Mendocino - Tahoe Trail
MENDOCINO - TAHOE TRAIL
RESTORING CALIFORNIA'S THIRTY-NINTH PARALLEL
35 Year Report Part One: Fulfilling the Mendocino-Tahoe Trail Dream
by
February 2003
The author is a distant cousin of the Frederick Law Olmsted family of landscape architects who helped design parks and grounds at Yosemite, Central Park, Stanford University, US Capitol Mall and portions of an Over-200 -Site California State Park System (only the US National Park System is more visited). The maternal grandfather William Hamilton Hay most likely had common roots with John Muir's grandmother who was also a Hay. But in contrast to the park-oriented Olmsteds, realtor Billy Hay developed Encino and part of Sunset Boulevard, creating the square line streets and subdivision lots that made the Los Angeles Megalopolis what it is today.
Forming two non-profits since 1968, California Institute of Man in Nature (CIMIN) and Sequoya Challenge (SC), the author has been following an elusive 39-year path furthering first the works of Muir, idol of his youth, and later 3 Olmsted cousins whose baton he grasped from 1979-92 by gaining token legislation and designations for California Heritage Corridors +$20,000 for a Heritage Corridor Map (with Cal.State Chico). Realizing a 300 mile Mendocino-Tahoe Trail and preserving its "missing link" parks is an obsession for this 65 year-old ecologist. Throughout this article, points of interest along Tahoe Pacific State Heritage Corridor /Route 20 will be referenced for the readers to visit, starting with Lake Tahoe parks. This article focuses on the Mendocino-Tahoe hypotenuse of a 600 mile San Francisco / Mendocino / Lake Tahoe triangle of parks, resorts, trails and scenic highways.The 600 mile Tahoe-Pacific Heritage Network includes six of California's most scenic county seats, the two largest fresh water lakes, two wild and scenic rivers, and its best Redwood estuary.
A Trail Opening for Mendocino-Tahoe Trail -2002 TAHOE ARRIVAL
To alert frontage and docked boat owners on the northwest shore of Lake Tahoe, loud mid-morning splashings September 27, 2002 would have drawn curiosity if not alarm. Two saronged, bearded, tanned men, looking more like religious pilgrims than normal lake visitors, attempted to wade in shallow water, then mounted an adjoining pier, finally swimming at its end in deeper water. A botanist, six foot five inch Frank Cook, was in truth an emerging John Muir disciple with an expanding repertoire of tropical plants. His quest to see all 5000 genera of the world's half million plants first led him to Europe and South America. This just-completed 300-mile Across California Trek was but a three-week detour on his way to Africa. In 1868-69 Botanist John Muir himself considered his 250-mile Treks Across California to Mono Lake a part of a Yosemite 'Detour' before going to the Amazon. Having finally reached the Amazon at the age of 72, John Muir had also pronounced that Tahoe should be a National Park. Instead the Tahoe that Muir disciple Frank Cook reached in 2002 had become a defacto National Heritage Area, with a dozen local, California and Nevada State Parks embedded between private and federal lands, the trails and visitor centers of a hybridized Tahoe Basin National Forest Unit. Completing their walk's ceremonial aspect, Frank and friend Chad joyfully splashed in Tahoe's cool not icy, still reasonably clear waters, then offered up the seaweed, shells and sand carefully carried from a September 5th Pacific Ocean baptism. The pilgrim's offerings traveled from the Mendocino shore to almost 9000 feet at "Tinker's Knob", then back down to mile-high Lake Tahoe. Friends would be phoned, then off to the East Coast and for Frank, off to vaster Africa. The only hint of greater significance to the walk was the Grass Valley Union's September 2? article "Frank Cook and his hiking partner Chad were joined for one day by local naturalist John Olmsted. They planned to reach Lake Tahoe in about a week. To dunk in Lake Tahoe somewhere near where Frank and Chad did, visit one of the public lakefront beaches between Sugar Pine Point State Park, King's Beach and the Buttermaker's Cottage, all reachable from where Highway 89 hits Lake Tahoe from Truckee.
Opening Mendocino-Tahoe Trail -PACIFIC CREST WELCOME
But the author and two friends 20 miles back and 20 hours earlier on Pacific Crest Trail at Old Donner Pass had joined Frank and Chad to celebrate their September 25th morning arrival at the Pacific Crest, western backbone of North America. As we all walked down the 2000-mile Canada-Mexico trail for two hours together, we were sharing the reconnection of a restorable necklace of western American landscapes.
35 YEAR MENDOCINO-TAHOE DREAM REINFORCED
Cook had been seeking trail and park directions around September 1. He had contacted the author who, with Cal. Institute (CIMIN) and Sequoya Challenge, had long helped rescue and legislate 15 natural and historic sites along a State Route 20 backbone for a 300 mile Tahoe Pacific State Heritage Corridor (AB2922/1992). Canessa Gallery's $1000 grant in 1968 and Oakland Museum Natural Science Docent Classes of 1969 had catalyzed the idea for a practical east-west Muir California Restoration Trail & Parks Corridor. In 1970s-1980s, six thousand acres worth $20 million were pre-acquired and/or linked into parks. But in 1990 major necklace additions were undertaken. Despite CIMIN/Olmsted winning a greed lawsuit, California Appeals Court unjustly withheld $150,000. Resulting 5 year delays and disorder left a crippled, stagnating dream, with 500 supporters uncontacted by newsletter. But now Mendocino Tahoe Trail, spiritual thread for what had become a 300-mile, 34-year maturing parks necklace, would be blessed with a Fall, 2002 rehearsal for a now-possible 2004 debut, thirty years after the author & friends 1974-75 Mendocino-Tahoe Landscape Survey & missing-links list.
REALIZING A 35-YEAR DREAM
Now for the first time since the subdivision of California was begun by the Goldrush and Homestead Act, Frank and Chad's million footsteps were threading together over forty parks, trails and reserves illustrating the diverse botany John Muir had found one degree of latitude south on his California arrival treks in 1868-69. And this Pacific Crest celebration and Tahoe arrival were the 160th year tip of an invisible homeostatic iceberg of land history: of Fremont's 1843-44 surveys, mining claims, railroad lands, farm homesteading, trans-continental surveying, subdivisions and lastly of park / trail purchases and restoration across the shy but diverse western chest line of North America (*below). 1 self-moderating, self-equalizing 39TH PARALLEL.
Meanwhile serendipitous Internet research had just recovered details of the *Thirty-Ninth Parallel Triangulation, a forgotten project to measure North America with an accuracy of 3/8 inch per mile. For the last three decades of the nineteenth century, that Cadillac of U.S. land surveys was calculated with great accuracy using high wood towers and commanding peaks on both sides of a 39-degree latitude arc from Mendocino to Tahoe to Delaware Bay. The Transcontinental Triangulation's most famous but forgotten assistants and apprentices include two of the conceptual architects of American park systems: John Muir (helping A. F. Rodgers triangulate California and Nevada's 39th Parallel polygons 1875-78) and young Frederick Law Olmsted, Jr. (helping finalize Colorado observations in 1894). The latter, son of Central Park designer F. L. Olmsted, wrote the famed National Parks mission statement in 1915-16, then chose original sites for California's State Parks, world's second most-used park system. Muir & Olmsted National & State Parks are ridgepole and rafters for California heritage tourism.
In order of accessibility, the important California peaks used for this archetypal trigonometric dance across America were: Mt.Diablo (Diablo State Park), Mt. Tamalpais, (Tamalpais State Park), Mt. Helena (Mount Saint Helena State Park), Round Top (El Dorado National Forest/Carson Pass), Mount Conness (Yosemite National Park), Snow Mountain (Mendocino National Forest), Mount Lola (Tahoe National Forest) 14,000' Mount Shasta (Shasta-Trinity National Forest); and Great Caspar (Observatory Hill, 5 miles east of Jughandle State Reserve).
Opening Mendocino-Tahoe Trail
REMEMBERING BOTH WALKS
We sat together now at the ridgepole of the Sierra Nevada, alongside a spectacular Sierra Juniper, watching the golden sun set over the headwaters lakes and meadows of the Yuba watershed. A giant split Jeffrey Pine and a leaning trunk shown red in the alpen glow. The video camera recorded Frank and Chad's high and low points, mentioning the longest days and favorite trails, the thank goodness feeling of finding a safe place to sleep among farms and highways, and exhaustion from walking until ten at night in socks and sandals. And because of the background of surveys and heritage preservation already discussed, Frank's route outlined in the author's living room and relived in the video camera for this Crest Sunset had become a veritable Hobbit's Odyssey of roads, trails and adventures along 20-mile: Clear Lake and half-saved Black Forest, 50 trail miles through Cache Creek wildlands to the east, walking towards and around a "lonely mountain" (the volcanic dragon teeth called Sutter Buttes), staying at CIMIN'S remote PG & E manager's Victorian in the Sierra Foothills, next day connecting by boat to Bridgeport's longest single-span covered bridge, checking out the visitor center for 20-mile South Yuba River State Park, then at dusk onto a wheelchair wilderness trail made out of a mining flume, finally completing by starlight a 40 mile day to the jumping off place for 75 mostly trail miles in BLM and US Forest service lands from Nevada City to Lake Tahoe.
THINKING BACK TO FIRST WALK
As the author also watched the 2002 Pacific Crest sunset, it was a thrill to think of 15 parks and 100 miles of trails/scenic dirt roads just walked, unavailable to himself and Peter Goddard on an initial 39th Parallel Trek in 1975. There was a grateful glow for improbable wishes now come true. As the sun set by Devil's Peak of the pioneers, it was possible to think back, back .suddenly 27 years back and 12 Pacific Crest Trail miles further south with trekkers Peter & John, joined that morning by Muir mountaineer/disciple Howard Weamer: The windswept Sierra Juniper had a red metal No Trespassing sign nailed into It's ribboned alpen glow bark. The first snow buttercups were pushing out of a snowbank. Overlooking the Wild and Scenic North Fork American River Headwaters, snowy Granite Chief to southwest was not yet a Wilderness Area. Certain peak landmarks for sighting back across a route from Great Valley and South Yuba Canyon were noted, yet the "39th Parallel Survey" was unknown history. As the sun set they prayed and pledged to try saving as many as possible of a Schindler's List of spectacular landscapes seen since April 5. Exhilaration from having followed spring's footsteps over the many wild ridges & canyons just traversed kept a vast dream from seeming futile, while 1975 realist friends were envisioning a dozen uncrossable political and financial barriers ahead:
Jughandle Ecological Staircase starting point, lacking $1/2million for unbought mid-section (now a 1000 acre plus State Forest/State Park Reserve and the 40 acre Jughandle Farm and Hostel, 707-937-4630),
Big River east of Jughandle owned by giant Georgia Pacific, its vast redwoods all to be cut (Fall?2002 issue California Tour / Travel explained a $26 million rescue of Big River Estuary and redwood lands),
Private Coast Range crest virgin forests (now insured as part of a $15 million conservation easement),
Cow Mountain & Cache Creek Wildlands with half private inholdings (in Bureau of Land Management/Cal Fish & Game lands; now available for Frank Cook route through over $1 million of land purchases),
Half of Bear Valley last great wildflower gardens to be planned as golf course/condos (Colusa County, saved 2001 by American Land Conservancy in $3 million pact with cattle ranchers' land trust),
Goat Mountain Ecological Staircase to be logged ($1/2 million loans to CIMIN on 680 acres still hold),
Wild/Private Sutter Buttes on 1975 hike only seeable via pre-dawn and after dusk traverse (now accessible on slightly pricy guided tours; our non-profit's 1990s $5000 loan helping to save North Butte), Opening Mendocino-Tahoe Trail 4 1975-2000 Mendocino-Tahoe Rescue List (concluded),
80-acre nature/historic site in 10,000 acre Yuba foothills to be sold (bought 1989 for future Mendocino-Tahoe Trail stops like Frank's; now 80% paid off via author's strenuous fund-raising, but badly needing $ help),
Threatened RV park at Bridgeport Bridge, stopped by CIMIN/SC/Olmsted $250,000 purchase of 290 acres,
1975 dozer work on Excelsior Canal means curtains for Gaye Blackford wild wheelchair trail (2 teachers' $500 deposits led to $3 million purchase/development of now half built South Yuba Independence Trail; author's purchases hold $1/2 million Yuba Point/ Yuba Watershed Overlook lands, needing debt payoffs for gift),
Planned $1/2 billion Yuba dam system (replaced by 39-mile Wild & Scenic South Yuba River; necessary 51% of public lands coming via our legislation and our non-profits' 2000 acre Mendocino-Tahoe Trail land rescues),
Nevada County Bear Valley old-growth pines/ponds planned for logging ('76 appeal to PG&E is now Sierra Discovery Trail, just 1/4 mile off State Route 20; some parts still need permanent PG&E preservation).
As Frank and Chad left us southward into the darkness, perhaps to walk towards Donner Peak and around Mt. Judah in the moonlight, the author ruminated all the way down the rocky mile of Pacific Crest Trail to the car. What a gift sharing that sunset, one Muir disciple to another, after 30+ years of buying and linking parks for Frank's precious Muir California Re-Creation Pilgrimage. Our miraculous 'Schindler's list' of rescued landscapes almost had become: a nine-hole golf course, a 60-lot subdivision, an 80-unit motel, 8 coastal mansions, possible towers on North Sutter Butte, a dozen private Yuba River cabins, a 10 acre RV Park and a $1/2 billion South Yuba Dam System.
To watch 39th Parallel sunsets on West Side of Mount Judah, Drive I-80/Old 40 to Old Donner Pass, parking at top of pass or 1/4 mile south at Pacific Crest Trail Trailhead. It's a well-maintained trail for most hikers, but learners and slow walkers should bring a walking stick for rocks in the trail. Its less than a mile to a fine spot by wind swept Jeffrey Pines and Sierra Junipers, looking down on the valley where Donner era and Gold-rush pioneers gave thanks for having made it across the Sierra. Bring water, and a flashlight for your return. Now armed with a new historic foundation and Mendocino-Tahoe Trail rehearsal, our Across California CIMIN chapter and new Muir-Olmsted Institute could link future Mendocino-Tahoe hikers back to our own 1974-75 Mendocino-Tahoe Trail / Parks Surveys, then a century further back to US Park heroes, John Muir and F.L.Olmsted Jr., all working on the same alignment.
Our task as Muir and Olmsted disciples would now be California's 39th Parallel Restoration. In contrast to a Transcontinental Survey designed to arbitrate the dividing of America's land-scapes into smaller and smaller parcels, we were all now consciously or unconsciously* threading together larger and larger parcels into restorable natural / historic landscapes and trails across California's 39th Parallel, most diverse part of the 2625-mile first-measured chest line of North America. And now, (in Eric Seaborg's amended design) half routed within 39th N. Parallel lies a 3300?mile American Discovery Trail**, in which our partial motion picture played a tiny inspirational part.
*Onto 10 existing parks/reserves in 1968 Muir Centennial Survey were added 10 CIMIN/SC/Olmsted sites and 10 random sites: Mendocino-Big River, Anderson Marsh, Cache Creek, Bear Valley, Grouse Ridge, Donner Lake, etc.
**American Discovery Trail began as 1980-81 Hike-A-Nation, filmed by author but unfinished.
Click Here to view:
John Muir in Nevada / 125th Anniversary Perspective
Part of One Hour Talk to Sierra Club at Auburn Public Library September 30, 2003
Tours, Maps, Volunteer Work Parties and Preservation Efforts
Box 1026, Nevada City, CA 95959
530-BRIDGES (274-3437)
johnolms@nccn.net
