Continuing our tour through my business cards, made by the wonderful Ernie Marquez, here's Paradise Cove in the olden days.

That's the trestle of the Hueneme, Malibu and Port of Los Angeles Railway, the full-gauge railroad built by May Knight Rindge in 1905. (It spans what is now the parking lot of the Paradise Cove Beach Cafe.) May's husband, Frederick Rindge, came up with the plan. He died suddenly and his widow oversaw its completion.

No trains every traveled that track, but that was the point. By spending close to a million dollars, May outsmarted the railroad barons of Southern Pacific and kept them from building their own railroad through her land.

Today, thanks to May Rindge, the first female president of a railway company in the U.S., the Southern Pacific was forced to jog inland through the Valley and Malibu remained railroad-free.

I bet Santa Barbarans wish they'd had a May Rindge in their neck of the woods.