HURON, Calif. (AP) — A rooster signals the start of the day as workers wearing sombreros and ball caps emerge from the shadows and shuffle past boarded-up businesses in this tiny farm town. They converge on a dimly lit dirt lot outside Panaderia de Dios, a bakery sweetening the air with the aroma of Mexican cookies and bread as workers catch rides to the fields.

SALINAS, Calif. (AP) — Middle-school English teacher Maryam Powers doesn't take vacations. To earn additional money, she picks up an extra period of teaching when she can and mentors new hires. But to afford the mortgage on a $330,000 three-bedroom home she purchased in Salinas in 2015, Powers still must rent out the master bedroom for $800 a month.

FULLERTON, Calif. (AP) — Pushy midday shoppers nose their carts through the Korean market, stocking up on bottled kimchi and seaweed spring rolls. A few doors away, customers grab pho to go at a Vietnamese takeout counter. Across the street, lunchtime diners line up for tacos "al pastor" — spit-roasted pork — at a Mexican-style taqueria.

It's a snapshot of how much Orange County, California, has changed.

HURON, Calif. (AP) — Beyond the boarded-up buildings and patchwork fences that others view as eyesores, Huron Mayor Rey Leon sees potential in this tiny central California farm town that has been mired in poverty for decades.

On a dirty restaurant wall, Leon envisions a mural depicting Bracero farmworkers, like his father who came from Mexico. In a dirt lot next to a soccer field, he imagines a rose garden. On fallowed land covered with weeds outside town, he pictures a park.

LAS VEGAS (AP) — The Republicans running in Nevada's hotly contested races for governor and U.S. Senate are taking aim at a common target as they try to maintain GOP control of the seats: California.

As more Californians have poured across the state line over the past few years, many of them escaping sky-high housing costs, some Nevada Republicans fear a state that already has become a political battleground will begin to resemble its deep blue neighbor.

RENO, Nev. (AP) — They were the toast of Reno in the 1950s, when the growing casino industry sparked a boom that for a time turned northern Nevada into the West's top gambling destination.

Dozens of downtown motor lodges provided spare but comfortable retreats for motorists who took to the nation's new highways to see the bright lights of the self-proclaimed "Biggest Little City in the World" and try their luck at the slot machines and blackjack tables.

SALINAS, Calif. (AP) — Here's a look at some key information about Salinas, one of the nation's least affordable metro areas to live. It's a phenomenon that's plaguing California, from its wealthiest areas, to working-class cities like Salinas.