San Luis Obispo, California Travel: "Roads to Romance" 1949 Chevrolet Division, General Motors

more at http://quickfound.net/

Travelogue produced for GM by Jam Handy.

Originally a public domain film from the Library of Congress Prelinger Archives, slightly cropped to remove uneven edges, with the aspect ratio corrected, and one-pass brightness-contrast-color correction & mild video noise reduction applied.

The soundtrack was also processed with volume normalization, noise reduction, clipping reduction, and/or equalization (the resulting sound, though not perfect, is far less noisy than the original).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/San_Luis_Obispo,_California

Wikipedia license: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/

San Luis Obispo (/sæn ˌluːɪs əˈbɪspoʊ/; Spanish for "St. Louis, Bishop [of Toulouse]", pronounced [san ˈlwis oˈβispo]), or SLO (/sloʊ/) for short, is a city in the U.S. state of California, located 190 miles (310 km) north of Los Angeles in Southern California's Central Coast region. The population was 45,119 at the 2010 census. The population of San Luis Obispo County was 269,637 in 2010.

Founded in 1772 by Spanish Franciscan Junípero Serra, San Luis Obispo is one of California's oldest European-founded communities. Serra's original mission was named after the 13th-century saint and bishop Louis of Toulouse. The city, locally referred to as San Luis, SLO, or SLO Town (as its county is also referred to as SLO) is the county seat of San Luis Obispo County and is adjacent to California Polytechnic State University...

Mission period

During the Spanish Empire expansion throughout the world, specifically in 1769, Franciscan Junípero Serra received orders from Spain to bring the Catholic faith to the natives of (Alta California); the idea was to unify the empire under the same religion and language. Mission San Diego was the first Spanish mission founded in Alta California that same year.

On September 7, 1769, an expedition led by Gaspar de Portolá entered the San Luis Obispo area from coastal areas around today's Pismo Beach. One of the expedition's three diarists, padre Juan Crespí, recorded the name given to this area by the soldiers as Cañada de Los Osos ("cañada" translates as "valley" or "canyon"). The party traveled north along San Luis Obispo Creek, turned west through Los Osos Valley, and reached Morro Bay on September 9.

In 1770, Portola established the Presidio of Monterey and Junípero Serra founded the second mission, San Carlos Borromeo, in Monterey. The mission was moved to Carmel the following year. As supplies dwindled in 1772 at the mission and Presidio, the people faced starvation. Remembering the Valley of the Bears, Presidio of Monterey commander Pedro Fages (a member of the Portolà expedition) led a hunting expedition to bring back food. Over twenty-five mule loads of dried bear meat and seed were sent north to relieve the missionaries, soldiers, and neophytes (baptized natives). The natives were impressed at the ease by which the Spaniards could take down the huge grizzlies with their weapons. Some of the bear meat was traded with the local people in exchange for edible seed. It was after this that Junípero Serra decided that La Cañada de Los Osos would be an ideal place for the fifth mission.

The area had abundant supplies of food and water, the climate was also very mild, and the local Chumash were very friendly. With soldiers, muleteers, and pack animals carrying mission supplies, Junípero Serra set out from Carmel to reach the Valley of the Bears. On September 1, 1772, Junípero Serra celebrated the first Mass with a cross erected near San Luis Creek. The very next day, he departed for San Diego leaving Fr. José Cavaller, with the difficult task of building the mission. Fr. José Cavaller, five soldiers and two neophytes began building Mission San Luis Obispo de Tolosa, which would later become the town of San Luis Obispo...

When the Mexican War of Independence from Spain broke out in 1810, all California missions had to become virtually self-sufficient, receiving few funds or supplies from Spanish sources. Beginning soon after Mexico won her independence from Spain in 1821, anti-Spanish feelings led to calls for expulsion of the Spanish Franciscans and secularization of the missions. Because the fledgling Mexican government had many more important problems to deal with than far-off California, actual secularization didn't happen until the mid-1830s...