San Luis Obispo was founded in 1772 as a mission in the foothills of the Santa Lucia Mountains on California’s Central Coast. The city that grew from a sleepy pueblo with a scattering of adobe buildings today has a wealth of architectural styles. From the dairy barns of the outlying farm community, to the grand hotels and lively saloons kept in business by the Southern Pacific Railroad, to the Mission Revival-style edifices of California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo’s architecture has echoed its history. Motor travel brought the world’s first motel to this half-way point on California’s historic Highway 101, and in the 1960s the unusual Madonna Inn, which remains a world-famous tourist attraction.

Author Janet Penn Franks narrates this visual tour of the town’s architectural treasures and tells the stories of the people who built and lived in them. Photographs are drawn from the large archives of the San Luis Obispo County Museum and History Center, and the City of San Luis Obispo.