The story of this website is an interesting one. I started my Internet journey in late 1994 using a local ISP and a shell account in Santa Clarita, California. Back then, a “shell” account was a text-only and inexpensive way to get onto the Internet. It didn’t take me long to find all sorts of websites related to my interests in geology, weather, and roads though none really covering the local area. Pickings were a bit slim back then, with the Internet itself having “only” tens of thousands of websites. I did find other sites, such as Usenet forums, where I found others interested in roads as well as some of my other interests like bicycling and geology. I also found some sites using Finger and Gopher, for those that remember those protocols.

Around August in 1995, I learned that I too could have a website. They told me I could have up to 10 MB of space, which seemed like a lot at the time. Initially, I thought of just having a basic “Home Page” with some pages to share the information I had gathered on the local area. I learned basic HTML and developed my first basic web page, which at the time I called “Mike Ballard’s Home Page”. The page went online in December 1995 and marked the beginning of the current site. This first page had a basic list of my interests, some interesting links I had found, and the “seeds” to my first subject pages – Historic Highway 99 in Santa Clarita, local geology, and some basic historical information. These first pages were very simple and had few photos, partly as I had to write the code for the pages and I didn’t have a proper HTML editor at the time. Such programs were also not easy to find and cost money. The original idea for the Highway 99 page, for example, was to have a short history of the road through Santa Clarita and photos of some of the various remnant sections and structures. The geology page was also as simple and had a basic geologic history of the area.

These simple pages didn’t last long as the website slowly grew. Within a few months, the page was renamed the “Santa Clarita Valley Resources Page” and started to have a broader list of topics. Local bicycling, a more detailed history of the area, local railroad information, and even a page I called “Dumb Developer Tricks”, which made fun of some of the advertising for the various housing developments in the area. My Highway 99 page was transformed into the “Virtual Tour of US 99” in 1996, which was easier to expand. Within a couple of years, the tour extended beyond Santa Clarita into the San Joaquin Valley and south into the San Fernando Valley. Tours of US 6 and the Ridge Route followed shortly after. The geology page expanded to have individual pages on each community within Santa Clarita and included information about earthquakes that had affected the city. Other highway pages, such as my “Scenic Drives” pages also started during this period.

By the late 1990’s, the site has grown in size to I think around 40 MB, far larger than the initially allotted space. Still hosted by my local ISP, they “let me slide” due to the educational nature of the site but told me to try to keep the size growth down. In an attempt to reduce the size of the site, I shrunk some of the images, cropped where I could, and even deleted wherever I could. Still, I knew this couldn’t last as the site continued to grow in scope. In 2000, purchased my first domain – scvresources.com, and moved the site to a different host not long after. I needed more space for the ever growing, and now more photo intensive, website. In 2005, I moved away from Santa Clarita to the San Diego area and decided to create an additional website covering similar topics in that area. The new site, called the “San Diego Rocks and Roads Page”, would cover some of the roads, geology, and bicycling around San Diego. A new domain was also purchased – sdrocksnroads.com and would become my primary site for a while. Both Santa Clarita and San Diego sites continued to grow but with a different focus, with the Santa Clarita site expanding mostly in the highway tours. The “Santa Clarita Valley Resources Page” was also rebranded during this time to the “Los Angeles Rocks and Roads Page”, keeping the “scvresources.com” domain and dropping some of the Santa Clarita-specific content.

The growth would slow by the late 2000’s as I ran into both financial and technical issues which made things more difficult for the site. I kept having site downtime, was unable to upload things for an extended period, lost access to the WSIWYG HTML editor I was using, and hosting costs were rising. In 2014, I finally had a solution and a better way to handle things. I moved the site to another host yet again and a new domain, socalregion.com. This new domain would contain both the Los Angeles and San Diego pages with a broader scope. With this change, the site could expand even farther, covering all of Southern California and pretty much any topic I wanted. It didn’t take long for additional topics to be covered, such as hang gliding and regional parks. Topics I had covered in the past but removed even got reposted. My “Civic Information” pages, which gave information about all the cities in the region as well as basic state facts, came back online. More recently, the site has expanded the “Recreation” pages to cover amusement parks, rollercoasters, and even some information about motorcycling in Southern California.

Today, the website covers such a broad range of topics that sometimes I don’t even know what I have online. I’ll come up with an idea for a post and end up finding I did one already 10 years ago. For a while, I nicknamed my site “The Monster” due to its growth and limitless options for topics. Its size and amount of traffic can sometimes make it difficult to host under the current plan as well but moving to a more “commercial” plan would be far too costly, so I make do with the hosting plan as it stands. The site was never made to make money. Its sole purpose has always been to teach others and share the knowledge I have acquired through my research. The site has a few firsts as well. It was the first to cover US 99 and the Ridge Route. It was the first to cover the geology in Santa Clarita. It was the first to cover the bicycle trails in Santa Clarita. It predates most of the Internet and even sites such well-known sites such as Google.

I wouldn’t have put as much work into the site if it weren’t for all the support and encouragement I’ve had over the years, both emotional and financial. The site has been used at schools, in the news, and even as a source for books. I wish to thank all that have helped with keeping the site alive over the last 30 years and look forward to seeing where things go in the future. I couldn’t have done it without you.

Thank you all again for all your support!