SeeCalifornia.com

The Department of Interior declared 5 new national monuments in California:

• Knight’s Ferry Bridge (see photo above) in Stanislaus County is “an exceptionally fine example” of a 19th century timber-truss covered bridge.
• Cesar E. Chavez National Monument in Keene, Calif., represents the farm workers movement as well as its leader Chavez. The site called Nuestra Senora Reina de la Paz is in the foothills of the Tehachapi Mountains in Kern County.
• Drakes Bay Historic and Archaeological District in Marin County is credited for Englishman Sir Francis Drake, who sailed around the world in 1580 and first set foot on American shores in California.
• U.S. Post Office and Courthouse in San Francisco built between 1897 and 1905 exemplifies the Beaux-Arts style.
• The United States Post Office and Court House in Los Angeles became an exceptionally important site in postwar American school desegregation efforts and the civil rights history of Mexican and Mexican-American people in the Southwest between 1945 and 1946.

The five new California national monuments added to six existing monuments for a total of 11. Nationally there are 2,527 such landmarks and 592 national natural landmarks in the United States.