Over the course of the last year, I've been working on a project to document the history of game design, and I've interviewed everyone from Sid Meier to Noah Falstein to Nasir Gebelli. As a part of that, this weekend, I set out to find the legendary game company Sierra On-Line. Unencumbered by research, my girlfriend Brenda and I spontaneously decided Friday night to leave Saturday morning for the Yosemite area.
I visited Sierra On-Line back in 1992, but that's a GameTales entry I need to write, and won't give away here. Oakhurst is approximately a 4 hour trip from our house through beautiful country, so we took the BMW Z4. Around 4pm we checked into our hotel room in Madera, CA, about 45 minutes from the Oakhurst area. We then continued on our mission. Around 5pm we reached the intersection of CA-41 and Raymond Rd., the beginning of Coarsegold. As we cruised down the street, we saw a Mexican restaurant named Alfonso's - surely a good omen, and oh, we would be eating there, of course. On we continued for another 8 miles or so until we reached the outskirts of Oakhurst.
Coming down the hill, the first business we see is on our left, and it's Erna's Elderberry House. I actually had dinner there in 1992, so it’s been around for a while. Since we had no idea where the actual address of Sierra was, we pulled over at a gas station to sit in the car and do some internet searching.
We pulled up next to a car. Someone was sitting in the driver’s seat with the window down. I knew that Sierra basically owned this town when they were functional, and probably everyone in the town knew that Sierra was a game company long ago. I rolled down the window and asked the person, “Hi. Do you know the game company Sierra that used to be in town?” “Yeah, just about everyone in town worked there. My uncle used to work in the warehouse.” I asked,”Do you know the address of the building?” The guy said,”No, but the bartender at Erna’s has been working there for over 20 years. Maybe he knows.” I said thanks, and we drove back up to Erna’s.