Elk Grove Shopping Score of the Week: Echoes of Yesterday

At $39.95, the glossy paperback Echoes of Yesterday might not seem like a bargain. But along with Elizabeth Pinkerton's History Happened Here, it's one of a very small number of history books that focus exclusively on the Elk Grove area.

Socked away within its pages are oodles of "then and now" photos and intriguing nuggets of Elk Grove trivia—like the location of Elk Grove's first-ever swimming pool (p. 19) and how a controversial dam project led to the murder of a local landowner (p. 37).

Within a few hours of buying Echoes of Yesterday, in fact, I'd already used it to solve an Elk Grove mystery. Earlier in the day, as I gave my parents a tour of Old Town, my sharp-eyed architect mother had noticed a building called the Toronto Hotel. "That doesn't look anything like a hotel," she'd said, noting the building's low profile and glass storefronts.

According to Echoes of Yesterday, she's right: The building was simply named for a two-story wooden inn that was built on the same site twice, in 1892 and 1922, and burned to the ground both times. Talk about bad luck.

You can pick up your own copy of Echoes of Yesterday—written by former Elk Grove Citizen lifestyle editor Lance Armstrong—at .