| Book Review | The Western Historical Quarterly, 38.4

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| Book Review | The Western Historical Quarterly, 38.4 | The History Cooperative

*California Vieja: Culture and Memory in a Modern American Place*. By Phoebe S. Kropp. (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2006. xx + 364 pp. Illustrations, tables, maps, notes, index. $39.95.)
Do myths matter? Can they prove more influential than historical fact? Myths that become powerful enough to shape history—to alter race and labor relations, to refashion urban forms and architecture, and to mold regional identity—do indeed matter. It is the ascent and powerful imprint of one such myth, the myth of Spanish Revival and Old California, or California Vieja, which serves as the focus of Phoebe Kropp's important new book.	1
California Vieja explores the ascendance and effect of Spanish Revival by examining four case studies—El Camino Real Highway, the San Diego Panama-California Exposition, the exclusive suburb of Rancho Santa Fe, and Olvera Street, a tourist market adjacent to the Los Angeles Plaza. In each locale, the fantasy past served multiple purposes. It drew tourists and new residents to Southern California. It obscured the problematic actual history of the region, from its exploitative racialized labor system to the war of conquest that placed it under U. S. control. It even camouflaged the continuing presence of Mexicans, making "Anglos into citizens and Mexicans into wraiths" (p. 251).	. . .

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