Back twenty years to... Saturday, May 13th, 2006. Day 35. The southern California desert, the world's tallest thermometer – and its first Motel. James Dean's crash site, 'Citizen Kane's Xanadu' – and a fast and furious coastal drive, up to the mighty Redwoods.

"In Ferndale, the Victorian architecture looks quite extraordinary in the low sunlight. Exceedingly finely detailed – almost unnecessarily so. Why so meticulous and precise. But hey! What else do you do before the invention of television? Precisely carve and paint, I guess. The town's current custodians are certainly preserving the infrastructure well. Complex patterns of paint highlight the astounding array of 'twiddly bits'. Ferndale, I decide – is a very secret and so special place – like 'Oz' or 'Narnia'. You get to it crossing over a long, narrow bridge – or getting caught-up in a violent storm, or peeking through a child's bedroom wardrobe.

For so many, California epitomises the 'Final Result'. The culmination of the promised and striven for – 'American Dream'. Dream big – and make it rich. I believe for most however, that it’s something of a heady, but hopeless aspiration. Where Los Angelean style – 'big money', inherited wealth and widespread affluence, rule-over all else, there's little regard for failure of any kind. Eminently similar to, but a great deal worse, than it is in Florida. Give rich people a super-scenic stretch of sunny coastline, and you’re up-against vulgar, unashamed and unabashed greed. An assumed sense of entitlement, superiority – and so ultimately – an unscrupulous contempt for absolutely anything unexceptional, or in any way second-rate. What with 'Silicon Valley', Hollywood, rapaciously energetic Business Services and majorly abundant agricultural output – if California were a Sovereign Nation – it would rank as the fourth largest economy in the world. A true Colossus.

My cynicism is obvious, as is the certainty that I haven't given the State a fair chance, when it comes to disclosing the small town simplicity I'm searching for. But clearly, there's no going back now. In my eyes – the very best thing that California has to offer – is the uncommon subtlety of the sunlight. And that of course, simply cannot be bought, or sold – by anyone."

In Search of Small-Town America: Volume 1 is a free-of-charge Pdf digital download – available from our shop. A table of contents, the introduction, the route-map – and featuring content on the first two States travelled: New Mexico and Arizona.

Jeremy Hammond I am a British writer and photographer, and have travelled through India, China, Southeast Asia and Australia, but most extensively in North America. In the late seventies and early eighties, I worked as lighting crew, and later designer, for many top-named British bands, on tours through Europe, Japan, and the USA. I’ve worked as a cruise-ship photographer, in office and store design, database design, visual arts book publishing and as a London-based freelance photographer, specialising in interiors and architecture.