“I’m going from my valley. And this time, I shall never return. I am leaving behind me my fifty years of memory. Memory.

After admiring her maps for several decades I began to ponder why the great Ruth Taylor White does not have a place in Tooley’s Dictionary of Mapmakers or even a Wikipedia page. After all, she must be considered at the top of popular cartographers with few peers amongst pictorial mapmakers.

We don’t have a typical Christmas season here in L.A., like the ones in syrupy movies with snow, ear muffs, winter coats, and people standing in a blizzard preparing to jump off a trestle.

It was a time when Angelenos should have been preparing to head out into the streets waving victory flags and knocking back belts of whiskey before the commencement of the dreaded Volstead act.