Author David Kier Reflects On Fifty Years Of Baja Travel

David Kier is a humble historian who has been traveling to Baja since the early '60s. With a copy of Gerhard and Gulick's Lower California Guide Book -known as the "Baja Bible," he sat between his parents on the bench seat of the Jeep Wagoneer as their trusted navigator. He read the map, followed the odometer, the "bible," and kept his father abreast of what to expect on the road ahead. On his first trip, they drove to the fishing village of San Felipe and South to Puertecitos. The goal was Gonzaga Bay, but that was fifty miles further over the toughest road in Baja. When the locals said the road was impassable, his father thought of the fish he was going to catch, dropped the Wagoneer into 4Lo, and five hours later, they arrived.

Kier continued making Baja trips with his parents, including an epic tour of 800+ miles on dirt down to the tip in 1966. The journey was so dusty and difficult that they took the ferry to Mazatlan to drive paved roads home. In 1973, he turned 16 -to celebrate, he and a buddy took his Myers Manx to Baja. It would be his first of many trips to come. There were two more firsts that year; he went to the Baja 1000, where Bill Sanders and Pete Springer won in a Land Cruiser FJ40, and he published his first book titled Baja and the Transpeninsular Highway. 

In this conversation, Kier shares stories of those early travels and subsequent trips for The Old Missions of Baja and Alta California 1697-1834 his book with Kurillo and Tuttle. And his latest book Baja California -Land Of Missions. 

Listen to the podcast here

Visit David Kier's website here

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