All posts tagged: inland

The lost inland sea that dwarfed the Great Lakes and reshaped North America

The lost inland sea that dwarfed the Great Lakes and reshaped North America

Published by Jenni Sidey

Long before Lake Superior, Lake Michigan, Lake Huron, Lake Erie, and Lake Ontario became the defining waters of North America, a far larger lake spread across the center of the continent. Lake Agassiz no longer appears on any map. It drained away after the last ice age. Still, its scale remains hard to ignore. More than 10,000 years ago, this prehistoric inland sea covered about 170,000 square miles, an area so vast it exceeded the combined size of the Great Lakes. That kind of size changes more than a shoreline. It helped carve valleys, fill basins, redirect rivers, and reshape the weather across a huge swath of land. Even now, the marks it left behind remain visible in the Red River Valley and in the many lakes and wetlands scattered across the region. Lake Agassiz is gone today, but during the last ice age it was a giant—sprawling across roughly 170,000 square miles and ranking among the largest lakes ever to cover North America. (CREDIT: CC BY-SA 4.0) The Great Lakes are hardly small. Lake …

‘Our Empire’ exhibit at the Cheech highlights the Inland Empire

‘Our Empire’ exhibit at the Cheech highlights the Inland Empire

Published by Sam Flores

Dilapidated buildings and decaying signage may put off the casual observer. But for Redlands-based artists James McClung and Marcus Mercado, the gritty patina of the Inland Empire urban landscape conjures memories of life in the region. Honoring these unassuming entities is the main focus of a new community exhibit, titled “Our Empire,” at the Cheech Marin Center for Chicano Art & Culture. A total of 29 acrylic, mixed media paintings and drawings by McClung and Mercado will be on display at the Altura Credit Union Community Gallery until Oct. 23. “James and Marcus’ artistic excellence, deep local roots and passion to tell the stories of their neighborhoods aligns with the vision of the Altura Credit Union Community Gallery — a space dedicated to providing opportunities for SoCal artists to showcase their work and uplift the people and places of our region,” said Valerie Found, interim executive director of Riverside Art Museum. “A lot of people that grew up in these communities see some of these locations and they’re very relatable to their upbringing,” says McClung. …

‘ICE stole someone here’: Signs posted in Inland Empire tell a story

‘ICE stole someone here’: Signs posted in Inland Empire tell a story

Published by Sam Flores

Outside Andrea Galván’s Ontario home, two young boys stop on their scooters to watch their neighbor create signs. Galván, an art consultant and activist, is accompanied in her driveway by a group of volunteers passing stencils and aerosol paints around to one another. “Can we join?” the boys ask. Soon, they’re wearing face masks and spraying away, stacking the growing pile of posters in the back of a red pickup truck. The next day, the signs appear in front of a car wash, a Home Depot and in various neighborhoods throughout the Inland Empire, catching the eyes of passersby with four words: “ICE stole someone here.” Since November, the signs have popped up around the Inland Empire, bringing awareness to the Immigration and Customs Enforcement raids in the area, which activists say might otherwise go unnoticed because they often happen in the early morning. According to Galván, the signs keep the stories of local immigrants taken by ICE visible and tangible. Inland Coalition for Immigrant Justice (IC4IJ) activist Andrea Galván instructs her young neighbors on …

The 7 best inland spots to take a walk by the water

The 7 best inland spots to take a walk by the water

Published by Sam Flores

Of all the images L.A. is famous for — the Hollywood sign perched above teetering palm trees, the mansion-lined streets stocked with free-range celebrities — few shine brighter in the public imagination than our coastline, that blue-and-gold border where the city and ocean momentarily blur. So it sometimes comes as a shock to visitors when an L.A. resident like myself will casually say that I — gasp — don’t live near the beach. Of course, “near” is a relative term. Siberia is near the North Pole, but Burbank is nowhere near Santa Monica. (I don’t make the rules, sorry.) And while no one in L.A. is ever more than 20 or so miles from the coast, the reality of city life is that the beach isn’t always the easiest option for those of us who like to get outside without losing hours to bumper-to-bumper traffic. That doesn’t mean that walking by the water is a pastime reserved only for Westsiders. (Unlike, say, rollerblading, which they can keep.) Luckily for the rest of us, it turns …