminine uniform of her own design, along with a special “Policewoman’s Badge No. 1.”

Women Who Shaped History

Armed With Just a Badge, Los Angeles’ First Policewoman Protected the City’s Most Vulnerable in the Early 20th Century

Appointed in 1910, Alice Stebbins Wells patrolled dance halls, skating rinks, penny arcades and movie theaters, keeping these public spaces free of vice and immorality

The Palos Verdes Peninsula in Los Angeles experiences slow-moving landslides that accelerated last fall, according to recent research.

Parts of California Are Sinking, and It Could Worsen the Effects of Sea-Level Rise, NASA Study Finds

The ground in many parts of the state—including Los Angeles, San Francisco and the Central Valley—is subsiding due to groundwater withdrawal, landslides and compacting of sediment

In October 2024, scientists created dozens of man-made nests and deposited 300,000 Chinook salmon eggs. Now, those eggs are hatching.

Chinook Salmon Are Swimming in This California River for the First Time in More Than 80 Years

The juvenile fish recently hatched from eggs that scientists deposited in the gravelly riverbed of the North Yuba River last fall

Nutria have voracious appetites for vegetation, leading them to destroy wetland ecosystems.

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service Wants You to Eat These Giant, Invasive Rodents

As part of National Invasive Species Week, the agency is calling on Americans to “eat the invaders,” including swamp-dwelling nutria

The photos were taken between 1966 and 1970.

Can You Identify the Mystery Photographer Who Captured Thousands of Captivating Images of 1960s San Francisco?

Discovered in an abandoned storage locker, the 2,042 processed color slides and 102 rolls of black-and-white film depict key moments in the city’s history

Shadow (left) and Jackie (right) are incubating three eggs for the second year in a row. Their nest is perched 145 feet off the ground in a Jeffrey pine near Big Bear Lake in Southern California.

Watch California’s Internet-Famous Bald Eagles Tend to Three New Eggs, Expected to Hatch Soon

Last year, the mated pair Jackie and Shadow also incubated three eggs—but none of them hatched. This year’s “pipping period,” when chicks may break out of their shells, begins in early March

The Hollywood sign, an American landmark and cultural icon, overlooks the area and has inspired many to make their showbiz dreams a reality.  

Smithsonian Photo Contest Galleries

15 Dazzling Photos That Celebrate the Sights (and Sites) of Los Angeles

These images from the Smithsonian Magazine Photo Contest show what makes the City of Angels and its next-door neighborhoods so heavenly

Although the Donner-Reed party’s time on the Oregon Trail was filled with suffering, their story did little to slow westward migration.

On This Day in History

Donner Party Survivors Were Rescued on This Day in 1847 After Weeks of Frigid Conditions, Starvation and—Eventually—Cannibalism

Bad luck and poor decisions turned the already dangerous trek from Missouri to California into a fatal affair for roughly half of the Donner-Reed party

The tire tracks, which cover more than two miles, were discovered in late December.

Driver Vandalizes Threatened Plants in Death Valley National Park

National Park Service officials haven’t identified the person or people who illegally drove more than two miles across Eureka Dunes, home to the federally protected Eureka dunegrass

Weighing up to 1,100 pounds, Risso's dolphins live throughout the world's temperate and tropical oceans.

See a Rare ‘Super Pod’ of More Than 1,500 Risso’s Dolphins Spotted off the Coast of California

Whale-watching tour operators encountered the mass gathering of cetaceans while looking for migrating gray whales

Bubonic plague is one of three types of plague infections, all stemming from the Yersinia pestis bacterium.

On This Day in History

On This Day in 1900, the Bubonic Plague Hit the Continental United States, Spiraling Into an Epidemic That Killed 119 People

California officials denied—and tried to hide—the first plague epidemic that reached U.S. shores

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