This Memorial Day weekend your editor and most of his family visited a Civil War reenactment at the Roaring Camp and Big Trees Railroad deep in the Santa Cruz mountains of Northern California. More than one hundred reenactors from as far away as the Los Angeles area gathered to participate in an American Civil War Association event. Troops, both male and female, represented many units of the Confederate and Union armies. There were also lots of wives and children participating in one of the oldest reenactments in the West.

California is a strange place for reenactors and living historians. Unless you're participating in "Californio" events depecting early California history, and there are more and more folks doing this all the time, nothing happened in California. No French and Indian War battles, no Revolutionary War skirmishes and no pitched combats of the Civil War. I say, only half-joking, that if one mentions the French and Indian War to the average Californian they think the French were fighting the Indians. It's not that bad, but close. We do have a few Revolutionary War reenactment groups here on the West Coast but they can be numbered on the fingers of one hand. Washington state has a Brigade of the American Revolution group as does Southern California. But, alas, I have found nothing in Northern California, specifically the San Francisco Bay Area. (If you are out there, drop me some email.) Who knows, maybe we'll start something ourselves.

So, hungering for the company of like-minded folks with a history bent, we took off for Roaring Camp and their Memorial Day Civil War extravaganza. I took almost 200 pictures on Sunday and Monday and have put some of them up for your perusal. Hope you like 'em.

Remember, we're all in this together. I feel a very close bond with the Civil War reenactors. They love our hobby every bit as much as we do.---JBW