12 Best Sights in Fresno, The Sierra Nevada

Sicilian immigrant Baldassare Forestiere spent four decades (1906–46) carving out an odd, subterranean realm of rooms, tunnels, grottoes, alcoves, and arched passageways that once extended for more than 10 acres between Highway 99 and busy, mall-pocked Shaw Avenue. Though not an engineer, Forestiere called on his memories of the ancient Roman structures he saw as a youth and on techniques he learned digging subways in New York and Boston. Only a fraction of his prodigious output is on view, but you can tour his underground living quarters, including bedrooms (one with a fireplace), the kitchen, living room, and bath, as well as a fishpond and auto tunnel. Skylights allow exotic full-grown fruit trees to flourish more than 20 feet belowground.

The museum's key permanent collections include pre-Columbian Mesoamerican art, Andean pre-Columbian textiles and artifacts, Japanese prints, Berkeley School abstract expressionist paintings, and contemporary sculpture. Temporary exhibits include important traveling shows.

The 62-mile self-guided Blossom Trail driving tour takes in Fresno-area orchards, citrus groves, and vineyards during spring blossom season. The trail passes through small towns and past rivers, lakes, and canals. The most colorful and aromatic time to go is from late February to mid-March, when almond, plum, apple, apricot, and peach blossoms shower the landscape with shades of white, pink, and red. After the blossoms mature, the route is known as the Fruit Trail.

The zoo's most striking exhibit is its tropical rain forest, where you'll encounter exotic birds along paths and bridges. Elsewhere at the zoo live tigers, sloth bears, sea lions, tule elk, camels, elephants, and siamang apes. The facility has a high-tech reptile house and there's a petting zoo.

The drive along palm-lined Kearney Boulevard is one of the best reasons to visit the museum, which stands in shaded 225-acre Kearney Park. The century-old home of M. Theo Kearney, Fresno's onetime "raisin king," is accessible only on guided 45-minute tours.

Along the Blossom Trail, roughly halfway between Fresno and Visalia, the colorful handiwork of local quilters is on display at the Mennonite Quilt Center. Try to visit on Monday (except holidays) between 8 and noon, when two dozen quilters stitch, patch, and chat over coffee. Prime viewing time—with the largest number of quilts—is in February and March, before the center's early-April auction. Ask a docent to take you to the locked upstairs room, where most of the quilts hang; you'll learn about the fine points of patterns such as the Log Cabin Romance, the Dahlia, and the Snowball-Star.

A restored 1889 Victorian, "the Meux" contains furnishings typical of an upper-class household in early Fresno. The house's namesake, Thomas Richard Meux, was a Confederate army doctor during the Civil War who became a family practitioner after moving to Fresno. The Meux can be viewed on guided tours only.

This lake at the top of Friant Dam is a great place for boating, fishing, camping, and summertime swimming. The lake and its surrounding hills are wintering grounds for bald eagles, and boat tours are available to view the birds between December and February.

The restored brick buildings of a former lumber-industry district now hold antiques shops, art galleries, restaurants, and saloons. At the visitor center (or online) you can access a walking-tour map. To get here from Fresno, head east on Herndon Avenue for about 10 miles to Clovis Avenue and drive south. Not much is open on Sunday.

Tree-shaded Roeding Park is a place of respite on hot summer days; it has picnic areas, playgrounds, tennis courts, horseshoe pits, and a zoo. A train, little race cars, paddleboats, a carousel, and other rides for kids are among the amusements at Playland. Children can explore attractions with fairy-tale themes at Rotary Storyland.

The collection at the largest military museum west of the Mississippi includes Japanese, German, and American uniforms, German bayonets and daggers, a Japanese Namby pistol, a Gatling gun, and nearly 20,000 other items. The museum is also home of the Legion of Valor, dedicated to those who have received the nation's highest decorations for heroism and service. The staff is extremely enthusiastic.

The Central Valley's largest urban park, with 300 acres of jogging trails, picnic areas, and playgrounds, is especially pretty in spring, when plum and cherry trees, magnolias, and camellias bloom. Outdoor concerts take place in summer. The Shinzen Friendship Garden (shinzenjapanesegarden.org) has a teahouse, a koi pond, arched bridges, a waterfall, and Japanese art.