Edited March 6Mar 6 by Fielder

Another fiiiiine example…of California’s Gold.

I got through about half of that.

The player machine is pretty cool. $3500 in 1912 would be about $120,000 today or maybe $60,000 in 2000.

Is it just me or is that host guy in the yellow shirt a bit of uncanny valley? The production values look about 1950s. Maybe I'm just confused.

Hook

Huell Howser ex Marine Corp Reserve worked on Senator Howard Baker's staff before retiring and doing singing voices for cartoons, before joining PBS. He was known for wildly over reacting ("oh my, LOOK at that !! ") when something only mildly interesting was being shown as happening. 

Huell Howser...you either love him or can't stand him.  I loved his programs.  He passed away in 2013.  He was based in Southern California and his programs (main one was California's Gold) would play on all the PBS stations in California and the one in Nashville, TN (where he started his TV career).  He was a genuinely nice guy, very enthusiastic about the whatever the subject was (as you can see he was easily impressed):

I had a connection to this program.  At the end of the shows, he asked the audience if they had anything they'd like to see on the program to contact them with suggestions.  I did that, and low and behold, they eventually appeared, in consecutive order so I know they were my idea.  To do shows on fire lookouts and the anti-submarine net that was deployed at the entrance of San Francisco Bay.  They appeared in Season 12, episodes 4 and 5:

• S12E03 Fire Lookout

  • March 3, 2002
  • PBS

  Travel with Huell to Sequoia National Forest to visit historic Buck Rock Fire Lookout. Established in the early 1900s, Buck Rock Lookout was one of the first fire detection locations in the Sierra Nevada Mountains. The current lookout building, constructed in 1923, is historically significant as a representation of the earliest live-in towers in California. Huell climbs 172 stairs to an elevation of 8,500 feet to interview the woman who currently staffs the lookout through the fire season, and to learn what it's like to live perched on the edge of a cliff! We'll also visit with a woman who staffed the lookout for many years in the '40s.

• S12E04 Sub-Net

  • April 7, 2002
  • PBS

  Its huge, metal and stretches across the Golden Gate, but it's not the bridge. It's the former site of the Tiburon Sub-Net Depot, where they built and deployed nets across the San Francisco Bay to keep out enemy submarines. Long before the Tiburon Sub-Net Depot was there, this small piece of land had many incarnations, among them are: home to Native Americans, an original Spanish Ranchero, the largest Cod fish drying plant on the west coast, a coaling station for the Navy, and it was where the cables for the bridge were spun... in fact if you look over the edge at low tide you can still see them. Come on along with us as we get a up close look at this little, but important piece of California's Gold.

List of episodes:  https://thetvdb.com/series/californias-gold/allseasons/official

Huell Howser humor: