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Sustainable Future for the Klamath Mountains, University
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Steward’s Fork
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Steward’s Fork
A Sustainable Future for
the Klamath Mountains
Copyright © 2007. University of California Press. All rights reserved.
James K. Agee
UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA PRESS
Berkeley
· Los Angeles
· London
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University of California Press
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© 2007 by The Regents of the University of California
Copyright © 2007. University of California Press. All rights reserved.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Agee, James K.
Steward’s Fork: a sustainable future for the Klamath
Mountains/James K. Agee.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-0-520-25125-0 (cloth : alk. paper)
1. Natural history—Klamath Mountains Region
(Calif. and Or.) 2. Conservation of natural
resources—Klamath Mountains Region (Calif. and Or.)
3. Sustainable development—Klamath Mountains
Region (Calif. and Or.) I. Title.
QH104.5.K55A34 2007
508.794—dc22
2007004255
Manufactured in the United States of America
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10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
This book is printed on New Leaf EcoBook 50, a 100%
recycled fiber of which 50% is de-inked post-consumer
waste, processed chlorine-free. EcoBook 50 is acid-free
and meets the minimum requirements of ANSI/ASTM
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Agee, James K.. Steward's Fork : A Sustainable Future for the Klamath Mountains, University of California
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To my partner, Wendy, who has loved
the Trinities along with me across
five wonderful decades
Agee, James K.. Steward's Fork : A Sustainable Future for the Klamath Mountains, University of California
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Contents
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.
8.
9.
10.
11.
12.
13.
14.
15.
16.
17.
Figures and Tables
ix
Acknowledgments
xi
Introduction
The Physical World
Forest Mélange
A Rose by Any Name
My Botanical Contest with Miss Alice Eastwood
Wild Creatures of the Klamaths
Change Is the Only Constant
First Peoples of the Rivers
Gold Is Where You Find It
Green Grass and Green Gold
Dam the World
Modern Myths and Monsters
Principles of Future Sustainability
Hard Times for Hardrock
Forests for the Future
Restoring the Rivers
Steward’s Fork
1
9
19
31
41
56
71
106
124
145
164
180
198
206
215
233
246
Appendix: Biota Mentioned in the Text
255
References and Further Reading
261
Index
277
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Figures and Tables
Copyright © 2007. University of California Press. All rights reserved.
figures
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.
8.
9.
10.
11.
12.
13.
14.
15.
16.
17.
18.
19.
20.
21.
The Klamath Mountains
The central Klamaths
Annual precipitation in the Klamath region
Geologic map of the Klamath province
Mount Shasta life zones
Vegetation of the Klamaths
Vegetation change over 9,000 years
Distribution of major tree species
Monkeyflower pollination
Carnivorous California pitcher plant
Life cycle of Pacific salmon
Lightning fires in the Salmon River drainage
Fires on Thompson Ridge
Morris Meadows, 1960 and 2004
Alluvial deposits at Eagle Creek
Native American groups of the Klamath Mountains
Yurok idea of the world
Gold-bearing gravels, Weaverville basin
Typical dredge configuration
Arc pattern of gravel deposited from a dredge
Suction dredge and the Modern Gold Mine
4
5
12
16
21
23
28
29
35
37
69
75
81
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92
107
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128
132
133
136
ix
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x
22.
23.
24.
25.
26.
27.
28.
29.
30.
31.
32.
33.
34.
35.
36.
37.
38.
39.
40.
Figures and Tables
Dredge spoils in Scott Valley
Snags near today’s Shasta Lake
Vegetation and stream changes at Butter’s Dam
Worldview from Hayfork
Brown Bear Quartz Mill at Deadwood
Lumber production in Siskiyou
and Trinity counties, 1948–2001
Sediment in Redwood Creek, 1947, 1964, and 1980
Trinity Dam above Lewiston
Upper Coffee Creek stream pirating
Proposed dams, 1957
Plan for northwestern California rivers, 1967
Foot impression at Cecil Lake
Restored stability at the Siskon Mine
Fitness of habitat for the northern spotted owl
Douglas-fir stand ten years after burning
Trinity Dam channel morphology
Berms downstream of Trinity Dam
Restored floodplain
Rush Creek delta
140
142
143
150
159
160
162
165
171
174
177
185
212
220
222
235
236
239
240
tables
Life histories of the three major salmonids
Bark thickness of mature coniferous trees
Plants used by the Karuk people
Grazing in the Klamath National Forest
68
77
114
149
Copyright © 2007. University of California Press. All rights reserved.
1.
2.
3.
4.
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Acknowledgments
I would like to thank the following individuals and organizations who
provided resources or inspiration that helped in the writing of this book:
Trinity County Historical Society, Jake Jackson Memorial Museum and
its History Center, Siskiyou County Museum, U.S. Forest Service (Klamath
and Shasta-Trinity National Forests), Save-the-Redwoods League, Trinity
Alps Resort and my many friends there, the University of Washington
libraries and librarian Carol Green, Trinity County Library, Don Elder,
Polly Haessig, Midge Hall, Michael Hendryx, Al Hodgson, Paul H.
Kinkade, David Laffranchini of the Trinity County Sheriff’s Office, Rich
Lorenz, Howard May, Kathleen McCovey, Ray McKidney, James T.
Rock, Gisela and Jerry Rohde, Carl N. Skinner, Alan H. Taylor, Betty Toth,
Jim Villaponteaux, and G. James West. The University of Washington
graciously granted me a sabbatical leave to work on the manuscript, and
the Virginia and Prentice Bloedel Endowed Professorship helped defray
certain of its costs. I would also like to thank all the people who have
helped create a new future for Klamath region ecosystems.
Cathy Schwartz and Jack DeLap of the University of Washington
took my rough drafts of illustrations and artwork and magically turned
them into effective and readable figures. Thanks to you both.
I offer special thanks to the individuals who critically read the earlier versions of the entire draft: Howard May, Cliff Pierce, Jerry Rohde,
and Carl Skinner. Jerry also provided extraordinary help for chapter 8.
Carl introduced me to the far eastern Klamaths that I had previously
xi
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xii
Acknowledgments
Copyright © 2007. University of California Press. All rights reserved.
underappreciated, and his love for the region appears to exceed even
mine. Of course, I accept responsibility for any interpretations and
errors that may have squeezed themselves into the published version.
A final set of thanks is due my editor, Jenny Wapner, and the editorial and publication staff at the University of California Press. Dore
Brown kept the production on schedule, and Adrienne Harris, my copyeditor, gently reminded me that I was writing in the English language.
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chapter 1
Copyright © 2007. University of California Press. All rights reserved.
Introduction
My introduction to the Trinity Alps of California came in 1950 when I
was five years old. My only memories of the entire year are from that
first summer visit. My family stayed at a resort, rustic even then, appropriately named Trinity Alps Resort, on the Stuart Fork of the Trinity
River within the rugged and beautiful Klamath mountain region of
northwestern California. Some neighbors had visited the resort the previous year and invited our family to come along the following year. We
drove from the San Francisco Bay Area up Highway 99, spent the night
in Red Bluff, and the next morning drove up to Redding through the
conical burner smoke of the lumber mills and across Highway 299 to
Weaverville. I sat in the back seat alongside my sister, Linda, and had a
great view out the side window of our 1948 Chevrolet as we crested
Buckhorn Summit. The Trinity River, in July, was a roaring, cascading
whitewater.
From Weaverville, we traveled over a succession of dirt roads, thick
with red dust and filled with immense logging trucks. I could feel my
parents’ tension whenever we confronted a huge Peterbilt truck and had
to dodge to the side to avoid being crushed like a bug. My mom clutched
my three-month-old brother, Mark, as we swerved through the footthick dust; my youngest brother, Richard, would not appear on the
scene for another three years. We finally entered a long, broad meadow
just downstream of the resort, now drowned by Trinity Lake behind
massive Trinity Dam; the green expanse was dotted with contented
1
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2
Introduction
cattle. One more turn, and we pulled into the resort and headed to our
assigned cabin, one of many named for counties in California. We were
there only a week, but as we left under the Good Luck Come Again
sign, I knew that my life had been forever changed and that I would
count the weeks each year until I could return. I still do. Each year now,
as I leave the mountains, I feel like a salmon smolt being swept downstream, head pointed upstream in a futile attempt to stay.
One evening during that first visit, as Mom was preparing dinner in
the cabin, Dad took me on a short hike into the woods. I remember
being awed by the large trees, although I didn’t know they had names
like Douglas-fir and ponderosa pine. The understory was quite lush
and tall (to my five-year-old self). We hiked along an old trail up the
side of the mountain for about fifteen minutes and stopped to rest. At
this age, I was certain my Dad knew everything about everything. He
was the handiest man I knew, able to fix cars and add rooms to our
house as well as to do the more fatherly things dads do. He suggested
we sit on a somewhat decayed log that was next to the trail. As we
plopped down, we heard a slight buzzing in the air. Soon the buzz had
escalated to a roar, notifying us that the log was home to a yellow-jacket
nest. Dad’s advice was to sit tight: as long as we didn’t move, we
wouldn’t be stung. My experience with bees was with honeybees,
which stung once and died. We weren’t prepared for these more aggressive wasps that could sting multiple times. The yellow jackets began to
land and sting, and after enduring about five stings, we began to
rethink our strategy. Dad yelled to get up and run down the trail, and
as we did, the angry swarm of yellow jackets followed us, slowly dispersing as we left them in the dust. This occasion was the first time my
Dad had been wrong about anything, as far as I knew, and though I
didn’t lose my confidence in him, I knew then that the forests of the
Trinity Alps held many surprises.
For the first ten years that my family went to Trinity, the trip from the
Bay Area took the better part of two days. Once we arrived, we might
travel to Weaverville once for groceries, but we largely stayed at the
resort, because the drive, which today takes fifteen minutes, then took
an hour and a half along dusty red dirt roads. However, surrounded by
ridges, we felt as if we were in the middle of the universe. And today,
wherever I am in the Klamath Mountains, I’m in the middle of things,
surrounded by ridges that define one’s world as necessarily provincial.
More than fifty years later, with annual visits to the resort and the
surrounding Klamath Mountains, my wonder has grown at the beauty
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Introduction
3
and majesty of this landscape. The area’s human history has largely
been extractive since the gold-rush days, whether the desired resource
was gold, water, or timber. I have seen some promising signs in recent
years that we are paying more attention to what we leave behind as well
as what we take, but the choices are always difficult in a landscape of
change. We need to more forcefully embrace principles of sustainable
management if we are to effectively steward our future landscapes.
Stewardship is the ethical treatment of the land, which Aldo Leopold
succinctly called a “land ethic.”
The title of this book refers to a fork of the Trinity River, the Stuart
Fork, which I know more intimately than any other river. Its initial name,
according to Isaac Cox, the first biographer of the region, was Steward’s
Fork (even Isaac’s name has alternate spellings, as Isaac and Issac). The
name later changed to Stewart’s Fork, and sometime in the twentieth
century, became known as the Stuart Fork. Like the many forks of a
river, a steward’s fork represents different pathways toward sustainable
futures for these landscapes. Some people believe that we have only
two choices for the future—exploitation or preservation—but their
“either/or” approach is out of tune with reality. Many forks lie before us,
with no single “right” fork and no certainty that following any fork will
be successful. We must learn as we go and apply our learning in intelligent management decisions, creating new forks along the way.
I define my region of interest as the Klamath Mountains, although I
make a few forays to other places. The Klamath Mountains are not specific mountains but a collection of mountain ranges, no single one of
which is named Klamath. The Klamaths include a number of major
ranges, including the Yolla Bolly Mountains, Trinity Mountains, Trinity
Alps, Scott Mountains, Salmon Mountains, Marble Mountains, and
Siskiyou Mountains. Although the boundaries of the Klamaths can be
defined in several ways, I’ve chosen my eastern boundary just east of
Shasta Lake where the Pit River forms a clear geological boundary, with
Highway 36 as the southern boundary (although the Klamaths do
extend somewhat south geologically), Highway 199 as the northern
boundary (and the Klamath terrane does extend a bit north of there),
and a sloppy western boundary that extends toward the coast to allow
inclusion of the redwood (see figures 1 and 2). At times, I expand the
region a bit and other times, I shrink it, depending on the story I wish
to tell.
As a forest ecologist, I emphasize a forest theme here somewhat
above others. But the stewardship of natural resources requires attention
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4
Introduction
Figure 1. The Klamath Mountains in northwestern California. A rough boundary can be defined by Highway 199 on the north, Interstate 5 on the east,
Highway 36 on the south, and a northwest-trending line east of Redwood
Creek. The region is surrounded by midsized towns, with few large congregations of people in its core. (Illustrator: Cathy Schwartz.)
to all resources, not just to forests. Management of these multiple
resources has become increasingly complex and contentious during the
past decade. Attempts to produce consensus have stumbled as scientists
and policy makers have debated how best to achieve and sustain landscapes that meet the needs of people and natural organisms, including
plants, fish, and wildlife. One theme that has drawn considerable consensus is that in these ecosystems of the Klamath Mountains, the only
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Introduction
5
Copyright © 2007. University of California Press. All rights reserved.
Figure 2. The central Klamaths, with many of the features mentioned in
following chapters. (Illustrator: Cathy Schwartz.)
constant is change. Natural disturbances have been common historically and have affected resources in various ways. Floods have caused
much damage, but they have also cleaned out riparian vegetation and
created slow-water areas where small Chinook salmon could later be
reared. Forest fires have burned across portions of the Klamaths annually but have often left most of the big trees alive and prevented more
catastrophic fires. These natural disturbances have been the backbone
of ecological sustainability. We have tried to remove flooding by dam
building and to remove fire by suppression, but our efforts have decimated the anadromous fishery and only created more destructive fires.
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6
Introduction
We tend to want the same stability in nature that we hope for in our personal lives, but there is no balance in nature. Nature is a constantly
changing kaleidoscope of events and rarely remains static for long. Fires
change the face of the vegetation, floods scour river bars, and insects
and windstorms remove trees of different sizes and species, including
some that are quite old.
An appreciation of place is essential to understand both nature and
culture. Modern ecology is essentially a science of place. Various physical principles apply, but we must interpret them in terms of the interactions of local biotic and abiotic (climate, geology, and the like) elements.
The Klamath Mountains are little like the Cascades or the Olympics or
the Sierra Nevada. Common tree species act out different ecological
roles in different places. The Douglas-fir, for example, is a pioneer
species that regenerates after fire in a wet place like the Olympic
Mountains in Washington. Its presence is a marker of a severe disturbance at some time in the past. It can play the same role in certain places
in the Klamaths, but more commonly here, the Douglas-fir indicates the
absence of recent disturbance, because it is more tolerant of shade in the
Klamaths than some of its competitors are. Scientists usually define the
region by its unique and diverse geology, again an issue of place. From
the vantage point of almost any ridgetop, wave after wave of forested
crests disappear into the distance around the horizon, broken only by
an occasional glimpse to the east of youthful Mount Shasta or Mount
Lassen, parts of another world: the Cascades. The rugged physiography
of the region has also had a defining influence on human culture. The
remote Klamaths have imposed provincialism because of the constraining influence of geography. This statement is as true of modern cultures
as it was for early cultures. My favorite place book for the region is
Traveling the Trinity Highway, edited by Ben Bannion and Jerry Rohde.
It began as a geography-class project at Humboldt State University and
evolved into a series of short stories chronicling the history of the Highway 299 corridor. It is a wonderful integration of nature and culture
and is as true to place as a book can be.
A place is partly defined by its native rocks, trees, flowers, and animals. In describing place, one must be true to these elements. I recently
read a short modern novel set in the upper Trinity River basin, in which
the characters observe steelhead, burn tanoak for firewood, and lead a
school walk during which they identify various forest conifers, including spruce. These characters might well do these things in Fortuna along
the redwood coast, or even at Willow Creek, at the western edge of the
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Introduction
7
Klamaths, but not in the Coffee Creek area where the novella is set.
Steelhead haven’t inhabited the upper reaches of the Trinity since Trinity
Dam permanently blocked their passage forty years ago, although landlocked kokanee salmon do spawn upstream. Tanoak, although native to
the region and common on the coast, is rare, if not altogether absent, in
the upper Trinity basin. A visitor would have to search hard to find a
stand with a tree-sized tanoak, although the shrub variety of tanoak
does occur there. Plenty of California black oak, Oregon white oak, and
Pacific madrone grow nearby that burn just as well and are much easier
to obtain. The coastal Sitka spruce doesn’t occur there, and although
Brewer spruce and Engelmann spruce do occur in the Trinity Alps, they
are not low-elevation species and would not be found on a walk there
next to the river. If the book’s setting were a generic western conifer
forest, these mistakes might not be so onerous, but for a novel of place,
they are egregious.
Nonfiction accounts of the Klamaths fare no better. The credit for a
photo in one forest-ecology book provides a table of forest data from
the “South Fork of the Trinity River, Siskiyou County,” yet the South
Fork never gets within 25 miles of Siskiyou County. My favorite Bigfoot
book has Bluff Creek, the site of the famous Bigfoot film, in the Trinity
Alps, some 30 miles southwest of its confluence with the Klamath River.
Under some of the dam proposals that floated around for decades
(which I discuss later), this feat might eventually have been possible, but
without such diversion, Bluff Creek flows into the Klamath River.
Another book that emphasizes the importance of place has Highway
199 crossing the Siskiyous from Happy Camp to Cave Junction.
Though a road does cover that terrain, it is a local Forest Service road
over Little Grayback Mountain that is closed in the winter and is definitely not a U.S. highway. Highway 199 heads southwest from Grants
Pass through Cave Junction to the coast at Crescent City. Even the official Trinity County website seems to be confused about where the
county is, proclaiming proudly that it is located in the “lower reaches of
the Cascade Range in California.” The lower Cascades are confined to
eastern Shasta County.
I think these mistakes happen because of the complex geography of
the Klamaths’ enclosed landscape. Place tends to be described locally
and often repetitively because of this provincialism. For this reason, we
see two Cedar Gulches within 2 miles of each other, and within
25 miles are two Big Flats, two Cherry Flats, and two Oak Flats—all of
which the local populace seems to navigate without much confusion.
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8
Introduction
Little Crater Lake is bigger than Crater Lake, which is a couple
drainages away, and both are but a small fraction of the size of the
famous, volcanically formed Crater Lake in Oregon. They wouldn’t
even fill the area occupied by Wizard Island. Within a 12-mile stretch of
the upper Trinity River lies Boulder Lake, plus six variants: Little Boulder,
Lower Boulder, East Boulder, Upper Boulder, Middle Boulder, and West
Boulder. Either the area has a lot of rocks, or someone didn’t have much
imagination.
Many early Native Americans remained within a 20-mile radius of their
birthplace for their entire lives. The “tribes” (most Native Americans in
this area had more of a community-based political structure than a
tribal one) defined their world most clearly as a local place, viewing
more distant areas in less-defined, more mythological terms. Sustaining
their world depended on sustaining their environment. The succeeding
white culture came from other places and exploited both the Indians
and the environment. Many of these visitors stayed only briefly, but
those who remained seem to have evolved this same sense of place. Culture affects place, but place just as surely affects culture.
I have attempted to mesh three important themes in the following
pages. The first is a multithreaded attempt to explain the ecosystem
dynamics of the Klamath Mountains, with their complex geologic history and diverse flora and fauna. Second, I note that for millennia,
people have used and more recently abused these ecosystems. Separating nature from culture, even in the large wilderness areas of the region,
is not possible. People are inextricably linked with the problems and
solutions in the natural environment, from logging and mining to alterations in salmon habitat and global climate change. The native ecosystem dynamics, together with this history of land use, have resulted in
the conditions we have today: some good, some not so good. The third
theme is the most contentious, but it logically follows the other themes:
given that people will continue to have a close tie to these landscapes,
how can we effectively steward the land? I provide some principles of
stewardship that reflect my beliefs about where the Klamath Mountains
should be headed. Sustainability is a value-laden concept, with multiple
“right” choices. This philosophical debate about landscape futures is
indeed a “steward’s fork.”
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chapter 2
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The Physical World
The physical world of the Klamath Mountains is the template upon
which its biological diversity has been built. The physiography of the
Klamaths is very rugged but less uplifted than the Sierra Nevada.
Whereas the peaks of the Sierra Nevada rise to over 14,000 feet, the
highest peak in the Klamath Mountains, Mount Eddy, is a whopping
9,025 feet. Thompson Peak, at 9,002 feet, is a close second, but anyone
who has climbed it (I’ve only come close, never having been much of a
rock climber) knows that it is more challenging than many peaks thousands of feet higher. Thompson Peak protects the only glaciers left in the
range, which are more properly described as glacierets, being not much
more than permanent snowfields. Most of the ridgelines across the
region range from 5,000 to 7,000 feet, forming a relatively level series of
ridges that geologists call accordant summits. This formation helps to
center visitors: one always feels in the middle, and usually in the middle
of steep country. One finds very little flat country in the Klamaths, which
is why the people of the Klamaths have always been and will always be
people of the rivers. The alluvial land adjacent to streams has not only
provided resources but offered a flat place to establish villages. Typical
upriver tributary settlements, such as Sawyer’s Bar and Cecilville, cling to
the flatter ground next to the river’s edge. The only four broad valleys of
note within the Klamath region are Hayfork and Scott Valleys, both primarily agricultural centers; the upper Trinity River, now the bed of Trinity
Lake; and Hoopa Valley, on the west edge of the Klamath Mountains.
9
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The Physical World
The rugged terrain is so difficult to navigate that significant landscape features are still being discovered. In summer 2005, Superintendent Jim Milestone of Whiskeytown National Recreation Area
announced the discovery of a 400-foot cataract along Crystal Creek
that was not on any U.S. Geological Survey topographic maps and was
known to only a few individuals. The cataract had been hidden by
steep terrain and thick vegetation, although the Indians and early gold
miners likely knew about it. It is such a spectacular falls, clearly among
the largest in the entire Klamath range, that a trail has now been constructed to it.
The major rivers of the Klamath Mountains flow transverse to the
orientation of the geology. Whereas the major geological formations
are oriented north-south, Clear Creek, which flows into Whiskeytown
Lake, eventually empties east into the Sacramento River; the Klamath
and Trinity rivers generally flow westerly in a convoluted serpentine
to the Pacific; and the Applegate River flows into the westerly trending Rogue River in southern Oregon. This “flow to nowhere” has
meant little protection, until recently, for the Klamath and Trinity
rivers, as natural river flows have been considered a waste of water.
Hydraulic mining was not curtailed here, as in the Sierra Nevada,
because the Klamaths had few downstream farmers. The sheer volume
of water being wasted to the west had water engineers yearning for
dams for most of the twentieth century. The abundant, clear water has
created complex drainage patterns and equally complex names. Poor
McClaron had his gold mine on the East Branch of the East Fork of
the North Fork of the Trinity River. The water knows where it’s going,
but the miners probably had a tough time getting their directions right.
We know the country was tough because of all the “gulches” knifing
into steep mountains: it is the real West. Some names are repetitive
(two Bear Gulches lie within 7 miles of each other east of Trinity
Lake), some are hopeful (Rich Gulch), and some are rueful (Drunken
Gulch). We can be grateful that not a single “brook” appears in the
Klamath Mountains, except the obvious nonnative interloper, the eastern brook trout. The region has plenty of creeks, and they are pronounced the way they are spelled, eschewing the pseudotough “crick”
of the Rocky Mountains.
Scientists typically describe the climate of the Klamath Mountains as
Mediterranean, but like many classifications, this one is not a totally
accurate. Watching the sunset in the Trinity Alps, one is not struck by a
climatic resemblance to true Mediterranean regions like Barcelona or
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The Physical World
11
Los Angeles, although on my last trip to Barcelona, I was greeted by a
foot of snow, so maybe the classification isn’t so bad after all. A
Mediterranean climate offers cool, wet winters and warm, dry summers, with a pronounced summer drought. These elements the Klamath
Mountains have. But there is a lot of variation across the region, and
the higher elevations have a much shorter growing season and cooler
summer temperatures than do other parts of the region. A montane
Mediterranean climate is perhaps the most accurate descriptor.
At the coast, summer fog mediates the warmth, and the trees intercept the fog and turn it into rain, a phenomenon called fog drip. Fog
drip can actually increase annual precipitation 10 to 20 inches in locations where fog is common in the summer, such as the redwood belt
along the coast. Interior warming essentially sucks marine air up the
coastal valleys, and until the valleys warm sufficiently late in the day to
evaporate the fog, the mist keeps the valleys cool and moist. Mark
Twain reportedly said that the worst winter he ever spent was a
summer in San Francisco, because of the fog. The coast also tends to be
wet. Honeydew, along the southern coast of Humboldt County, is the
wettest place in California, averaging over 104 inches of precipitation
per year. But the rain doesn’t come all at once; instead it drips in day by
drippy day, a quarter inch here, and a half inch there. Even in flood
times, only 5 to 8 inches fall in a day. But if the rain is warm and falls
on snow, world-class floods can result. The state record for one day of
precipitation is elsewhere: in Southern California, where a whopping
26 inches fell in one wet January day at Hoegees Camp in 1943. No
one keeps weather records there anymore, so perhaps the station
washed away. The Klamaths do have the state record for number of
consecutive days with measurable precipitation: in 1998, Gasquet
Ranger Station had 63 straight days with enough rain to record in a
rain gauge.
Inland a few miles, the climate is more typically Mediterranean,
except that the winters tend to receive more precipitation than is typically Mediterranean (see figure 3). Willow Creek, Orleans, and Happy
Camp all receive over 50 inches a year, mostly as rain. Annual precipitation tends to decrease as one moves inland. Weed, Yreka, and Callahan,
for example, receive only 20 to 25 inches a year, because they are in the
rain shadow of mountains to the southwest, where most of the storms
come from. They are also colder in the winter, so some of this precipitation comes as snow, as it does in higher mountainous areas. In the
eastern Klamaths is an “island” of higher precipitation that bucks the
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The Physical World
Figure 3. Annual precipitation in the Klamath region. Rainfall varies over an
order of magnitude, from about 10 inches inland to over 100 inches at the western
edge. (Source: Western Region Climate Center. Illustrator: Cathy Schwartz.)
trend of decreasing precipitation to the east. Storm masses coming from
the northern Sacramento Valley hit the mountains, are pushed up in
elevation, cool, and are then less able to hold moisture, so the moisture
drops as rain or snow. Weaverville, in the center of the Klamaths, receives
only about 35 inches of annual precipitation, but Whiskeytown, at
the edge of the Sacramento Valley, receives over 60 inches. The higher
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The Physical World
13
elevations in the mountains receive much more precipitation than do
the valleys, where all the permanent weather stations reside, and snowpacks as deep as 80 inches are not uncommon by the end of the major
snow season in April.
The Klamaths tend to have warm, dry summers away from the coast.
This situation makes for an ideal tourist climate but also is an ideal fire
climate. Thunderstorms start many lightning fires, and a typical historical summer was probably much smokier than today’s typical summer.
Average July temperatures across the region exceed 86oF, with record
highs topping 118oF.
Climate has not always been so warm in the Klamaths. Like the rest
of North America, the Klamaths have been subject to wide swings in climate due to many factors, including oscillations in solar radiation in
response to the orientation of the earth’s axis. Historically, these
changes in the earth’s heating led to cycles of glaciation, filling many of
the upper valleys of today’s rivers with glaciers. In the Trinity Alps,
repeated glaciation reached as far down as Deep Creek on the Stuart
Fork, the North Fork on Swift Creek, and Dedrick on Canyon Creek.
The most recent glacial cycle was about 14oF colder on average than
typical temperatures today and had major effects on the roughly thirty
glaciers active at the time and on the distribution of plants and animals
that were adapted to the cooler climate. The last glacial maximum here
was about 22,000 years ago, and it was followed by an abrupt (in geological time) increase in temperature to conditions much like today’s.
This past 10,000 years or so is known as the Holocene. The midHolocene, 8,500 to 4,500 years ago, appears to have been warmer and
drier than present conditions, with perhaps as much as 20 inches less
annual precipitation, affecting river flow, forest fires, and other natural
phenomena. A reasonably stable climate similar to today’s has persisted
for the past several thousand years. These climatic shifts have had significant effects on the distribution of vegetation and animals and have
resulted in remarkable biodiversity in the region. Of course, even earlier, 30 million to 40 million years ago, magnolias and bald cypress
grew along the swamps here. Weaverville’s La Grange Café, known for
offering unusual entrées such as wild boar and venison on recent menus,
could have added local ground sloths and mammoths to the menu had
it been operating a couple of million years ago in the Pleistocene.
Global warming is no longer a wild theory: it is here. But it will interact with the same natural agents that have forced short- and long-term
climate change in the past. Most people are now aware of the El Niño
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The Physical World
phenomenon, a tropical sea-surface temperature anomaly that tends to
push tropical storms farther north than usual. In the American Southwest, El Niño is associated with increases in annual precipitation, and
the reversed pattern, La Niña, is associated with drier years. This pattern repeats every few years. In the Pacific Northwest, a longer-phase
pattern known as the PDO, or Pacific Decadal Oscillation, brings multiple decadal cooler-wetter or warmer-drier conditions. The Klamath
Mountains are likely to be affected by both El Niño and PDO, but probably less strongly by either than are places much farther north or south.
Arriving at the Stuart Fork each summer, I always head first to the
river and its rocks. Most of the rocks have been rounded by the action
of the stream, but that feature is about all they have in common. Gold,
green, black, blue, and white, they are usually framed by a stunning
rock outcrop that temporarily holds them in place on their journey
downstream. The diversity in rocks is a symptom of geological diversity
and is one of the characters that defines the Klamath region. Its geology
is responsible for some of the most diverse plant communities in the
western United States. Klamath geology was responsible for the major
cultural shift that occurred when Indian cultures were overwhelmed by
whites in search of gold. And, like the white man, the rocks came from
somewhere else.
Anyone seeking a specific rock in the Klamaths doesn’t have to go far
to find it, or a version of it that has metamorphosed in response to heat
and pressure. Limestone? It’s here. Hall City Cave is a spooky limestone
cave, once said to contain treasure, although explorers hoping to strike
it rich found only a few animal carcasses. Natural Bridge is another
limestone feature, although it should probably be called “Natural
Tunnel,” because water didn’t so much build a bridge as excavate a
tunnel through it. To find metamorphosed limestone, one can try the
Marble Mountains (although they are mostly granite). Sandstone and
its metamorphosed form, schist, are both plentiful in the Trinity River
canyon west of Junction City. To find granite, one can climb into the
Trinity Alps or scout out the decomposed form at Buckhorn Summit.
Serpentine? The Klamaths have more concentrated serpentine country
than does anywhere else in North America. The Klamaths are a geologist’s candy store, although several geologists likely went mad trying to
explain the convoluted geological “knot.”
We usually think of the land we walk on as stable and unchanging.
People who anchor companies are known as the “bedrock.” But in geological time, change has been the hallmark. Terranes, as geologists call
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The Physical World
15
these large complexes of rocks, have floated around the earth as large
plates, in a process known as continental drift. The westward-moving
North American plate is responsible for scraping off and piling up terranes at the western edge of the continent. That most of the mountaintops of the Klamaths are former sea bottom comes as no surprise to any
geologist, but an explanation of how they got there has become widely
accepted only in the past few decades. Serpentine, the state rock of
California, forms from peridotite, probably the most common mantle
rock within the earth. Deposits above the serpentine are commonly
pillow lavas that formed from basalt that erupted under ancient seas.
Above that layer are radiolarian cherts, originally deep-ocean sediment.
The island of Cyprus, the Apennines and the Swiss Alps of Europe, and
the Marin Headlands north of San Francisco all contain this same threerock ordered sequence, known as the Steinmann Trinity, which formed
the basis of the theory of continental drift and plate tectonics. The
Steinmann Trinity is also found in the Klamath Trinities.
Most fifth-grade kids can look at a globe and see how South America
and Africa seemingly fit together like pieces of a jigsaw puzzle. When I
did this as a fifth grader, my friends considered it a crazy idea, even
though such theories first appeared early in the twentieth century, not
only because of the jigsaw puzzle fit but because of resemblances between
rocks and fossils from different continents. That continents are flexible
and capable of floating and crashing (the most impressive example being
India’s crashing into Asia and forming the Himalayas, which explains
why the top of Mount Everest is marine limestone) is now well accepted
and has given us a much better understanding of how the Klamath terranes evolved. J. S. Diller, perhaps the best-known Klamath-Shasta geologist, courageously tried to explain the geology of the Klamath Mountains
in 1914 but was hampered by the profession’s then-static view of the
underlying landscape.
Geologists define four major groups of complex rocks, or terranes, in
the Klamaths (see figure 4). Each terrane is oriented somewhat north to
south, and as one moves east to west across the terranes, they transition
from oldest to youngest. The oldest is the Eastern Klamath Belt, created
perhaps 450 million years ago, which contains sedimentary and volcanic rocks and old ocean floor. The old ocean floor, on land, is called
an ophiolite and often contains serpentinite, which forms when hot
peridotite comes in contact with water. Outcrops of serpentinite on land
have very unique plant communities, and in road cuts, the rocks often
appear quite green and glassy. The Central Metamorphic Belt to the
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Figure 4. Generalized geologic map of the Klamath province. The map does
not show granitic intrusions. The inset shows the relation of the Klamaths to
the Sierra Nevada of California and the Blue Mountains of Oregon. Ages of
these terranes from east to west range from 450 million years for the Eastern
Klamath Belt to 150 million to 200 million years for the Western Jurassic
Belt. (Source: Adapted from David Alt and Donald W. Hyndman, Roadside
Geology of Northern and Central California. Missoula, MT: Mountain Press
Publishing Company, 2000. Used with permission. Illustrator: Cathy
Schwartz.)
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The Physical World
17
west of the Eastern Klamath Belt is younger and separated from it by a
thrust fault. It’s a much narrower belt that is composed of gneiss,
marble, schist, and likely the same rocks as in the Eastern Klamath Belt,
only more metamorphosed because they were dragged under the Eastern
Klamath Belt. Large domes of granitic rocks, batholiths, intruded under
these rocks and emerged as Shasta Bally and the Canyon Creek pluton
that forms the central Trinity Alps (although they do not appear individually in figure 4). The next terrane to the west is the Western Paleozoic
and Triassic Belt, which contains mostly dark rocks of oceanic origin
and sedimentary rocks, and farthest west is the Western Jurassic Belt, a
slightly metamorphosed group of oceanic crust and sediments that is
only 150 million to 200 million years old. It contains the Josephine
ophiolite, one of the best preserved chunks of old ocean crust in North
America and one of the most widespread sets of serpentinite plant communities anywhere. Serpentinite forms soils with very low calcium and
very high magnesium content, and the plants that can tolerate such conditions form unique plant communities, including species that are found
nowhere else (endemics) and stunted individuals of species that are more
widely distributed.
The Klamath Mountains appear to have once been part of the
northern Sierra Nevada (figure 4, inset). They somehow migrated about
60 miles to the west perhaps 100 million years ago, and the sequence of
terranes matches those in the Sierra Nevada and the Blue Mountains of
northeastern Oregon very well. Deposits of gold are as common in the
Klamaths as in the Sierra Nevada for this reason. They formed within
dikes of quartz, mostly in slate but some in metamorphosed volcanic
rocks. Some of this gold became entrained in stream gravel deposits.
Many of the gold deposits are on ridges that are uplifted ancient
streambeds, created 50 million years ago when they drained a low-lying,
coastal, tropical landscape. These ancient river deposits became known
as auriferous gravels because of their gold content. The largest one in
the Klamaths forms a broad crescent several miles wide that parallels
the west side of present Trinity Lake, beginning at the East Fork of the
Stuart Fork and continuing southwesterly to Weaverville and Oregon
Mountain, where its southern terminus became famous as the La Grange
hydraulic mine.
The coastal Franciscan terrane later formed on the western edge of
the Klamath terranes, eventually shaping the landscape we know
today. South Fork Mountain serves as the boundary between the
coastal Franciscan complex and the Klamath terranes. Geologist David
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The Physical World
Alt describes the Franciscan complex as “one of the world’s grand
messes” (Alt and Hyndman 2000, 117). The rocks are so scrambled
that geologists describe them as a “mélange,” a word more common to
vintners today, who use it to describe wines that mix many varietal
grapes (of course, the southern mélange country in Napa and Sonoma
is also the original California wine country). Sandstones and schists are
the most common rocks of the Franciscan terrane, and they are often
pulverized along active northwest-trending earthquake faults. The Franciscan terrane is unusually unstable; erosion from natural landslides
and conditionally unstable hillslopes is often accelerated by activities
like road building and logging. Berry Summit along Highway 299 is the
dividing line between the Franciscan and Klamath terranes.
Mount Shasta borders the eastern edge of the Klamath Mountains
and is the youngest large feature on the landscape. It and the other Cascade volcanoes are the surface expression of the thrust of an oceanic
plate under the North American plate. The sinking oceanic plate is the
source of the magma, or molten rock, that erupts and has built the stratovolcanoes that line the crest of the Cascades. Whereas the rocks to the
south and west range from 200 million to 400 million years old, Shasta
is less than 1 million years old. Shastina, the small cone just west of the
summit, formed less than 10,000 years ago, and hot pyroclastic flows
buried forests where Weed and Mount Shasta City sit today. Mount
Shasta was not active in the twentieth century, but its southerly neighbor Mount Lassen erupted violently in 1915. About five small earthquakes occur each year within the mountain, providing evidence of
continuing volcanic life. With ten eruptions in the past 3,500 years and
three in the past 750 years, future eruptions are likely to occur, sending
streams of superheated rocks or mudflows toward neighboring towns.
The Klamaths are essentially old terranes surrounded by much
younger ones. They have been inundated, uplifted, eroded, intruded
upon by great granite domes, and carved by glacial action. Because of
their geological diversity and age, they have supported a degree of biodiversity unknown elsewhere in the western United States. Even at a
semicontinental scale, the Klamaths are recognized as “central,” in the
middle of things—as they should be.
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chapter 3
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Forest Mélange
The forests of the Klamath Mountains are the most complex in western
North America. Although a mélange is a mixture, medley, or a motley
assortment of items, the seeming forest mélange of the Klamaths does
have order, a sense of place. As a forest ecologist, I define place by its
forest. If I were to be dropped off, blindfolded, in the Klamaths, I
would know where I was just from the vegetation, much like basketball
players know where they are on the court from a single glimpse of a
sideline. Far from being a random combination of overstory and understory species, the vegetation pattern reflects the ancient age of the land,
the diversity of the geology, topographic complexity, a history of changing climate, and a plethora of disturbances that favored some species
and discouraged others. Like the geology of the Klamaths, the vegetation has also shifted over time, altering the landscape in response to
these factors.
Describing the factors influencing vegetation is much like describing
a favorite piece of music. The integrated sound may be unique, but it
can be deconstructed into component parts that are easier to understand.
One of the most famous naturalists of his era was C. Hart Merriam:
zoologist, botanist, and ethnologist. In 1889, working for the Department of Agriculture, he traveled to northern Arizona to study the distribution of vegetation in the San Francisco Peaks area. Very little was
known at the time about the area’s vegetation pattern. Merriam classified
the vegetation largely by the influence of temperature and moisture, and
19
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Forest Mélange
called his scheme the “life-zone” concept in his classic 1890 monograph.
As one moved up the San Francisco Peaks, temperatures became cooler
and annual precipitation increased, and the vegetation changed from
desert to forest and eventually to treeless alpine meadows. He suggested
that this progression was similar to walking a line from Arizona to the
North Pole, and he named his life zones after that latitudinal transect.
The hottest, driest zone was the Lower Sonoran, which contained hot
desert vegetation. Next up in elevation was the Upper Sonoran zone,
with twoneedle pinyon and Utah juniper. The next-highest zone was
the Transition, dominated by pure ponderosa pine. Above that level
was the Canadian zone, with a variety of conifers, including Douglasfir and ponderosa pine. This zone graded into the Hudsonian zone,
consisting of Engelmann spruce and fir, and then a higher treeless zone
called the Arctic-Alpine. This classification scheme is analogous to a
layer cake, with each layer being relatively level and representing one
zone. It offered a simple way to describe vegetation, and although we
know that most simple solutions to complex problems are flawed, the
zonal concept, with refinements, is still widely used today.
By the time Merriam, with his walrus mustache, arrived at Mount
Shasta in 1898, he had already refined his life-zone concept, taking into
account aspect (the direction a slope faces), slope (steepness of the land),
and disturbance. This revision conceived the layers of the cake as wavy
rather than flat. Merriam recognized that the direction a slope faces
influences the amount of solar radiation it receives, making a northfacing aspect cooler and moister at a given elevation than its corresponding south aspect. Therefore, the boundary between any two zones
would be at lower elevation on the north aspect. Yet mountains are generally not smooth cones; they are dissected by ridges and valleys with a
variety of aspects. Therefore, just taking into account elevation and
aspect, the boundaries between zones begin to fluctuate quite a bit. Furthermore, relative to some average condition, steep slopes tend to be
warmer and drier, and often have shallower soils than do gentle slopes,
which often accumulate soil from the steeper slopes. Ridgelines have
shallower soils than do valleys and have greater exposure to winds.
Valleys, in contrast, tend to concentrate the drainage of cold air at night.
The interaction of climate and topography creates complex patterns of
local climate, or microclimates, which affect the zonal vegetation
boundaries. The boundaries between zones tend to be at higher elevation on ridges, steep slopes, and south aspects, and at lower elevation in
valleys and on north aspects, in a fairly predictable pattern.
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Forest Mélange
21
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Figure 5. Merriam’s life zones for Mount Shasta, showing elevations
(feet) for major zones. (Source: Merriam 1899. Illustrator: Cathy
Schwartz.)
When geology enters the mix, things get even more complex, particularly in the Klamath Mountains. The biggest influence is the widespread presence of “ultramafic” rocks, primarily serpentine, which
produce soils that are very low in calcium, very high in magnesium, and
also high in a variety of heavy metals that are often toxic to plants. The
parent rock is often glassy and green, and the soils are brick red. These
landscapes support a unique flora adapted to the harsh conditions, and
are often sparsely treed. They contain many species, called endemics,
that appear nowhere else in the region or the world. More subtle differences are evident in the vegetation on soils of other geologic origins
(soils derived from gabbro, diorite, and schist, for example), but they
pale in comparison to the differences between the ultramafic soils and
soils of all other substrates.
Merriam defined three tree zones on the volcanic slopes of Mount
Shasta: the Transition zone, with ponderosa pine; the Canadian zone, with
Shasta red fir; and the Hudsonian zone, with whitebark pine (see figure 5).
Just below the mountain slopes is the Upper Sonoran zone. In 1898, he
and others hiked west to the coast through the Klamaths via Scott Valley
and Salmon Summit, making a list of plants he found. Because this journey was quick, he apparently did not identify or classify vegetation
zones there as he had on Mount Shasta. Botanist Alice Eastwood, from
the California Academy of Sciences in San Francisco, helped Merriam
identify many of the plants he collected at Mount Shasta. She later made
an expedition into Canyon Creek north of Junction City and identified
three vegetation zones on her trip from Redding to the glacial cirques of
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Forest Mélange
the Trinity Alps: a digger pine (now called gray or ghost pine) zone, a
sugar pine zone, and a mountain pine (western white pine) zone. These
zones are roughly synonymous with the Upper Sonoran, Transition,
and Canadian zones in Merriam’s classification. She also hiked through
the Hudsonian and Arctic-Alpine zones in the headwaters of Canyon
Creek. The fact that she named her zones differently from Merriam’s
illustrates a key concept in vegetation classification: all schemes are artificial. They are simply means of pigeonholing and communicating
information about ecosystems.
The two most common zonal-classification systems today use either
the current dominant vegetation, called cover type (see figure 6), or the
vegetation that would dominate in the absence of disturbance, called
potential vegetation. Cover types are usually named for the tree or trees
that have the most canopy cover or cross-sectional stem area (called
basal area). For example, any stand currently dominated by Douglas-fir
is called a Douglas-fir cover type. However, potential vegetation is
defined by the most shade-tolerant species present there (even in small
amounts) and is useful in projecting how the vegetation will change if it
is not disturbed for a long time. A shade-tolerant species is one that can
regenerate and persist in the understory of a forest, although it may not
grow very fast there. The most shade-tolerant species may exist only in
limited amounts in the understory of the current stand. For example, in
the low to intermediate elevations of the eastern Klamaths, we can identify three major species with increasing shade tolerances: ponderosa
pine, Douglas-fir, and white fir. In the driest places, where ponderosa
pine is the only tree species present, this tree will be defined as the potential vegetation. Slightly moister areas will also have Douglas-fir, which,
because it can persist in the understory in this environment, will eventually dominate the overstory if the site is not disturbed. Douglas-fir is
defined as the potential vegetation here even if it is not currently dominant in the overstory. Similarly, where white fir joins the mix, it will be
defined as the potential vegetation, and will itself be replaced by Shasta
red fir at even higher elevation.
We can use the concept of potential vegetation to project forest
change over time. Let’s look at three forests, all with ponderosa pine as
the cover type, in three zones: one each in the ponderosa pine, Douglasfir, and white fir zones. Over time, without disturbance, the forest in the
ponderosa pine zone will remain dominated by ponderosa pine,
although the architecture, or structure, of the forest may change. In the
Douglas-fir zone, Douglas-fir will begin to share dominance with the
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Forest Mélange
23
Figure 6. Current vegetation of the Klamath Mountains. Because of the map
scale, these zones are more generalized than the forest types discussed in the
text. (Illustrator: Cathy Schwartz.)
pine over time and will eventually become the dominant vegetation if
enough time passes without major disturbance. In the white fir zone, the
pine will eventually decline in favor of Douglas-fir and white fir, with
white fir eventually becoming the dominant vegetation. Other species,
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Forest Mélange
of course, will also be present, and their ecological fate also depends on
their tolerance to shade in the absence of disturbance.
The potential-vegetation concept is, of course, only a theoretical trajectory for two major reasons. The tree species in the Klamath Mountains, like those across much of the West, are long-lived, so replacement
will take many centuries. Even more significant is the common occurrence of natural or human-caused disturbances: fires, windstorms, ice
storms, floods, and more recently, logging and mining. These events
often discriminate against the late-successional, more shade-tolerant
species. They occur at the scale of years to decades and are important
influences on forest composition. Resistance or resilience in response to
disturbance is also important, which we’ll see in a later chapter.
Within the broad vegetation zones are finer classifications that are
usually defined by the relative dominance of understory species. A
simple way to think about this is that the zones are broadly controlled
by temperature or elevation, and the finer classifications recognize a
gradient of moisture from dry to moist within the zone. John Sawyer
and Dale Thornburgh, from Humboldt State University, have developed
a classification system for the higher-elevation forests of the Klamath
Mountains, beginning where white fir is a zonal dominant. Their communities include white fir/Pacific trillium, white fir/American vetch,
white fir/prince’s pine, white fir/Oregon grape, and white fir/mahala
mat, along a gradient from moist to dry. Analyzing these communities
can then help scientists predict the occurrence of other species with
similar environmental requirements or tolerances. These classifications
have a clear yin and yang: environment can be used to define plant communities, but plant communities are excellent indicators of environment, too.
At lower elevation, the complex mixed Douglas-fir and hardwood
forests are not so easily classified. Often, more than one tree species is
added to the zonal name to recognize complex codominance patterns
between conifers, or between conifers and hardwoods. The great diversity of tree species and frequent disturbances from forest fires make for
a tangled classification problem.
Because of the diversity of climate in the Klamath Mountains, different zonal sequences occur in the western and eastern portions, particularly at low elevation. The coast receives more precipitation than do
inland regions and has a general maritime climate. Inland areas have a
more continental climate: they are drier and see greater temperature fluctuations in both summer and winter. Communities dominated by Sitka
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Forest Mélange
25
spruce and redwood occur only along the coast and up the coastal valleys that receive summer fog. Farther inland, the low-elevation forests
are Douglas-fir/hardwood, with the hardwoods forming a tall layer of
mostly thick-leaved evergreen species (tanoak, giant chinquapin, and
Pacific madrone). As one continues inland, and as elevation increases,
one encounters montane and subalpine zones dominated by white fir,
Shasta red fir, mountain hemlock, and whitebark pine. To the east, as elevation decreases, the same subalpine and montane zones appear, below
which is a Douglas-fir zone, a ponderosa pine and black oak zone, then
juniper woodland or chaparral in the eastern valleys such as Scott and
Shasta valleys.
The current vegetation is essentially a snapshot in time. Just as the
rare Brewer spruce has not occupied the upper Stuart Fork forever, neither has redwood always grown along the coast. Geology, topography,
climate—in short, the entire environment—has ebbed and flowed, creating a similarly diverse set of places for various plant species to grow.
William Cooper, one of a pioneering group of ecologists in the early
twentieth century, likened the temporal evolution of vegetation to the
flow of a braided stream that is choked with sediment. The various
“stream” channels, representing vegetation communities, move downstream in time and merge, diverge, and coalesce once again as environmental conditions change. Various species may increase or decrease in
importance, and some will disappear if conditions are not suitable for
establishment and growth. This stream concept is a relevant metaphor
for the vegetation of the Klamaths and helps explain the diversity of
species there today.
Remnants of early vegetation are evident in sedimentary deposits, as
fruits and leaves of the ancient vegetation became covered in mud and
left identifiable impressions, or fossils, when the deposits solidified into
rocks. Few known fossils in the Klamaths are older than about 35 million
years, but the geologic epoch of that time, the Oligocene, created a
series of fossilized beds now called the Weaverville formation. These
layered deposits of old muds are in the Hyampom Valley, Hayfork
Valley and north to Hayfork Summit, Reading Creek, Big Bar, and the
auriferous (gold-bearing) gravel beds that sweep north from Weaverville
to Trinity Center. The fossils of these times represent a swampy, lowelevation environment that was dominated by hardwoods rather than
conifers. The Sierra Nevada would not rise for another 30 million years,
and the Cascade volcanoes we know today did not form until the most
recent 2 million years. The Coast Ranges were not yet present either.
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Forest Mélange
The primary Klamath conifer was bald cypress, and its angiosperm
associates (plants that have seeds in a closed ovary, like a rose) included
fig, holly, walnut, tupelo, basswood, and bay. The species that are most
similar to these fossil species today are in Japan, China, and the gulf
states of the southeastern United States. The climate then was warmer
than today, with more summer rain. Because the lowlands’ swampy
nature allowed them to preserve only the lowland species, little is
known of the more montane floras of the time. Scientists assume that
species related to the current regional dominants were there, including
Douglas-fir, redwood, the true firs, tanoak, and white alder. The region
has been clothed with vegetation since that time, although the species
mixes have radically changed.
Between 35 million and 25 million years ago, temperatures decreased
and the subtropical flora of the lowlands began to move south, displaced by cooler temperate forest types from the north. Redwood
forests (both Sequoia sempervirens, the redwood, and the deciduous
Metasequoia, or dawn redwood, which is now only in China) occurred
throughout the West, with a variety of other evergreen and deciduous
species. As climate continued to cool between 25 million and 5 million
years ago, during the Miocene era, the subtropical flora continued to
retreat, and a drying trend restricted the mesic redwood-mixed forests
closer to the coast. Some dry vegetation types, such as oak woodland
and chaparral, moved north into the eastern Klamaths, whereas the
central Klamaths remained a mixed-evergreen forest with conifers and
evergreen hardwoods. Over the past 2 million years, essentially modern
vegetation types have existed in the region, but their distribution has
been strongly influenced by continued shifts in topography, geology,
and climate. Mount Shasta has grown only in the past million years,
and Shastina is only 10,000 years old. As many as twenty ice ages have
occurred in the past 2 million years, carving and recarving the high
mountain terrain and pushing debris down the valleys. Many areas covered with forest today have been repeatedly overrun by ice, although
only a few little glacierets remain in the Trinity Alps.
During these times of cooling and warming, the tree species in the
Klamaths have migrated, some rapidly and some not so rapidly, as the
climate has changed. Tree species did not move as a group but as a function of their ability either to tolerate the new environmental conditions
by changing growth rates or to disperse by vegetative growth or by seed.
This process created combinations of species, or plant communities,
unlike any we see today. Some species were extirpated, and others found
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Forest Mélange
27
small niches, or refugia, where they could persist. These migrations
might be compared to a marathon, in which all the runners start as a
single community but are widely spread across the course by the time
the winner has crossed the finish line; in tree migrations, some species
have stopped at refugia (water stops), and some have dropped from the
race completely.
We have a good picture of the past 10,000 to 15,000 years of vegetation change from pollen records. Each year, trees produce pollen, and
some of this pollen ends up in bogs or ponds where it sinks to form thin
layers on the bottom. Over time, a record of the pollen accumulates,
because pollen is decay resistant. The grains of different species are usually distinct, so that by sorting any given layer, one can identify the proportions of the contributing species. Ecologists called palynologists take
soil cores from these areas, which resemble frozen cookie dough, though
they are not frozen. They slice the core into thin “cookies,” label the
position of each one, and then sample the pollen composition of each
slice. By radiocarbon-dating of organic matter in the core, they can
determine ages across the length of the core and use any distinctive
layers of volcanic ash from past known eruptions to establish reference
dates within the core. From this process emerges a profile of changing
species composition over time in the vicinity of the sample. This analysis sounds relatively simple, but it is actually complex and tedious.
Though some species are easily identifiable, others have pollen so similar to that of related species that one can identify only their subgenus
(“hard pines” like ponderosa and lodgepole pine versus “soft pines”
like sugar pine and whitebark pine), genus (all the true firs in Abies), or
family (Cupressaceae: juniper, cypress, Alaska cedar, incense-cedar).
Pollen records are available in scattered locations of the Klamath
Mountains (see figure 7) and allow us to reconstruct postglacial vegetation change. The four sites in the figure are arranged in order of increasing elevation, with today’s vegetation type at the top of each column
and representation of historical changes over the Holocene (the past
9,000 years) for each elevation. The two leftmost, low-elevation
sequences are from the western Klamaths, and the two high-elevation
sites on the right are from the eastern Klamaths. If C. Hart Merriam
were to visit today’s vegetation, he would classify the four sites as Lower
Transition, Transition, Canadian, and Hudsonian. All sites show substantial change over the period, with a shift toward vegetation characteristic of a warmer, drier environment between 6,000 and 3,000 years
ago, and vegetation similar to today’s for the past 2,000 to 3,000 years.
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Forest Mélange
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Figure 7. Vegetation change over the past 9,000 years in the Klamath Mountains
along an elevational gradient (from left to right). The vertical axis is time before
the present. (Data sources: West 1993 and Mohr, Whitlock, and Skinner 2000.
Illustrator: Cathy Schwartz.)
The lowest-elevation record (approximately 3,100 feet) shows that
Douglas-fir has joined pine (most likely ponderosa pine) and oak
(California black oak or Oregon white oak) as the environment has
become cooler and wetter over the past several thousand years. Due to
climate change, an Upper Sonoran zone 5,000 years ago has become a
Transition zone. At Clear Lake, well south of the Klamath Mountains,
the temperature was some 3°F higher during the mid-Holocene, with
about half the current annual precipitation of 30 inches.
The core at approximately 4,100 feet shows a similar trend, except
that the available record is a bit shorter. A conifer-dominated record
with some oak has shifted to one of a mixed-evergreen forest dominated
by Douglas-fir and true fir (probably white or grand fir). The core at
approximately 6,300 feet likely represents different species over time.
The pine-Cupressaceae-oak 5,000 years or more before the present was
likely Jeffrey pine, western juniper, and incense cedar, and the shrubby
huckleberry oak. Between 5,000 and 2,000 years before the present,
although pine and oak remained dominant, true fir pollen began to
increase, and in the past 2,000 years, true firs (white and red fir, with
some subalpine fir) have become the dominant conifer-pollen source.
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Forest Mélange
29
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Figure 8. Gradient position of the major tree species in the Klamath Mountains.
The gray ellipse shows the range of the white fir. Other species will have range
ellipses of different shapes and sizes. (Illustrator: Cathy Schwartz.)
At the highest-elevation site (some 7,500 feet), the earliest vegetation
had a dominant soft-pine component (foxtail, whitebark, or western
white pine), with huckleberry oak and alder. True fir (probably Shasta
red fir) increased about 5,000 years before present, with the pines still
dominant, and mountain hemlock has become increasingly important
in the past several thousand years.
These sites show similar responses to regional changes in climate,
although the timing of the changes varies somewhat from site to site.
The species mixes are different as elevation increases, just as they are
today, and the species have reacted individually to climate change, not
as a coherent group or zone. These principles are likely to play out in
the future and allow us to speculate on the effects of global warming,
except that the projected changes in climate are more rapid than at
any previous time in the historical record. Clearly, sustainable management of the forests of the future will require adapting to such
global change.
Another tool for understanding today’s “forest mélange” is gradient
analysis (see figure 8). This technique defines important environmental
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Forest Mélange
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gradients, such as temperature and moisture, and then arranges the
species in the resulting two-dimensional space. Species listed close to
one another usually grow together. In figure 8, the position of the species
is based on their general ranges rather than specific plot data. From left
to right, the graph represents a transect across the Klamath Mountains
from the coast to the interior valleys along Interstate 5. For simplicity,
the wetter areas of the easternmost Klamaths are omitted here, but one
can locate the species of this area by moving from the right edge of the
figure back slightly to the left. The ellipse represents the range of just
one species, white fir. Each species would have a similar circle or ellipse
(but of unique shape and size) representing most of its range, although
the figure would become very noisy if it showed all the ranges. The
wettest, low-elevation sites on the coast are dominated by spruce and
redwood, and as one moves inland and up in elevation, other species are
more dominant. At dry, low-elevation sites in the interior, one finds oak
and juniper woodlands. Some species, such as Jeffrey pine, have a wide
range, growing both at low elevation on serpentines and on a variety of
substrates at higher elevation. Any place on a real landscape can be represented by a point on this graph, and all the species whose ellipses on
the graph overlap at that point can be found there. Those species are the
“players” that will compete for dominance on the site in the absence or
presence of disturbance.
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chapter 4
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A Rose by Any Name
The Klamath Mountains owe the rich diversity of their plant life to the
shifting of species across the landscape in response to environmental
change. The great age of the Klamath terranes, and the existence of
some nonglaciated land throughout that period, has allowed some
species that were dominant in past eras to persist in small areas when
climate changes favored new species. These “relict” species enrich the
flora, and the Klamath Mountains contain the richest conifer diversity
in the world, including several conifers found nowhere else in the world.
The Klamaths contain the only populations of weeping spruce, known
for their droopy branches. Most of the range of Port Orford cedar and
Baker cypress is in the Klamaths. The mountains hold isolated stands of
foxtail pine at the most northerly range of the species. This pine is so
called because its foliage resembles the tail of a fox. Like foxtail pine,
gray or ghost pine does not grow farther north, and knobcone pine goes
only as far north as the southern Cascades of Oregon. Just as these
species that are more common to the south have pushed north into the
Klamaths during climatic warming, other species more common to the
north have gradually pushed south during cool periods. The southernmost populations of subalpine fir, noble fir, Pacific silver fir, and Alaska
cedar are found here. None of these four species are currently widely
distributed across the region; they are relicts of past climates and
once-broader distribution. The southernmost population of Engelmann
spruce lies in the Russian Wilderness of the Klamaths. In total,
31
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A Rose by Any Name
twenty-nine conifer species reside today in the Klamath Mountains.
John Sawyer of Humboldt State University has counted seventeen conifers
in 1 square mile of the Russian Wilderness, a somewhat incredible number
in the West, where a typical square mile might contain three or four species
and where the existence of seven species is considered remarkable.
One day in the early 1990s when Glen Clifton and Dean Taylor were
driving along Highway 299 east of Redding, Clifton noticed an unusual
shrub growing along a low limestone outcrop near the river. They stopped
and could not identify the plant, and it was later taken to Humboldt
State University. Botanists there puzzled over it, until a geologist
remarked that it was similar to fossils found in Miocene deposits in the
John Day Fossil Beds of eastern Oregon. It turned out to be the same
plant as the fossilized ones and is now named the Shasta snow-wreath
(Neviusia cliftonii), a species that looks superficially like the widely distributed ninebark (Physocarpus capitatus). This ancient member of the
rose family has very short petals, but it is a rose by any name. Its range
has since been extended within the Klamath province, but it is still quite
rare, apparently growing only in moist soils derived from limestone.
This and other finds explain why the Klamath-Siskiyou region has been
defined as an area of globally outstanding biodiversity.
Plant names are often mysteries intended to throw the average person
off the track and maintain a professional niche for taxonomists. The
Latin name for Douglas-fir, Pseudotsuga menziesii, indicates correctly
that the tree is not a true fir (Abies); to confuse matters, the tree is also
not literally its generic names, Pseudotsuga, or “false hemlock.” Its
southern neighbor, Pseudotsuga macrocarpa, has the common name of
bigcone spruce, but these two species are not spruces, firs, or hemlocks.
Moreover, neither tanoak nor poison oak is an oak, although tanoak is
at least in the same family as the oaks. Among the oaks are three subsections of the genus Quercus: red oaks, white oaks, and live oaks.
Although one might expect red and white oaks to be dead oaks, given
that they are not live oaks, the “live oak” designation just means that
they are evergreen species rather than the deciduous ones that lose their
leaves each winter. So where does the California black oak, the most
common deciduous oak of the eastern Klamath forests, fit in? Why, it is
a member of the red oak group, identified by its sharper leaf margins, in
contrast to the smoother leaf margins of the white oaks. No wonder
people get confused.
If one is willing to wait a few years, the Latin names will also change.
Douglas-fir used to be Pseudotsuga taxifolia. Port Orford cedar has
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A Rose by Any Name
33
recently changed from Chamaecyparis lawsoniana to Cupressus lawsoniana: at least the new version is easier to spell. Incense cedar used to be
Libocedrus decurrens but is now Calocedrus decurrens. All three species
once had a hyphen in the common name to recognize they are not true
members of that group: Douglas-fir is not a fir, and Port Orford cedar and
incense cedar are not true cedars, but that convention now applies only to
Douglas-fir. The plant-taxonomy bible for California, The Jepson Manual
(J. C. Hickman, editor), does use the hyphen for Douglas-fir; the more
northerly plant bible, Hitchcock and Cronquist’s Flora of the Pacific
Northwest, doesn’t. Giant chinquapin’s Latin name has changed from Castanopsis chrysophylla to Chrysolepis chrysophylla, a change that is bound
to confuse those familiar with canyon live oak (Quercus chrysolepis).
“Chrysolepis” means golden scaled and refers to the yellowish underside of
the leaf; the color is much more pronounced in chinquapin but is present in
both species. At least this change makes some sense.
The pines, in general, are well named. Knobcone pine has knobby
cones that stay closed on the branch and conserve seed until a fire comes
along and opens the cone. Whitebark pine has white bark, but in its
younger stages it is easy to confuse with western white pine, another
five-needled white pine. Digger pine has recently been renamed, because
its common name was considered pejorative for the ill-named Digger
Indians, a “tribe” that never existed. It has gone through a succession of
other names: “foothill pine,” “bull pine,” and now the apparently stable
name “gray pine,” which describes its foliage color well. However,
although The Jepson Manual notes only the change from “digger pine”
to “foothill” or “gray pine,” John Stuart and John Sawyer, in their more
recent Trees and Shrubs of California, and Sawyer in his Northwest
California (2006), have replaced “gray pine” with the name “ghost
pine,” which represents the rather translucent appearance of the crown
and apparently is also an Anglicized version of the Indian name for the
tree. This renaming is the work of a mélange of regional botanists and
geographers who really don’t like the dull name “gray pine.” The war
of names continues.
A species can, of course, have different common names in different
areas, which can cause a lot of confusion. One gripe of mine is Oregon
botanists’ tendency to embrace every species as their own. This practice
is particularly irritating given that no one is sure of the origin of the
name “Oregon.” Some think the word derives from the candlefish, or
smelt, known as “oorigan” to the Western Cree Indians and praised for
its high fat content. Others think it may derive from the French word
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A Rose by Any Name
for storm (ouragan) or the Spanish word for wild marjoram (orégano).
But the chutzpah of this place of unknown lineage is unsurpassed in the
West. “Garry oak,” native from British Columbia to southern California,
abruptly changes to “Oregon white oak” south of the Columbia River.
“California bay” miraculously becomes “Oregon myrtle” north of the
California border (of course, Californians have their own problems,
unable to decide whether to call it “California bay,” or “California
laurel,” or “pepperwood”). Even Douglas-fir, timber king of the Northwest, is marketed as “Oregon pine” in Australia. I love Oregonians, or
perhaps I should say “Oorigonians,” but their penchant for co-opting
common names is nothing short of criminal. Why is the northwest ash
common to creeksides called “Oregon ash” instead of “Washington
ash”? Why is “Oregon grape” not “California grape”? (This one is
somewhat understandable, because people might confuse it with the
chardonnay or cabernet sauvignon grape.) Recently, the rest of us got
our revenge when the ground-nesting bird the “Oregon junco” became
the “dark-eyed junco” (Junco hyemalis). Maybe Lewis and Clark had
the right idea: on their visit to the Oregon coast, they simply named the
conifers “fir #1” to “fir #9.” Who can argue with such simplicity?
To make matters worse, different species can have the same common
name. Buckbrush is a shrub that is preferred by deer, but in the Klamaths,
it can refer to three kinds of ceanothus (Ceanothus) shrub: deerbrush
(C. integerrimus), buckbrush (C. cuneatus), and tobacco brush or snowbrush (C. velutinus), giving the latter species three possible common
names! And one must not confuse snowbrush with creeping snowberry
(Symphoricarpos). Nor should one look for nine types of bark on
ninebark: it has only one.
Plant names are only part of the problem. Although we conveniently
classify plants and animals into distinct species based on the inability to
produce fertile offspring, ecologically distinct species with different
morphologies may not really be different species. Monkeyflowers are an
excellent example of how to throw a monkey wrench into the concept of
speciation. The Klamath Mountains are home to a number of distinctive
species of monkeyflower (Mimulus). Their color ranges from gold to
scarlet, and they occupy a variety of habitats, but most occur in moist
areas. Two such species are the low-elevation scarlet monkeyflower
(Mimulus cardinalis) and the higher-elevation Lewis’ monkeyflower
(Mimulus lewisii; see figure 9). They are morphologically quite distinct,
with the scarlet monkeyflower having red to orange flowers, a narrow
tubular corolla, and anthers and stigma that protrude from the flower
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Figure 9. The pink Lewis’ monkeyflower (top) is pollinated by bees, the aptly named scarlet monkeyflower
(bottom) is pollinated by hummingbirds, and a hybrid
of the two (middle), which is intermediate in color
and shape, is favored by neither bees nor hummingbirds. (Photographs supplied courtesy H. D. “Toby”
Bradshaw, University of Washington, Seattle, WA.)
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36
A Rose by Any Name
(bottom, figure 9). Scarlet monkeyflower is pollinated by hummingbirds
and has a large nectar reward, which the bird obtains by touching the
anthers and stigma with its head. In contrast, Lewis’ monkeyflower
(top, figure 9) has pink flowers, a wide corolla, and petals flexed forward to act as a landing platform for bees, which pollinate that species.
The reproductive isolation of the two species arises from the attraction they have for different pollinators and the different elevations they
occupy, with some overlap. In fact, they produce fertile hybrids (middle,
figure 9) quite easily if artificially pollinated. Doug Schemske and Toby
Bradshaw from the University of Washington experimented with the
two species in a common garden in the Sierra Nevada and found that
hummingbirds strongly favor scarlet monkeyflower, bees strongly favor
Lewis’ monkeyflower, and both (59 percent bees, 41 percent hummingbirds) favor first-generation hybrids of intermediate morphology.
Second-generation hybrids, produced from first-generation hybrids,
possessed a wide range of morphologies and attracted pollinators in
proportion to the degree that the hybrid resembled one or the other
species. Hybrids with increased levels of petal anthocyanins and
carotenoids, which intensify the redness of the flowers, discouraged bee
pollination. Wider landing platforms on the hybrids tended to encourage bee visitation. Hummingbirds were not as selective for color but
selected strongly for nectar volume. These striking differences in flower
preference suggest that bees and hummingbirds may influence flower
traits by selective pollination and that the flower traits for these two
species are under relatively simple genetic control. Schemske and
Bradshaw argue that one can still consider these species to be separate
because of their distinctive ecological niches. In the process of reproduction isolation and the development of new species, pollinators may
play critical roles.
Perhaps the most unusual plant in the Klamaths is the carnivorous
California pitcher plant (see figure 10). This insect-devouring plant is an
innocuous-looking part of midelevation wet meadows, particularly on
serpentine substrates, where it competes with much showier wetmeadow flowers. It has a cobralike hood that emits a rather putrid smell
and attracts various flies, yellow jackets, and the like. Because of the
hood, it is sometimes called “cobra lily,” although it is not a member of
the lily family. Once inside the hood, insects find themselves trapped and
drop to the bottom of the trap, where they drown. As bacteria decompose
them, adding to the rotten odor, the plant absorbs the nutrients. We usually classify organisms as producers (most plants that photosynthesize)
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A Rose by Any Name
37
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Figure 10. The carnivorous California pitcher plant (Darlingtonia californica).
This one is from the vicinity of Lake Eleanor near Trinity Lake.
or consumers (herbivores like deer or carnivores like mountain lions).
The pitcher plant is both. Michael Pollan, in The Botany of Desire,
argues that such adaptive traits are so clever that the plant appears to
have developed them purposely. The seeming miracle of purpose in
monkeyflowers and pitcher plants is the process of natural selection
at work.
Selection has also been important for plants growing on ultrabasic
substrates. Soils developed on serpentine, dunite, and peridotite tend to
be very low in calcium, high in magnesium, and high in heavy metals.
The vegetation on such sites usually has an open canopy, rather stunted
growth of the trees and shrubs, and a shrub/herb layer that ranges from
well developed to sparse. At low elevations, Jeffrey pine replaces ponderosa pine on serpentine soils and can be easily differentiated by the
cones. The larger Jeffrey pinecones have the prickles oriented inward,
whereas the prickles on the smaller cones of ponderosa pine face outward. At higher elevations, Jeffrey pines are not restricted to serpentine.
The usual zonal relations of vegetation tend to be relaxed in serpentine
areas, with a broader elevational range for most of the conifers.
These areas have a high number of rare or endemic species, so botanically they are quite interesting. Experiments have shown that some
species such as jewel flower (Streptanthus) and phacelia (Phacelia) that
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A Rose by Any Name
grow on both serpentine and nonserpentine soils have different ecotypes in the two areas. The serpentine populations can absorb higher
amounts of calcium, which helps them survive in a calcium-poor environment. Typically, they are not good competitors, so they grow well in
the competition-free serpentine but cannot compete well with other
plants on neighboring soils. Conversely, the nonserpentine populations
do not grow well when planted in serpentine. Botanists hypothesize that
over time, some species that have adapted well to serpentine have lost
their nonserpentine cohorts because of competition from other plants
on the more productive soils, so they now grow only on serpentine and
have become serpentine endemic, persisting only there.
When new species enter the ecosystem, they can upset any quasi equilibrium at work and often result in simpler, unstable plant communities.
These so-called exotics are from other places, do not belong where they
are growing, and are rarely as romantic as the word exotic implies.
Today, we call them “alien” plants, and many of them are invasive or
have the ability to spread aggressively in their new environment. Many
aliens have been here for a long time and have essentially become thoroughly naturalized. Indian informers told early twentieth-century
ethnographers that wild oats (Avena fatua) had always grown in central
California, but we know that the species came from Europe during the
Franciscan mission period. Some alien plants are noxious and are injurious to human or animal health. Few are easily eradicated once they
are established. Many of today’s common California grasses come from
the Mediterranean area and are also common in western Australia.
When I visited western Australia in the 1990s, I was struck by the similarity of the grass-species composition to that of California, and the
place reminded me of the San Francisco Bay Area, where I grew up:
tall eucalyptus (native to Australia but widely planted in California),
short eucalyptus that, from a distance, resemble the native live oaks of
California, and rolling hills of grass that are just like those of California,
dominated by species native to neither place but to Europe. While the
resemblance stirred some nostalgia, it also was disturbing. We are
homogenizing the natural world, piece by piece, much as we’ve homogenized the cultural world with Wal-Marts and Burger Kings. We are
losing our sense of place, which is in part defined by native flora
and fauna.
Though introduced herbs like cheatgrass, Dalmatian toadflax, and
yellow star-thistle have likely had a much more negative impact on the
Klamath Mountains than have introduced trees, alien trees impart a
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A Rose by Any Name
39
false sense of place. When I hitchhiked to the Trinity Alps up Highway
299 in the 1960s, the tree of heaven (Ailanthus), native to eastern Asia,
was actively invading the road corridor. Introduced by the Chinese gold
miners in the mid-1800s, tree of heaven has become common below
3,000 feet elevation in the eastern Klamaths and radiates out from the
old gold-mining settlements where it was originally planted. But perhaps the most egregious alien presence is that of giant sequoia trees
along Highway 3 north of Weaverville. Giant sequoias, cousins of the
redwood, grow naturally in a series of disjunct groves in the middle to
southern Sierra Nevada, where they form magnificent groves of towering trees that can be thousands of years old. Sequoias are the largest
trees by volume in the world, joining in the record books their relative
the redwood, the tallest plant in the world. In their native habitat, they
are spectacular.
By 1960, when Highway 3 was rerouted because of the construction
of Trinity Dam, foresters had recognized the fast growth of giant
sequoia, and plantings were common outside of the species’ natural
range. Someone decided to plant giant sequoias in the disturbed areas
adjacent to the new Highway 3 right-of-way, and today populations of
this beautiful species grow in places where they do not belong. As one
drives north on Highway 3 over Buckeye Ridge and begins descending
along Slate Creek, the road winds through a minigrove of giant
sequoias. The trees are also found at the “Osprey” turnoff amid a patch
of French broom, another alien likely planted there. Attempts to remove
the broom have been unsuccessful to date; it is persistent with a longlived seed bank, so new plants will germinate following any disturbance
created by cutting or pulling the mature plants.
The sequoia is also planted north of the Trinity Lake Bridge near
Mule Creek and the Long Canyon road. At first, the range of tree sizes
suggests that the first planted sequoias are the largest and that smaller
ones are much younger, perhaps either planted later or regenerated from
seed on-site. However, age analysis of these trees with increment borers
indicates that the largest ones, which are up to 20 inches in diameter,
and the smallest ones, 3 to 5 inches in diameter, all are the same age,
having been planted somewhere in the mid- to late 1960s. I will be the
first to extol the beauty of the giant sequoia: both my master’s thesis and
doctoral work were on giant sequoias and their associated species, and
I have one growing in my backyard in Seattle. As an ornamental tree,
or as a wildland tree in its place, it is a very beautiful conifer. But in a
wildland setting where it does not belong, it is a weed. It steals from the
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A Rose by Any Name
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beauty of the Klamaths and imparts a Sierra Nevada image where it
does not belong. The sequoias appear to pose little threat of expanding
away from the roadside, unless the upslope areas are disturbed by logging or fire, but the ones that are there will become more visually imposing over time. We should be showcasing the Pacific yew, the sugar pine,
the ponderosa pine, the Douglas-fir, the incense cedar, and other native
plants of the area. If I were king, or even prince, for a day, I would command that a few of these sequoias be removed each year until they are
gone. In the Klamaths, native plants deserve to rule!
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chapter 5
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My Botanical Contest
with Miss Alice Eastwood
Alice Eastwood, a famous California botanist, conducted a botanical
survey in 1900 of Canyon Creek, a tributary stream that joins the
Trinity River at Junction City. She listed all the trees and shrubs she
found along her journey, including those she spied on a 20-mile trek up
Canyon Creek. I thought it would be fun to challenge her expertise with
a survey of my own, but in many respects, the contest was unfair. Miss
Eastwood died half a century ago, after being curator of the herbarium
at the California Academy of Sciences for the previous half century.
She, therefore, was unaware of the contest, which, I thought, gave me a
significant advantage.
Miss Eastwood was an accomplished botanist, better respected in her
day than even Willis Linn Jepson, who wrote the classic Manual of the
Flowering Plants of California in 1923. Born in 1859 in eastern Canada,
she was a self-taught scientist whose formal education was limited to a
high school degree from East Denver High School in Colorado. Her
mother died when she was young, and she moved to her uncle’s estate
in the Canadian countryside, where her interest in botany flowered.
After living for six years in a convent, she reunited with her family in
Denver and discovered the mountain meadows of the Rockies west of
the city. After graduating from high school, she became a teacher, longing for the freedom of the summers so that she could roam freely in the
mountains. Her growing botanical expertise led her to an audience with
Professor Asa Gray of Harvard, author of Gray’s Botany, and to work
41
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42
My Contest with Miss Alice Eastwood
as a Rocky Mountain guide for English naturalist Alfred Russell Wallace,
who had designated the still-famous “Wallace’s line” that biogeographically separates Asian and Australian biota. Before long, she had traveled to California and moved there in 1892, becoming curator of botany
at the California Academy in 1893, as well as editor of the botanical
journal Zoë. One of her first treks was to Mount Shasta, where she
made a “hasty trip” to the summit in August 1893.
Her Canyon Creek expedition of 1900 grew out of a meeting with
C. Hart Merriam, who had surveyed the plants and animals of the
Mount Shasta region in 1898 as chief of the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Division of Biological Survey. Merriam had spent most of the
summer of 1898 around Mount Shasta, but toward the end of the
summer, he and several others had trekked to the coast directly through
the Klamath range. Merriam, a stout fellow with a Teddy Roosevelt
walrus mustache, took along an assistant and Henry Gannett, geographer
with the U.S. Geological Survey. Gannett was in charge of mapping
the forests of Oregon and Washington and produced some of the first
maps of forest types and the extent of forest fires. The group collected
some plants along the ridges heading west, some of which they could
not identify. Merriam, who was internationally known for his “lifezone” concept of biotic-community distribution, then traveled to San
Francisco to meet with Eastwood in the hope of obtaining positive
identification of unknown species that he had sent to her. She was able to
identify about twenty-five of the unknowns, and while Merriam was
there, he extolled the virtues of the Klamaths. Eastwood was convinced
that an expedition was critical: “It seemed as if life would lose its zest
if these mountains could not be reached, their rugged peaks climbed,
their botanical treasures collected, and their dangers and difficulties
overcome” (39).
Miss Eastwood’s army for the 1900 expedition consisted of three
traveling companions and a string of broken-down horses that the
group obtained in Redding, thinking that they could not secure any
stock at the end of the road if they traveled by stage. One of their objectives was to obtain a list of trees and shrubs en route from Redding to
the snow-clad peaks of the Klamaths. They chose not to focus on herbs,
because by July, when they departed on foot with their pack stock from
Redding, many of the herbs of the lower elevations were far past flowering stage. They headed for Canyon Creek, likely because Merriam
had told them of this spectacular alpine area topped by the 9,000-foottall Thompson Peak.
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My Contest with Miss Alice Eastwood
43
Miss Eastwood was robust and could hike a steady 4 miles per hour
all day, which is a pretty fast walk for a person of her small stature. The
first night the group camped at Whiskeytown, the second they stopped
off between Tower House and Lewiston, and they reached Lewiston the
third day. One of their horses gave out on this first leg of the trip and
was replaced in Lewiston. The troupe reached Weaverville more than a
day later than expected and continued on past the La Grange Mine,
which was in full operation. Miss Eastwood noted, “It is desolation and
ruination of the natural features of the country, and the result on the
landscape is typical of the effect on humanity of the greed for gold” (44).
Later that day, they reached Anderson’s Ranch near Junction City, and
on July 7, began their journey up “Cañon Creek,” which is now Canyon
Creek.
The lower part of the canyon had been heavily mined for placer gold,
and some operations were continuing. Deserted ranches were everywhere, marked by fruit trees, and the remaining miners “seemed like the
driftwood of humanity left behind on the great tide that swept over the
country in the days of 49” (44–45). Once at Dedrick, a bustling town
that was the “terminus of civilization,” after 60 miles on foot, the team
began exploring in earnest (45). Few people in the town knew much
about the upper canyon, so Eastwood and her crew headed upstream
with scant knowledge of what was ahead of them. On the journey to the
first waterfall, Hound’s-Head Fall (now Lower Canyon Creek Falls),
she remarked on the “rare and lovely” flowers that grew in the shade of
the mixed-evergreen coniferous forest. Surprisingly, she made no note
of the “sinks,” a section of the stream that flows underground, at least
during the dry part of the year. This omission was likely due to her focus
on the destination: the subalpine and alpine terminus of the trip, Twin
Lakes (now Lower and Upper Canyon Creek Lakes). The group took
two days to travel the 8 miles from Dedrick to Twin Lakes. The trail
was obscure, and they took dead ends, cutting new trail along several
sections of the stream. Miss Eastwood couldn’t help but admire the
shrubs that were making progress so difficult. She observed that the fragrance of snowbrush’s foliage and flowers made it attractive even
though it was a “great obstacle” to their progress (47). The group had
to ford Canyon Creek seven times during the journey, with the animals
crossing among the rocks and Miss Eastwood walking across on logs.
Hound’s-Head Fall is also near a major geological boundary. Below
the falls, the geology is a mix of complex, distorted remnants of the
Mesozoic and Paleozoic ages, containing jagged slates, schists, and
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44
My Contest with Miss Alice Eastwood
other rocks best exposed along the streams. Granite boulders rounded
by glaciation and stream action over the past several thousand years
represent small pieces of the upper watershed that were carried downstream. The upper basin of Canyon Creek is in one of a number of
granitic plutons that intruded into these older rocks, like a large boil,
during Late Jurassic or Early Cretaceous times. The largest pluton in
the Klamath Mountains is the Canyon Creek stock, covering about
30 square miles and forming the southeastern portion of the Trinity
Alps. The granite was pushed up in molten form from the deep and
slowly solidified into a mix of quartz, plagioclase, biotite, and hornblende. The particular chemical composition of the Canyon Creek stock
is called tonalite, which sounds more like a health food than a type of
rock. Before the light-colored tonalite (as “white as snow,” according to
Eastwood) cooled and consolidated, a dark, iron-rich igneous material
called lamprophyre intruded along its cracks, creating a series of eastwest dikes that average a couple of feet in width (51). Thompson Peak,
Sawtooth Ridge, and other jagged features of the Trinity Alps are all
composed of tonalite.
The spectacular scenery of the upper Canyon Creek area is a result of
this geological history, sculpted by more recent glaciers. Glacial till
deposits that are named after these local features describe continental
glaciation that occurred during the past million years. Maximum ice
advances, known as the Swift Creek till, occurred about 400,000 years b.p.
(before the present). Later glacial advances occurred at 130,000 years b.p.
(Alpine Lake till), 60,000–75,000 years b.p. (Rush Creek till), 45,000
years b.p. (no name), and 20,000 years b.p. (Morris Meadows till). A
series of terminal and lateral moraines, unsorted rock debris left by
receding glaciers that filled the valley and pushed down some 10 miles
from the headwaters, lie along Canyon Creek, particularly in the area
below Hound’s-Head Fall. This glaciated high country was one of the
main attractions for the Eastwood party.
As the party began to enter the high country, the ponderosa pines
began to yield to western white pine, and white and Shasta red fir began
to replace Douglas-fir as the dominant species. Eastwood recorded her
first sighting of the rare Brewer spruce (also called weeping spruce), a
species found only in the Klamath-Siskiyou country and one of the
rarest trees in California. Its pendulous branches and small stature suggest a tree in mourning, thus the “weeping” spruce. Shasta red fir and
mountain hemlock were the dominant trees around the lakes, with a
beautiful subalpine flora of shrubs and herbs. Miss Eastwood marveled
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My Contest with Miss Alice Eastwood
45
at the granite slopes polished by glacial action. Glaciers had “scratched”
the granite as they moved boulders along, eroded holes later filled by
lakes, and created meadows at lower elevations as areas behind
moraines filled with sediment. Ice had etched the high cliffs into jagged
ridges and peaks, creating a “regular Sierra” (48), as Eastwood
described them. The Sierra Nevada had to be the standard of grandeur
and beauty, if only because the account was to be published in the Sierra
Club Bulletin.
More than any other place in California, the night sky in the Trinity
Alps is clear, and Miss Eastwood remarked on the “great distinctness”
of the constellations in the summer sky (49). At daybreak, the party
began a series of expeditions ascending the ridges and peaks that surrounded Twin Lakes. The first, an ascent of Thompson Peak, was unsuccessful. The group apparently reached the ridge looking down onto
Mirror Lake and the headwaters of the Stuart Fork, only to face a series
of “cliffs, pinnacles, and knife-edges” that convinced them to return
back to camp (49). Other ascents were more successful, including an
ascent of a peak they named Sunset Peak, very likely the unnamed peak
that looks over Papoose Lake on the North Fork of the Trinity River.
Permanent snowbanks even now clothe the eastern flank of the peak.
The travelers kept to the talus as much as possible, and Miss Eastwood
marveled at the profusion of flowers: arnicas, asters, columbines, penstemons, and monkeyflowers. White heather was in full bloom along
the ridgetop. From the peak, she was treated to a “most beautiful view
of Mt. Shasta” to the east, which she noted that one must see from neither too close nor too far for maximum effect (50). She could imagine
C. Hart Merriam plowing his way across the pumice fields of Shasta,
and she must have had a grand view of Diller Canyon on the west slope.
Merriam named the canyon after J. S. Diller of the U.S. Geological
Survey, who did much early geological exploration on Shasta, as well as
work on the gold fields of the Weaverville area. In the next few days, the
party explored the area above the lakes, found alpine laurel in bloom
with pink flowers, and managed a few potshots with a .38-caliber Smith
and Wesson at an unsuspecting cinnamon-colored black bear. Eastwood
shrugged off a successful hit as “probably no more than the sting of an
insect” to the bear (52).
Miss Eastwood and her group were able to return to Dedrick in a
day’s time, aided by the trail they had cut and the knowledge they had
gained on the trip up the canyon. Eastwood published a list of the
shrubs and trees she had noted throughout the trip from Redding to the
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46
My Contest with Miss Alice Eastwood
high country. It was after reading this list that I decided to challenge the
indomitable Miss Eastwood. I was determined to find all her shrubs and
trees and to tack a few more onto the list. But I would need to make an
expedition of my own to outdo Miss Eastwood.
Any expedition requires planning, so I began to compile a list of
wilderness gear that I would require, some of which I had and some of
which I needed to buy. The camping landscape has changed so much
over the years that I thought that use of too much advanced gear would
be unfair to Miss Eastwood. First of all, I didn’t have to wear a dress,
the proper attire for a lady in the backcountry of a century ago. My predecessor had at least designed and worn a functional denim affair. I
decided to shorten my trip to a few days rather than duplicate the
extended week that Eastwood and company spent in Canyon Creek. I
wisely cut out the walking trip from Redding to Dedrick, although back
in 1962, on my second backpacking trip into the Trinity Alps, my pal
Bill Weston and I did walk much of the way along Highway 299 from
Redding to Shasta before successfully hitching rides the rest of the way.
Even in 1962, we had many advantages over Miss Eastwood:
1:62,500-scale maps, whereas she likely had no maps at all. Tang, the
early astronauts’ powdered orange drink of choice, had been invented;
we had aluminum-frame backpacks, slightly lighter sleeping bags, and
awful-tasting water-purifier tablets. For the Canyon Creek adventure in
2003, I was prepared, although not completely. I owned no cell phone,
a handy bailout device for today’s wilderness, but even if I had had one,
it would not have worked in the deep canyons of the Trinity Alps. I had
a form-fit backpack, a global-positioning unit, lightweight titanium
pots, a fancy little camp stove, a small digital camera, good maps
(1:24,000 scale), a small headlamp, a water-purification pump, a soft
pad for sleeping, a new sleeping bag, and freeze-dried food. I later discovered that the last item was not really an advantage over my 1960s
trips or probably over Miss Eastwood’s, either. I also had a secret
weapon: whereas she edited the journal Zoë, I was bringing my Australian shepherd, Zoe. As I proudly marched out of REI with my new
gear and a lighter wallet, I was sure this challenge would be no contest.
And I was right.
I planned my trip for early September, after Labor Day, when the
backcountry crowds might be thinner than in midsummer. Although I
was a month behind Eastwood’s visit, the timing was not critical. Trees
and shrubs would be easy to identify by leaf characters, and flowers
would not be needed. My plan was to have my wife, Wendy, drop Zoe
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My Contest with Miss Alice Eastwood
47
and me at the trailhead on a Monday morning and pick us up Wednesday
morning. In Weaverville the previous Friday, I dutifully filled out the
backcountry permit, which is simply a way for the Forest Service to
monitor use. No limits on access are currently in place for this wilderness area, although the Canyon Creek trailhead is the busiest of all those
in the Trinity Alps Wilderness. The trail, once it passes the Bear Creek
intersection just up from the trailhead, heads due north up the stream
with few opportunities to branch out until Boulder Creek at mile 6.
Canyon Creek Lakes is at mile 8, and from there, bushwhacking is in
order, although most of the bushes are quite low. In fact, Eastwood
described them as a help rather than a hindrance in climbing around the
amphitheater of upper Canyon Creek.
Unfortunately, an axiom of backcountry travel is that if the trailhead
parking lot is full of cars, one is likely to meet most of the occupants
somewhere upstream. The Wilderness Act of 1964 defined wilderness as
a place with “outstanding opportunities for solitude.” On the Canyon
Creek trail, the hiker will find many people “out standing,” or perhaps
sitting or even hiking, during most of the summer, so the trail is not a
prime entry to the wilderness unless one really likes to meet people. On
holiday weekends, it hosts two hundred to three hundred backpackers,
with vehicles parked all the way down from the trailhead parking lot a
mile or so to Ripstein Campground. But I did not have the choice of
hiking up another, less-traveled watershed, such as the North Fork,
because the trees and shrubs I was hunting were up Canyon Creek. At
least I was late in the season, and with the crowds gone, I could hear
Miss Eastwood calling.
The day of challenge arrived. I awoke early that cloudy morning in
the neighboring Stuart Fork at Trinity Alps Resort, and we packed up,
drove south to Weaverville, west on Highway 299 across recently firescarred Oregon Mountain, past the hydraulically mined hills of the La
Grange Mine, and into Junction City, the portal to Canyon Creek.
During Miss Eastwood’s visit, gold mining was still very active in
Canyon Creek: hydraulic mining in the lower watershed and lode
mining on the slopes above Dedrick. As we turned up the creek, I was
reminded of Miss Eastwood’s comment on the residents and looked in
vain for the “driftwood of humanity” as we drove up the road. Along
the lower watershed, mining claims are still posted, fences abound, and
one gets the feeling that this is not a very friendly place. At Dedrick, the
Eastwood group saw a bustling community: stores, hotels, homes, and
of course, three saloons. Today, not a single building is left standing,
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48
My Contest with Miss Alice Eastwood
and all one sees is a lonely plaque, dedicated in the 1990s, noting
“Dedrick faded.”
We arrived at the most dangerous place of the entire trip: the trailhead parking lot. In the previous month, at least two cars had been burglarized, according to the Trinity Journal. Hikers often leave valuables
in their cars, and with no campground nearby, the trailhead parking lot
is a lonely place at night and is attractive to the criminal element.
Canyon Creek is not the only problem spot in the Trinity Alps; all
wilderness trailheads have the same problem. In the late 1960s, the
Stuart Fork trailhead was targeted by gang members who camped in a
remote upstream gulch so that no vehicles would be spotted coming
down the road after a burglary. Authorities were baffled, and the depredations continued for months. One evening, my Mom and Dad went
fishing there after parking at the trailhead (which was then at Cherry
Flat, but since then, the upper mile of road above Bridge Camp has been
gated, available only to the single landowner above Bridge Camp).
Mom spotted a lifeless leg and boot behind a log, which, after her initial horror, turned out to be an officer in hiding. Several days later,
despite the officer’s inability to effectively conceal himself, he successfully surprised the gang breaking into a car, and the arrests temporarily
ended the burgling of cars at the Stuart Fork trailhead.
Forest rangers do patrol the trailheads and keep the areas clean, but
they can’t be there all the time. At a wilderness trailhead in the Cascades
of Washington some years ago, cars were broken into regularly, but as
the ranger radioed his colleagues of his approach each day, he could
never catch the thief in action. Finally, the rangers realized that the thief
carried a stolen Forest Service radio and was receiving a handy warning
every time the ranger came near. So they devised a scheme whereby the
ranger, in leaving the trailhead, radioed that he was heading for a distant
trailhead, and though parked down road, sent several messages indicating he was en route. He then drove back in radio silence to the trailhead
and not only surprised the thief but recovered the stolen radio. Given
that Wendy dropped off Zoe and me at the Canyon Creek trailhead, I
was not concerned about car break-ins. The parking lot was almost full,
which was good news for potential thieves but bad news for me. I’d be
seeing a lot of people. My pack seemed heavier than it had seemed back
at our cabin, but my pencil was at the ready: the botanical contest was
set to begin.
Miss Eastwood’s report on her trip listed the trees and shrubs she
saw between Redding and the headwaters of Canyon Creek. She listed
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My Contest with Miss Alice Eastwood
49
sixty-six species of trees and shrubs in Canyon Creek (she found some
of these species before she reached Canyon Creek but also found them
in the lower reaches of the watershed). So a winning total of sixty-seven
species was my target. In the first turn of the trail, I caught my breath! I
saw a shrub my predecessor had missed: Aralia californica, or elk clover.
But elk clover was a red herring—it is a very large herb rather than a
shrub—so I did not include it in my list. The Jepson Manual includes
perennial herbs, shrubs, or small trees in the genus Aralia, which
includes elk clover. The one species native to California is “perennial,”
which the manual defines as herbaceous and not shrubby, although all
shrubs and trees are indeed perennial. Furthermore, in her local classic
Flowers and Trees of the Trinity Alps, Alice Jones clearly says of elk
clover, “Although from 6'–10' tall, this plant is not a shrub” (99). I
composed myself, adjusted my pack, and carried on, stopping to record
the species I had seen in the previous fifteen minutes and giving me a
convenient excuse to catch a breather. Unlike the Stuart Fork trail,
which seesaws up and down for the first several miles, Canyon Creek
trail is a well-designed slight but steady uphill grade. Zoe, who cared
little about Miss Eastwood or the contest, was busy reading the news of
the past few days, sniffing the trail and every bush extending into it. Her
idea of a break was to chase the occasional Douglas squirrel that had
identified itself with a squeak. As a herder, her idea of success is the
chase rather than the kill. The only squirrel she ever cornered, near
Stoddard Lake in the northern Trinity Alps, bit her on the nose or paw,
and convinced her that the chase is more fun than the catch, inviting
something of a catch-and-release strategy for mammals instead of fish.
Although the trail has but a slight grade, the slopes we traversed had
grades of 60 percent to 70 percent, and she thought nothing of running
to the bottom of a slope and racing back up to the trail. I tried to look
tough as I moved up the 5 percent grade of the trail, stopping to record
species or to contemplate why I hadn’t found species I expected to
encounter.
Each species of tree or shrub has environmental limits that constrict
its presence. Some grow only below the snow zone, whereas others
appear only at the high elevations. So I had some good clues about
which species I shouldn’t bother to look for yet and which ones I could
expect to find in the low country. I recorded about twenty species in the
first mile of trail, mostly species of wide distribution in the low country:
ponderosa pine, Douglas-fir, snowbrush, Oregon grape, service-berry,
and the like. The weather was cool and cloudy, making the hike quite
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50
My Contest with Miss Alice Eastwood
pleasant, and the backpack seemed lighter as I moved up the canyon.
Miss Eastwood was in for a fight. By the time I reached Hound’s-Head
Fall, now Lower Canyon Creek Falls, I had recorded forty-six species,
more than two-thirds of the total I needed. I was missing one of her
low-elevation species, vine bark (Neillia opufolia), but had two species she
had apparently missed: ninebark (Physocarpus capitatus), a common
shrub that I was surprised she had overlooked, and a buckwheat (Eriogonum sp.) whose species I did not identify. The buckwheat was along
the trail on a dry rocky slope, and I surmised that Eastwood and her
party had missed it because they had headed directly up the bottom of
the canyon rather than along the cushy midslope trail that I followed.
Too bad for Miss Eastwood. So I decided that I had the early lead, but
I was still early in the game.
I camped just above the falls on a beautiful little flat across the creek
where someone had arranged chunks of tonalite to make a nice fire pit
and low table. I arrived there in midafternoon and spent the rest of the
day setting up camp, making notes about the day, and preparing for my
assault on the high country early the next morning. Zoe and I hiked up
the smooth, barren granite slopes and got a clear view of the country
ahead, as clouds billowed across the sky from west to east. Zoe enjoyed
racing ahead with four-wheel drive and waiting patiently for her twowheeled master to catch up. I gathered a few dead manzanita branches
on the way down the hill to fuel a minicampfire in the evening. Campfires
are forbidden in the high country because of the lack of fuel and the
damage that desperate fire starters cause to live vegetation. In the low
country where I was camped, campfires are permissible, but very small
fires are not only safer but provide ample warmth and reassurance that
one is master of his domain. Eastwood spent several nights in the high
country, and she was awed by the wonderfully clear sky and the
immense number of stars filling the sky. I was going to have only two
nights, and the first was decidedly overcast. My plan was to hike from
camp up to the lakes and back the next day, so I needed to leave early
to give myself time for plant searches.
I hung my food to discourage bears from rooting around camp. I
didn’t have a .38-caliber Smith and Wesson revolver like Eastwood’s
companion S. L. Berry did, but I had my trusty dog, Zoe, who had
proved herself a couple of years earlier when I hiked up the Rush Creek
Lakes trail with her and spun out on a spur ridge. Sitting in a natural
rock “chair” chiseled out of the ridge, I had been contemplating the
views toward Mt. Lassen and Mt. Shasta when Zoe spotted a bear
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My Contest with Miss Alice Eastwood
51
silently moving upslope and let out a great howl. The bear jumped and
noisily retreated down the hill. So I was sure that if deer or bear were
around our camp, I would have an early warning system in place,
although the alarm would sound off immediately adjacent to my ear.
Hoping that the skies would clear overnight, I crawled into the tent and
became a temporary pupa, hoping to metamorphose into a winning
botanist and dreaming about Miss Eastwood’s twin lakes, which I
would finally see tomorrow. During the night, I began to hear plops and
drips as rain penetrated the forest canopy and hit the rain fly of the tent.
In the morning, rain was falling hard, and the forest canopy was saturated, dripping copious amounts of water to the ground. As I dressed,
I wondered how the weather would affect my hike to the lakes. Opening the tent fly, I found the lakes had come to me! The flat was locally
flooded, but when I moved a few pieces of wood, my lake began to
drain. A cool rain pelted me as I fired up my little stove, and my adventurous dog stayed in the tent, which was a really bad sign. I wondered
if Miss Eastwood was behind this setback. When Zoe and I left our
muddy camp, I had yet to find some twenty species on the list; I started
hiking into a sea of clouds that were pouring precipitation. At least the
downpour was rain with no chance of snow. My old coated nylon
raingear failed in about an hour. Relying on this gear was a critical
mistake—I should have had a waterproof, breathable fabric—but ever
since the late 1970s, when my first “waterproof but breathable”
raingear failed in 9 inches of rain in the Olympic Mountains after only
one month of use, I had refused to buy more. The salesperson at the
store said knowingly, “Well, you have version 1 of this material and
now there is version 2, much more reliable.” “And even more expensive,” I muttered under my breath. So I moved to heavier rubber-coated
products and then to coated nylon, which works OK when it’s new. My
raingear at Canyon Creek wasn’t new, and by the time I approached
Twin Lakes, leaving the forested valley below, I was soaked, Zoe was
soaked, and visibility was about 100 feet. I later invested (an accurate
term given the price of good raingear these days) in a breathable-fabric
rain suit, which passed a severe thunderstorm test the next year in the
Stuart Fork. After my trip, I learned that 80 percent of the rainfall
between August and October 2003 fell that day. However, damp as I
was, the list of plant species left to find was shrinking, and I had only
about ten more to go. I ducked into the Stonehouse, a natural rock
shelter called a “tor” about a quarter mile below the lakes. The Stonehouse was formed by jointed tonalite and stacked in a way that created
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52
My Contest with Miss Alice Eastwood
a protected “room” under the rocks. A clueless climber had fixed a
climbing piton to the ceiling; he might as well have spray-painted his
name on the rocks. I had temporarily escaped the rain, but not the water
against my skin. I knew now, in my cold and clammy state, that beating
Miss Eastwood would be tough.
Zoe and I hiked up the last bluff through a thick blanket of fog into
the supposedly beautiful amphitheater of the Canyon Creek Lakes.
The glaciers had polished the tonalite, and the last portions of the trail
were marked by small stone cairns—three rocks piled on one another—
as we climbed up the smooth, convex stone face that held behind it the
Canyon Creek Lakes. As we crested the bluff, the lower lake was to our
right, but I couldn’t see across the 600-foot-wide lake. Ghostly Shasta
red firs, mountain hemlocks, and Brewer spruces appeared and disappeared in the mist. I had difficulty seeing where I was going, and the
cold wind blew hard across the exposed fetch of the lake. I lost the trail
by walking too close to the lake; stumbling along through the rocks and
shrubs, I came to a cliff. Retreating upslope, I saw through the mist my
secret weapon, Zoe, sitting next to a trail marker, and we were soon on
our way again to the upper lake. I found mountain heather (Phyllodoce),
one of the high-elevation plants still on the list, but soon realized that
the white heather (Cassiope), which Eastwood found on a ridgetop
and which grows at higher elevation than the mountain heather does,
would not join my list today. I also could not find alpine laurel (Kalmia)
and ruled out hiking up another 1,200 feet to Kalmia Lake, where I
surmised I might find it. The contest was getting tight, and with Miss
Eastwood leading by at least one plant, I had to find western Labrador
tea (Ledum). I decided to look for it at slightly lower elevation, for I had
pushed up to the lakes pretty quickly in the morning. On the way down,
in one of the small wet meadows, I left the trail and walked over to the
creek, as if Miss Eastwood were leading the way. There, at the edge of
the stream, was the Labrador tea. With my ninebark and buckwheat
secure on my list as new species, I was assured of at least a tie in my
contest with Miss Alice Eastwood, unless someone tampered with the
scorekeeping.
Buoyed by my late success, and burdened with an ever-growing
weight of water inside my raingear, I struck out for camp down the slick
tonalite. My feet suddenly were in front of my eyes, and I fell hard to
my side, revived by a quick, warm lick on the face. Once off the first
bluff, the trail became easier to navigate and it was soon buffered by
forest. By the time we reached camp, the rain had stopped, and patches
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My Contest with Miss Alice Eastwood
53
of blue were appearing and disappearing among the lower-elevation
clouds. Camp was still a muddy mess, so I packed up and headed down
to the trailhead, where Wendy was to pick me up the next morning. Zoe
and I hiked past the trailhead to a small open beach between the river
and the road, where we unpacked, set everything out to dry, and contemplated the day. I felt a bit guilty about my blind challenge to the gracious Miss Eastwood but secretly felt smug, although the final tally of
species was not yet complete.
As the next morning dawned with clear skies, Wendy picked us up
right on time, and once back at our cabin, I began the final tally. Neither
Miss Eastwood nor I had likely found all the species of trees and shrubs
in Canyon Creek, but one of us had likely found more than the other.
The final scorekeeping had to be completed by one of the contestants,
and as Miss Eastwood was unavailable, I volunteered for the job. I first
adjusted Eastwood’s list (in my favor) by subtracting vine bark (Neillia)
from her list, because it is not a native plant. It is a member of the rose
family native to China and was likely introduced by Chinese miners in
the lower watershed. The contest started at the trailhead, and if this
plant were still around, I would have found it far down the valley. My
find of ninebark was a short-lived advantage, because in rechecking
Miss Eastwood’s list I found that she had indeed listed ninebark, and I
had simply overlooked it when I had put together the list of her plants.
I also had to rule out my buckwheat, because Eastwood had noted that
she purposely did not list a number of low, shrubby plants, including
buckwheat. With vine bark gone and ninebark added, the list to beat
still had sixty-six trees and shrubs, and my rival had them all. Because of
my failure to find the white heather and alpine laurel, the elimination of
buckwheat, and the wash for ninebark, my total was sixty-four. Dang!
I declared Miss Eastwood the winner. Wendy and I opened a bottle of
wine to celebrate Miss Eastwood’s narrow victory.
I didn’t really intend for my botanical contest with Alice Eastwood to
be a true contest. I sought to show that at a landscape scale, species
composition can stay remarkably stable, even over a century’s time.
This stability is less likely to hold in heavily managed landscapes or in
areas that contain aggressive alien species, but upper Canyon Creek is a
wilderness where forces of nature have been the primary elements at
work. Eastwood was described as “too big for jealousies and petty
squabbles” and would surely have turned our contest into a joint venture had we been contemporaries (Jones 1933–35, 8). She was not only
one of California’s most acclaimed botanists of her time, but of all time,
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54
My Contest with Miss Alice Eastwood
and she was a gracious and tough lady. She single-handedly saved most
important herbarium specimens at the California Academy of Sciences,
about 1,500 of them, during the Great 1906 earthquake in San Francisco. Botanists have named plant genera not only after her surname
(Eastwoodia, a shrub of the sunflower family) but also after her given
name (Aliciella, a recently revived genus with former members of Gilia
in it). She named 125 species of California plants and published more
than three hundred scientific papers, general articles, and books.
Marcus Jones, a contemporary Western botanist, remarked in 1933,
“Her work, like mine, is mostly done and the falling leaves will soon
obscure our graves, but it will be many a day before botanists cease to
venerate her magnificent work for the Academy” (Jones 1933–35, 8).
With her recent victory at Canyon Creek, her reputation remains
formidable.
The year after her victory, in early spring, I visited her memorial
grove of redwoods at Prairie Creek Redwoods State Park, now part of
the Redwood State and National parks. Most of the redwood groves in
the state parks were donated to the state of California by the Save-theRedwoods League through memorial dedications of small tracts in the
names of beneficiaries. After Alice Eastwood’s death, she had a grove
named for her through the efforts of the California Spring Blossom and
Wildflower Association and Friends. Her sandstone memorial plaque is
set back from the road behind a wooden sign noting that the Edna
Sammet and Alice Eastwood groves are a quarter mile up the road. I
saw Eastwood’s plaque only after noticing Sammet’s (“A True Lover of
Nature”): it was obscured by a small hemlock branch that had broken
off and impaled itself just behind the plaque. Eastwood’s plaque is
embossed with the words “Ageless as the Redwood Trees She Knew and
Loved,” and growing in front of it are two species of plants with a trinity of leaves: a Pacific trillium, just coming into bloom, and a small bed
of redwood sorrel, the cloverlike ground covering so familiar in the redwoods. I followed the sign to the grove, which instead led to the “Little
Creek trail.”
The trail leads up the south side of aptly named Little Creek. Sword
ferns cover the forest floor, and on one uprooted old redwood, the
ferns were so thick that they reminded me of a Fourth of July fireburst
in green. Here is the heart of big-redwood country, shared with the
occasional Sitka spruce and Douglas-fir. The lower trunks of the redwoods remain so moist throughout the year that western hemlocks can
germinate on their bark and eventually grow roots down into the soil.
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My Contest with Miss Alice Eastwood
55
Along the trail, I saw one small hemlock clinging to its host redwood as
a frightened child would cling to its mother. Birds’ spring mating season
was under way, and the creek was gurgling, the sound broken only by
the occasional low whoosh of a car passing up or down the road. I was
grateful for the silence but knew it had come at a cost. When Redwood
National Park was expanded in 1978, this road was Highway 101, full
of logging trucks, but the park legislation authorized rerouting of the
highway to the east of Prairie Creek. The new “freeway” has been a
source of periodic road-cut failures and erosion, but it passes through
young second-growth forest. The reroute measurably increased the
enjoyment of the old Highway 101 corridor, which still meanders up
Prairie Creek and its massive old-growth redwood forests.
Redwoods of all sizes were on the slopes when I was there, and the
older ones all had char on their bark. Even the wet redwood forests are
“fire forests,” with the trees having adapted to survive by their thick
bark and ability to sprout a new crown if the old one is scorched. The
trees are so tolerant of fire, as well as shade, that they persist and dominate in the presence or absence of disturbance. I looked up, and up, to
the tops of trees as high as a football field is long, to a beautiful blue sky.
The warm and clear coastal weather on this trip was as anomalous
among the redwoods as the storm in Canyon Creek had been the previous summer. Lungworts littered the trail, beautiful, large, greenishwhite lichens that favor moist canopies and fix atmospheric nitrogen
high up in the tree into forms usable by plants. As my gaze came closer
to the ground, I saw huge salals and smaller California huckleberries.
Deer ferns were scattered among the sword ferns, and redwood sorrel
framed the many “humbler” plants, as C. E. Dutton, a contemporary of
Eastwood, noted in his descriptions of the diverse understory plants he
found in the meadows above the Grand Canyon. I was never sure that I
actually stood in Alice Eastwood’s grove, because the trail seemingly
disappears at a bench honoring Frank Finley Merriam, former California
governor and realtor and relative of C. Hart Merriam. I’m sure that Alice
Eastwood would have wanted it that way, honored by an obscure grove
tucked up the slope, without the large, somewhat pompous signs of the
roadside groves. She would have always favored place above person.
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chapter 6
Copyright © 2007. University of California Press. All rights reserved.
Wild Creatures of the Klamaths
Most people are much more impressed by a creature than a plant, even
though both are beautiful and both can be dangerous. Trees have been
known to fall and land on people, and plants can be poisonous, either
to the touch or upon eating. But the former is a rare occurrence, and
poisonous plants such as poison oak can be avoided by the careful hiker.
The sighting of wildlife or fish has an emotional power far beyond that
of forest plant life, whether in a hunt for meat or for the thrill of seeing
wildlife in its native habitat. Some wildlife species can be quite dangerous; the most dangerous, the grizzly bear, has been extirpated from
California, except for its place on the state flag, but some other species,
such as the mountain lion, still pose a potential danger on any trip into
the Klamaths.
The most impressive wildlife encounter I have had was with a golden
eagle at Deer Creek. I was hiking along the Stuart Fork trail in early
morning, on a crisp and clear summer’s day in the early 1960s. I heard
the usual small bird chatter, and then suddenly a “whump-whump”
that was at first strangely faint and then frighteningly louder. I froze in
my tracks, briefly terrified of this unknown sound, but then saw gliding
toward me through the trees below the trail a huge bird, which I soon
recognized as a golden eagle. Dangling from its talons was a dead opossum with its long, ratlike tail hanging beneath it. The eagle landed on a
large Douglas-fir log about 50 feet away from me to catch its breath, its
eyes directed at me, the invader of its space, while it heaved for air.
56
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Wild Creatures of the Klamaths
57
Standing on the log, and slightly upslope from me, it appeared to be
taller than I was. I stood motionless in respect and awe. The opossum
seemed about a quarter of the bird’s size, and the eagle was clearly
having a difficult time carrying the prey upslope to its nest. It surely
would have avoided stopping at my location had it known I was there,
but it appeared to be exhausted. Several minutes later, much rested, it
raised its wings and with one beat, powerfully levitated about 3 feet
with the dead mammal and took off downslope. When it cleared the
trees, it circled back upslope in a large spiral pattern and disappeared,
leaving me with an indelible memory. That moment captured the
essence of wilderness for me, however ephemeral it was.
Birds of prey, as is the case with most predators, tend to be charismatic, but when they prey at night, their charisma is less dramatic. One
of these less dramatic birds is the northern spotted owl, our only large
owl in the Klamaths with dark eyes. Like other owls, it is nocturnal,
preying on small mammals across its range of about 25 million acres
from northern Washington state south to San Francisco. This owl is of
the “heavy forest,” as my early 1960s Peterson bird guidebook describes
it. In the Cascades of Washington, it feeds primarily on northern flying
squirrels, whereas in the Klamaths, it favors the dusky-footed wood rat,
which provides about 70 percent of its diet by weight. This difference in
prey appears to have a major influence on the types of forest patterns
most suitable for owl nesting, roosting, and foraging. In the Klamaths,
as elsewhere, the spotted owl nests in older forests, often in old hawk
nests or mistletoe brooms, but it forages heavily in other types of vegetation cover where the wood rat is plentiful. So a mix of older conifer
forest and other vegetation appears to be the “best” owl habitat in the
Klamaths, in contrast to larger expanses of older conifer forest farther
north, where flying squirrels are the major prey species. Spotted owls’
requirement for old forest, for nesting, foraging, or both, caused its
population to decline during the liquidation of the old growth in the
Pacific Northwest between 1960 and 1990. When its decline was documented in the mid-1980s, plans for recovery began a revolution in
forest management that culminated in the adoption of the Northwest
Forest Plan in the mid-1990s covering 25 million acres of public lands
in Washington, Oregon, and Northern California. This plan will continue to affect the Klamath region’s public forestlands (I discuss its
design later). The current status of the spotted owl is not promising.
Although logging on public lands has almost ceased to be a problem,
loss of habitat from forest fires in the drier portions of the owl’s range is
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Wild Creatures of the Klamaths
now the largest source of habitat loss. The spotted owl is also suffering
from competition with the barred owl, another large but more aggressive owl that has expanded its range west and south over the past several
decades. In Washington, barred owls are displacing spotted owls even in
the undisturbed old growth of Olympic National Park; the degree to
which they may do the same in the Klamaths is still being evaluated.
Osprey swoop up the streams regularly and grab fish, particularly if
they have seen the Fish and Game planting truck nearby. Another good
fisher is the great blue heron, a seemingly awkward bird that is really
quite graceful. I had a wonderful encounter with a great blue heron on
the Stuart Fork. Fishing at sunset, and sitting on granite boulders in the
middle of gentle, white, splashing rapids, I was unsuccessfully trying to
thread a monofilament leader into the eye of a tiny, hand-tied fly. As I
readied to leave, a heron flapped its way upstream toward me on a lateday fishing trip. I stayed perfectly still, expecting it to fly over my head.
But as it neared me, it slowed, turned, and landed on the boulder immediately next to the one I was sitting on. With its back to me, it preened
for about a minute and then lazily looked upstream directly into my
eye. It did a grand double take, worthy of Daffy Duck, and leapt into
the air. With a loud squawk and a quick embarrassed glance back, it
flew back downstream, passing a few bats beginning to feed on the
insect life above the stream.
Bats are the only true flying mammals, and they are nature’s bug zappers, at least here in the Klamaths. More than seven hundred bat species
exist worldwide, thirty-five of which are in the western United States,
with fourteen species in the Klamath Mountains. In the tropics, many
bats are fruit eaters, and are quite large, but most temperate forest bats
are small and insectivorous. One evening as I sat outside a cabin at
Enright Gulch at the head of Trinity Lake, I saw the bats flitting by in
the night snatch many more insects than did the electronic bug zapper
humming nearby. A single bat can consume 3,000 insects in a night! As
I sat outside my cabin, every fifteen seconds a bat swept through the
area and consumed another insect near me. Until recently, we knew
little about bats: where they live and how best to manage their habitat.
They are long-lived, often surpassing twenty-five years of age, an incredible feat for such a small mammal. In contrast, a two-year-old mouse is
a real veteran of its species. We are learning more about where bats
roost and about how bats locate prey.
About 70 percent of all bat species use echolocation, and all of the
bats in the Klamath region echolocate. They send out ultrasonic waves
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Wild Creatures of the Klamaths
59
that reflect off still or moving objects, and their receipt of the reflected
waves (the echo) allows them to maneuver through the forest and to fix
on prey. The spotted bat, which is not found as far south as California,
has a call within the range of human hearing. But most northwestern
bats emit waves at 60 to 200 kilohertz (kHz: a thousand cycles per
second), well above our hearing range of 20 kHz. As a bat detects a
flying prey, it increases its emission frequency, essentially homing in on
the prey. This frequency is known as a feeding buzz. Scientists have
developed electronic bat detectors, small handheld machines that record
bat calls and electronically translate them to the range of human hearing. The detector alters the frequency by a division factor, such as 8,
which will take a call at 80 kHz, translate it to 10 kHz, and amplify it as
a “call” audible to humans. As a result, every time a bat flies by the
detector, the device emits a small squawk. When detectors are hooked to
a tape recorder, the calls are recorded in this translated, audible range.
Because individual species or species groups of bats produce different
patterns, this approach allows scientists to record indices of activity by
group. Using computer software, researchers can then graph the patterns
of each call. Some species have unique patterns, whereas others, like the
myotis group of about six species, have very similar calls. Bat detectors
have greatly expanded the amount of information available about bat
activity in different kinds of forests, shrublands, and streamside areas.
Bats feed where insects are plentiful. Creeks and streams provide
good feeding places for bats and also serve as travel corridors through
the forest. One evening just at dusk, I took a bat detector down to the
bridge that crosses the Stuart Fork and turned it on. Its range of detection is about 50 feet. In just several minutes, I listened to hundreds of
calls, each one lasting a second or two and sounding like “z . . . z . . .
z..z..z..zzzt”! Whereas streamside areas are favored feeding sites,
large upslope trees appear to be favored roost sites. The bats wiggle
under loose bark and go into torpor (low metabolism) for the day, and
they typically prefer trees in drier and warmer locations, such as
ridgetops. Healthy bat populations require attention to both feeding
and roost habitat. We still know little about how bats gather for
mating. They can congregate for short periods in largely unknown
places we call hibernacula, where mating occurs. The females of some
species store sperm for later fertilization of the egg, so that they do not
need the males around when conditions are best for pregnancy. In
some areas, we find only males during certain seasons. Breeding sites
and habitat requirements are largely unknown for most forest bats.
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Wild Creatures of the Klamaths
Some of the largest black bears (to 600 pounds) have shown up in
the Klamath Mountains. Most bears are much smaller, with females
weighing 100 to 200 lbs and males weighing 150 to 350 lbs. As a
youngster, I saw a huge dead black bear that had been shot while raiding trash cans. It filled the entire bed of a full-size, late-1940s pickup
truck. I’ve seen others on Highway 96 that could have been mistaken
for a Bigfoot as they stood on hind legs and pawed the air. Black-bear
populations appear to be on the rise, numbering some 10,000
statewide in the early 1980s and about 30,000 in 2000. About onethird of the annual statewide harvest of bears occurs in Shasta,
Siskiyou, and Trinity counties, and if harvest is proportional to population, about 10,000 bears live in this area. Excluding the major
human population centers, one could likely count more bears than
people in the Klamath Mountains. Most bears run from human contact unless cornered or with cubs, so they pose a minor threat compared to mountain lions. Still, seeing one along a trail gets the
adrenaline pumping!
Historically, wildlife management has focused primarily on game
species, the charismatic megafauna of the region: deer, bear, mountain
lion, or even the smaller carnivores such as fisher, pine marten, mink,
and wolverine. Some are doing well, some are species of concern, and
a couple—the grizzly bear and the gray wolf—have disappeared from
the region. The last recorded grizzly bear in the Klamath Mountains
was a 600-pound specimen shot by Uncle Tom McDonald on Swift
Creek in 1910. Scientists are not sure when the gray wolf disappeared.
Recovery plans for both species do not include sites in California, so
any ecosystem restoration in the state will be shy two of its topline carnivores. The small carnivores such as fisher, wolverine, and pine
marten are rare, but whether their populations are at risk for extirpation is unclear.
The mountain lion (also called cougar or panther) is still common
and is a major predator of deer. A mountain lion can eat a deer a week,
plus larger numbers of fawns. In the wildland-urban interface, mountain lions also prey on dogs, cats, and small farm animals. Recently,
their predation on humans has increased, although not to date in the
Klamaths. In 1994, two women were killed, and in 2004, one man was
killed and a woman was mauled in Southern California. The number of
mountain lions has increased tenfold since the early 1970s when then
governor Reagan announced a moratorium on recreational hunting. In
1990, Proposition 117 declared the mountain lion a “specially protected
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Wild Creatures of the Klamaths
61
mammal” in California. Mountain lions are still killed by wildlife
officers (roughly eighty-five per year) and through special depredation
permits (roughly one hundred per year) in areas where cougars are
killing livestock.
Snakes, especially rattlesnakes, seem to produce memorable encounters. As a Boy Scout camping near Yosemite, I had an unusual encounter
when I was fishing along a stream and stopped at a slate outcrop to
change my fly. The outcrop was shoulder high, and as I stood there
working on the fly, my head leaned back onto a western rattlesnake,
which had been sunning itself next to a smaller rock on the ledge. The
snake immediately began to rattle, and although I had never heard a
rattlesnake before, instinctively I knew the sound. I stupidly turned
around, saw the snake’s heat-sensing tongue directly between my eyes,
and luckily launched myself backward into the stream before it struck.
After that day, I knew that rattlesnakes, although dangerous, were not
exceptionally aggressive and would give a person a chance to leave, or
would try to leave, rather than initiate an encounter. They are generally
much less dangerous than their reputation suggests, as several Trinity
stories attest.
The first story involves the Baron de La Grange, French owner of the
La Grange hydraulic gold mine in the late 1800s. While the baron
leaned against a rock ledge during a deer-hunting trip, a rattler crawled
out from under a rock on the ledge and onto his shoulder and looked
him in the eye. This encounter was surprisingly similar to mine, except
that I didn’t hang around, and the steely baron did. According to the
Baroness de La Grange, man and snake remained motionless, except for
the darting tongue of the reptile. The snake eventually moved to the
baron’s other shoulder, then back on the ledge and under its rock. Once
the baron recovered from a cold sweat, he dislodged the rock and finished off the rattlesnake with the butt of his rifle, the only trophy he
bagged that day.
When I was fifteen, I rode with my dad by horse to Morris Meadows
to do a little trout fishing. Unlike the narrow gorges of the Stuart Fork
downstream, at the meadow, the stream sinuously flows through the
forest, and grass grows to the water’s edge. This gorgeous meadow was
once a glacial lake, gradually assuming its current form as sediment
filled the area behind the old moraine that serves as a dam. Dad somehow picked up a small rattlesnake on his boot as he shuffled through
the grass to the stream, and when I approached from downstream, he
was sitting on a 4-foot soil bank dangling his feet over the edge, and the
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Wild Creatures of the Klamaths
snake was perfectly balanced, hanging over the toe of his right boot.
The snake was about a foot long, but quite distinctive from where I
stood, with its triangular head and button of a rattle. Even small rattlers
can pose quite a problem if they bite, and this one could have easily
slithered up his pant leg. He was not aware that he had a poisonous
snake on his foot, so I shouted that there was an emergency and that he
needed to do exactly as I said. As I instructed him to kick his right leg,
he responded vigorously, and the snake went sailing into the stream and
swam off.
If Dad had had the mysterious powers of G. A. Wirzen, he might not
have needed to kick so hard. In 1855, the Swede found an enormous
rattlesnake up Rush Creek and started whistling at it. The snake raised
its head, then collapsed and rolled over as the whistling continued.
Wirzen picked up the reptile and carried it home, and soon he and his
trained snake had their debut in Weaverville. The act traveled as far as
San Francisco, and Wirzen supposedly made a fortune. Although
Wirzen had once been bitten by a rattler, his trained snake remained
under his “mysterious power which he really possesses,” according to
Isaac Cox (21). Wirzen was more comfortable than Wilber Dodge of
Trinity Center, who constructed a flowing moat around his cabin to
keep rattlesnakes out. Unknown to Wilber as he relaxed inside his moat
was that rattlesnakes swim easily.
Other snakes in the Klamath region are less frightening than the rattlesnake. The California mountain kingsnake is an amazingly colorful
serpent of black, white, and red rings. I’ve seen only one in the Klamaths,
as I was hiking along a trail, and it stood out dramatically in this world
of muted browns and greens. This kingsnake superficially resembles a
poisonous Arizona coral snake, native to the southwestern United
States, but it has bands of red bordered by black, whereas the coral
snakes have red bands bordered by yellow or white. It was rather uninterested in me, and I suspect its bright markings tend to deter most
predators. It has a reputation of eating rattlesnakes, which it does, but
also takes a wide variety of other reptiles, amphibians, and small
mammals.
The western aquatic garter snake is a common sight along streams
and can often be seen serpentining its way across a pool. Its habit of
sunning itself on rocks makes it rather vulnerable to hawks and other
avian predators. The garter snake can be aggressive, chasing bathers
at times. I saw an especially ambitious but undersized garter snake snag
a nonnative bullfrog by its butt along the shores of Trinity Lake and
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63
then hang on as the frog jumped to and fro, trying to shake the reptile.
The snake struggled to get a better grip, but it had no chance of swallowing the large frog. The battle went on for about half an hour, at which
time the snake let go and the frog hopped off with a bloodied rear.
The rubber boa is one of the region’s prettiest and most docile snakes.
The two ends of the snake look about the same. I bumped into one of
record size in a Trinity meadow on a warm evening in the late 1950s. As
I crawled around with my face to the ground collecting grasshoppers to
use as fishing bait, I encountered a 3-foot-long boa, twice as large as any
I had ever seen and a good 6 inches longer than the longest noted in field
guides: it must have been a hunting record worthy of the Boone and
Crockett Club. It was out looking for a vole for dinner. We were shocked
to see each other, and we both recoiled from the encounter. Immediately,
I decided to catch the snake to observe it more closely, as I could not
believe the size of this boa. I jumped up and chased the snake, but the
grass was too tall for me to see the snake clearly, and I had to chase the
waving seed heads of the grass as the boa slithered through. Just as I
would track it to the left, it would turn right, and I dove in vain at least
twice to try to get a hand on it. I was surprised at its speed and sense of
direction, as it finally eluded me in an old, hollowed-out oak stump. I
would have had to tear the stump apart, which was likely its home, to
capture it and probably would have hurt the snake in the process. I ceded
victory and returned to my grasshopper quest.
Western pond turtles appear to have disappeared from the most
northerly part of their range but still are common in the Klamaths. Their
habitat requirements are more flexible than those of other aquatic turtles. The changes in the Trinity River below Trinity Dam have reduced
their habitat somewhat by producing greater sedimentation, lower
water temperatures, and higher water velocity than they experience in
the undammed South Fork Trinity River. The dam appears to have
homogenized the habitat, lessening the presence of deep, slow-flowing
pools with underwater cover. On a trip home from Trinity one year, I
rescued a western pond turtle near Carrville on Highway 3. As my wife
and I drove north, a speck in the road became a “rock” that I recognized as a turtle as our car passed directly over it. We pulled over, and I
got out, picked up the turtle, and moved it off the road to a more suitable basking place.
The most common frog of the region is the foothill yellow-legged
frog, but it is less common than it was fifty years ago. I remember times
in the 1950s at Trinity Alps Resort when every third rock in the river
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Wild Creatures of the Klamaths
had a yellow-legged frog on it, and I could count twenty to thirty of the
frogs as I looked up the river. I seldom see one now. The floods of 1955
and 1964 scoured much of the frogs’ habitat, reducing bankside cover,
and the populations have never recovered. They may also be victims of
the mysterious worldwide amphibian decline. Red-legged frogs appear
to have replaced the yellow-legged ones, albeit in much smaller numbers, in the Stuart Fork and Canyon Creek. Yellow-legged frogs have
also declined below Trinity Dam. The more uniform deepening of the
channel and an increase in stable riparian vegetation on river bars have
reduced habitat. High-flow releases from the dam during summer have
destroyed egg masses, and the cold temperature of the water delays
larval development. The artificial stability of the river channel has
encouraged nonnative bullfrogs, suspected predators of yellow-legged
frogs. The success of pond-breeding bullfrogs in the main stem of the
Trinity is testament to the pondlike nature of recent river currents.
During the 1990s, the number of egg masses of yellow-legged frogs on
the dammed main-stem Trinity averaged one or two per mile in contrast
to the sixty to eighty per mile on the undammed South Fork Trinity.
A frog with no voice would seem a very sad animal, but such is the
tailed frog. This frog of ancient lineage, with relatives only in New
Zealand, is a small, wrinkled, rough-skinned amphibian, the male of
which has an external copulatory organ—thus, the “tailed” frog. Unfortunately for the female, she is also known as the tailed frog, although
she has no tail. The tailed frog occupies very cold and fast streams,
which are usually small headwater streams. The “tail” is used for internal fertilization of the eggs, because the sperm would simply wash away
if it were externally applied near the eggs. Tadpoles often take two years
to metamorphose into adults, meanwhile using a strong, suckerlike
mouth to attach themselves to rocks from which they can glean algae
without washing away in the current.
The Klamath Mountains have an impressive diversity of salamanders,
creatures that are frequent subjects of fact and fiction. Depending on
how tightly one defines the region, it may have as many as fifteen species,
but salamanders are never as noisy or obvious as the frogs. The roughskinned newt is often the most visible because of the bright orange coloring on its belly, and it is also the most poisonous of the salamanders.
One often sees newts in the spring in large, copulating masses, with ten
or more clasping each other in large balls. Later, one can see them on
the bottoms of ponds or slow streams. Some other salamanders, like the
northwestern salamander, also breed in ponds, whereas other, more
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Wild Creatures of the Klamaths
65
streamlined species, like the southern torrent salamander, breed in
streams. Yet others are fully terrestrial species, such as the lungless
plethodontids that breathe through their skin: the ensatina and the
clouded and black salamanders. They lay their eggs in moist logs and
protect them while they develop. The terrestrial salamanders burrow
into the ground and remain dormant during the dry summer but are
quite active in late fall and spring.
Likely because of the ancient age of their geology, the Klamaths have
supported salamander populations for tens of millions of years, and
the rugged topography has served to isolate populations and allow
separate species to evolve. Until 2005, the Klamaths had two endemic
species: the Del Norte salamander and the Siskiyou Mountain salamander. Both are lungless plethodontids that are closely related to one
another, and they occur nowhere else in the world. Both are small
(2.5 to 3 inches total length) and are active only during the wet period
of the year, retreating beneath rocks in the summer. Because they are
small and look somewhat alike, with the Del Norte salamander being a
bit darker, identifying one to species is difficult. But in 1996, Forest
Service biologists Dave Clayton and Sam Cuenca found an unusual
salamander that didn’t fit the typical description of either known
endemic species near the confluence of the Scott and Klamath rivers,
near the historic boundary between the ranges of the Siskiyou Mountain and Del Norte salamander species. This salamander was a bit
stouter than the other two, with a wider head and longer legs. Subsequent
genetic analysis led to the declaration of a new species in 2005: the Scott
Bar salamander, Plethodon asupak, in which the species name is the
Indian name for the Scott Bar area. Not since David Rains Wallace’s fictional book, The Turquoise Dragon, in 1985 had a new salamander
species been proclaimed in the Klamath Mountains, but in this case, fact
followed fiction. Of course, the species was not entirely undiscovered; in
this case, good biologists sensed that slight morphological differences had
genetic origins, and subsequent genetic analysis bore out their suspicions.
Why would such a diversity of salamanders appear here? And have
we discovered all the species yet? Answers are not firm, but the ancient
age of the terranes and a generally mild climate, at least in some refugia,
probably account for the persistence of salamanders over millions of
years and for their ability to evolve into separate species. It would not
be surprising to find other new salamander species in the future, and I
would look in the older terranes and at low elevations that have not
undergone glaciation.
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Wild Creatures of the Klamaths
The most imposing physical specimen is the Pacific giant salamander,
a foot-long beast that can actually growl and eat snakes, mice, and
shrews, instead of the usual terrestrial salamander diet of springtails,
slugs, and beetles. It is the largest terrestrial salamander in the world. It
sometimes exhibits neoteny, remaining in aquatic larval form as an adult
and reproducing without metamorphosing into adult form. The related
Cope’s giant salamander in coastal Washington is almost always
neotenic. The advantage of neoteny is not clear, but why leave the house
if one doesn’t have to?
Some of my best memories of the Trinities are fishing stories. I started
fishing the Stuart Fork in the early 1950s, when the stream was full of
big fish. One could rent a horse and head up trail to places that were
rarely fished, returning with a large string of big trout. Keepers started
at about 10 inches, and 16 inchers were not uncommon. Most of these
larger fish were native rainbow trout, with their splashy sidebar of violet
to red, but occasionally one would catch a “German brown,” a nonnative and quite elusive species with speckles of black and red on its back.
Why it was “German” is puzzling, because the strain in California up to
the mid-1950s was from Scotland, and today the fish is known simply
as the brown trout. These “brownies” grow to large size and live in the
deeper, cooler pools. The limit back then was probably twenty fish per
person, and as the area became more popular, even with more restrictive take limits, the fishery declined. The floods of 1955 and 1964 significantly widened the channel in places and removed streamside cover,
including food sources for the invertebrates that the fish ate. I’m sure
that big natives still hang out in some streams, but these days, I mostly
fish with barbless dry flies and release the little rainbows I catch. The
thrill is to read the stream to predict where the fish are and then to lay
a fly with a natural drift and watch the water roil when the fish strikes.
My favorite late-season fly is a small “muddler minnow” made of deer
hair, which is supposed to be fished under water (“wet”) and to simulate a minnow. But I fish it “dry,” and it must bear a close resemblance
to a grasshopper because it is a successful fish catcher. Native rainbows’
genetic stock has been altered by hatchery-planted rainbows, but the
species is not threatened in the region. Probably the biggest effect in the
past half century has been a change to a much younger rainbow population. This pattern won’t change without restrictive regulation of the
take of large fish.
Most of the lakes in the Trinity Alps have historically been “barren.”
To a fishing enthusiast, this designation has meant that the lakes are
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Wild Creatures of the Klamaths
67
fishless, but they were far from barren. Invertebrates, reptiles, and amphibians lived in the lakes, and they have suffered from the introduction of
trout. Trout-planting efforts first used pack stock to carry in buckets of
fish and later relied on airdrops. Rainbow trout are common, but eastern brook trout are even more common in these lakes, because they
breed more successfully in high-elevation lakes without permanent tributary streams. The “brookies” are easily identified by the wavy, wormlike dark patterns on their backs, and they normally don’t get very
large.
In addition to the resident fish, migratory fish swim, or once swam,
in the rivers of the Klamaths. Most of the anadromous species, those
that spend part of their lives in freshwater and part in salt water, have
suffered major declines since the mid-twentieth century due to a variety
of causes: dams, pollution, overfishing, and damage from logging. The
effect has been more significant for some species than for others. The
plights of steelhead and salmon receive the most attention, but other
species are involved, too. Before the Trinity Dam blocked the main stem
of the Trinity River above Lewiston, all these species occurred in the
upper Trinity River. I can remember seeing the Pacific lamprey, a long,
snakelike creature, hanging out in the Stuart Fork. The lamprey has a
strong suckerlike mouth that helps it rest on its trip upstream and that
it uses to move rocks to create a suitable spawning nest. After spawning, adult lampreys die, and the young burrow into soft sediments and
stay as small juveniles for four to six years, filtering out microscopic
plants and animals. Metamorphosed adults emerge as 5-inch-long lamprey that migrate to the ocean, returning in two to three years as 15- to
30-inch-long bluish-gray adults. Iron Gate Dam on the Klamath and
Trinity Dam on the Trinity stopped the lampreys’ migrations, so the fish
are no longer present above the dams. Though they are not an endangered species, their numbers are likely far below historical populations.
Three species of salmonids have historically spawned in the Klamath
and Trinity River systems: Chinook (king) salmon, coho (silver)
salmon, and steelhead, which are essentially seagoing rainbow trout
(see table 1 and figure 11). Of the three species, the Chinooks have had
the largest runs and have spawned in the larger, deeper portions of the
region’s streams. The egg nests, or redds, are in coarser gravel than that
used by coho or steelhead. Spring Chinook return in spring and summer.
They wait until fall to spawn. Fall Chinook begin returning in late
summer and breed slightly later than the spring Chinook do. The coho is
a smaller salmon that returns with the fall Chinook, but it spawns in
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table 1. life histories of the three major salmonids
Migration
Spawning
Egg
Incubation
Emergence
of Fry
Rearing of
Juveniles
Smolt
Migration
Chinook
(spring-run)
April–
September
August–
November
August–
December
November–
April
May–
February
March–
September
Chinook (fall)
August–
December
October–
December
October–
December
January–
April
May–
February
March–
September
Coho
September–
December
November–
February
January–
March
February–
May
May–
February
February–
June
Steelhead
(summer)
May–
August
February–
May
February–
June
March–
July
July–
age two
March–
July
Steelhead (fall)
August–
November
February–
May
February–
June
March–
July
July–
age two
March–
July
Steelhead
(winter)
November–
April
February–
May
February–
June
March–
July
July–
age two
March–
July
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Wild Creatures of the Klamaths
69
Figure 11. The life cycle of Pacific salmon, representing the migration between
freshwater and salt water. (Illustrator: Jack DeLap.)
shallower water with lower stream velocity and smaller gravel. Both
species die after spawning and likely provide substantial protein to
wildlife scavenging at the water’s edge. Bears, raccoons, eagles, and
even mice use the carcasses, which were once thought to simply wash
back downstream to sea. Studies in the Pacific Northwest have found
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70
Wild Creatures of the Klamaths
nitrogen that derives from marine sources (salmon carcasses) in streamside trees, which then grow faster and provide larger woody debris to
small streams: a complex web indeed. Steelhead spend more time than
salmon in freshwater as juveniles and might spend as long as five years at
sea before returning. They can return almost any time of year and have
runs defined as fall, winter, and summer (table 1). They spawn in small to
medium-size gravel, but unlike salmon, they can then return to the ocean,
demonstrating an anadromous fish version of the fountain of youth.
The placement of Trinity Dam on the Trinity and Iron Gate Dam on
the Klamath has eliminated runs of anadromous fish above the dams.
Changes in channels below the dams have also decreased spawning habitat for these fish. The original plans for the Klamath and Trinity rivers
would have eliminated anadromous fish habitat on both rivers. The
California Water Plan, a 1950s creation, noted a need for “the development of a new environment for the anadromous fish now using those
streams. It is planned that conditions will be improved on other smaller
coastal streams through construction of stream flow maintenance dams
and other measures. It is expected that this will result in an increased
anadromous fish population in these streams, thereby compensating, to
some extent, for the loss of the famed Klamath system runs” (172).
Though the California Water Plan was never fully implemented, 90
percent of the anadromous fish runs were destroyed with only one dam
on the Trinity River and a series of dams that begin with the Iron Gate
more than a hundred miles up the Klamath River. The coho salmon suffered the greatest loss, and the species is now listed as “threatened” under
the Endangered Species Act. Recovery is under way and appears to be
making more progress on the Trinity than on the Klamath. Plans call for
restoring flow to the main-stem Trinity, where up to 90 percent of the
inflow to Trinity Reservoir was diverted to the Sacramento drainage for
transport south during the early years of the dam, and for restoring the
river below the dam through removal of riparian vegetation, bar reshaping, and increased high flows to restore more natural spawning gravels.
Fish and wildlife have a much different role in resources management
than they did decades ago. Early resource-management programs paid
little attention to the effects of management on wildlife populations,
and as a result, a number of species became threatened or endangered,
either through overharvest or loss of habitat. New legislation and regulations have slowed and in some cases reversed population declines, and
fish and wildlife are now primary considerations in natural-resources
management on both public and private lands.
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chapter 7
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Change Is the Only Constant
As I sit on a small bluff overlooking the Stuart Fork in late summer, I am
impressed most by the serenity of the place. Perhaps I am just reacting
to the contrast with the pace of the city, but the sounds of the forest are
part of the place, not noise at all. Nuthatches occasionally let out their
unmistakable “yank yank,” while western fence lizards and dark-eyed
juncos rustle among the leaves of the canyon live oaks. The closest thing
to noise is the scolding of a Steller’s jay and the squawk of a raven. Old
Douglas-firs stand with ponderosa pines and incense-cedar as sentinels
on the slopes, offering testament to the serenity of the landscape. But
this seeming stability belies the reality that this forest was created by
disturbances like forest fires and that it has been maintained until
recently by fires. Any sustainable future for Klamath forests must incorporate change, the hallmark of dynamic ecosystems—indeed the hallmark of all ecosystems.
Earlier, I discussed the concept of potential vegetation as a means of
predicting change in the absence of disturbance. But where do we see
real examples of potential vegetation, where the slow process of succession has finally allowed the most shade-tolerant species to replace those
that must begin in sunlight? In the Klamath Mountains, potential vegetation is just that: a potential that is rarely, if ever, realized. The area
almost always has a suite of shade-intolerant, or pioneer, species present,
which are often still dominant, because of the ubiquity of forest disturbances and the longevity (300 to 1,000 years) of the dominant species.
71
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72
Change Is the Only Constant
“Forest disturbance” is an imprecise phrase. We usually try to define
“disturbance” as a discrete event that has an effect on the forest’s species
composition, its structure (either horizontal or vertical), or its function:
how it cycles nutrients or provides wildlife habitat. However, this definition is somewhat arbitrary. When does a breeze, or a winter storm
wind, cease being a normal part of ecosystem rhythm and become a disturbance? Wind is usually considered a disturbance when it breaks or
blows over a substantial number of stems in the forest, but not when it
follows its usual diurnal pattern. How discrete must an event be to qualify as a disturbance? Fire is usually quite discrete, but tree mortality
from insects often occurs over several years.
In the 1980s, ecologists Steward Pickett and Peter White edited a
book on natural disturbance in which they listed more than twenty-five
general types of disturbances, some of which were physical, like ice
storms, and some of which were biotic, like insects. They didn’t separately list the defoliating insects, the bark beetles, or the multiple species
of each disturbance guild. They also suggested ways to characterize
disturbance: by type, frequency, magnitude, season, and synergistic
effects. These categories fit some disturbances, like fire, better than
others, like insect epidemics. Frequency is the return interval of the disturbance: how many times it occurs in a given period. Even very long
disturbance intervals are important in conifer forests, because the trees
can live for many centuries. Magnitude describes the intensity of the
event: flame length for forest fires, wind speed for windstorms, and flow
rate or flood height for water. Season of disturbance may also affect
recovery. Fires in the spring are often more damaging than those in the
fall because vegetation is more vulnerable: buds are not hardened, and
root reserves of food are low after bud break. New stream terraces created by flooding in winter are good for redwoods because their cones
open in winter, spreading seed on bare soils with few seedling pathogens.
Such new, bare soil is still moist in spring, providing good germination
sites for alder and cottonwood. Finally, some disturbances set the stage
for other disturbances to occur, feeding off each other in synergistic fashion. Fires can damage trees and make them susceptible to insect attack,
and conversely, tree mortality from insects creates fuel for potential fires.
When a disturbance occurs, its effect depends partly on its magnitude, but it also depends on what adaptations the vegetation has, either
for individual species to persist, or, if the disturbance kills them, to
recover by vegetative (sprouting) or seed reproduction. Some species
have thick bark: redwood, Douglas-fir, and ponderosa and Jeffrey pines.
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Change Is the Only Constant
73
Others have moderately thick bark: sugar pine, incense cedar, and Port
Orford cedar. These features are excellent adaptations to surface fires.
The knobcone pine has serotinous cones, which stay closed for decades
with viable seed in the tree canopy until a hot fire comes along to melt
the resin around the cones and open them. Postfire sprouting from the
crown or base is another adaptation to hot fires that kill the foliage in
the crown. Almost all the hardwoods possess this sprouting ability.
Adventitious buds, such as those of willow and cottonwood, allow
stems and branches buried by floods to resprout and colonize bare
stream terraces in which they have just been deposited. Redwoods can
also develop a new root platform in place if the old one has been
buried by sediment. The old roots grow up into the new deposits, and a
new root system sprouts from the buried portion of the stem. Each of
these adaptations tends to favor the individual species, either by selectively killing other species or by providing a reproductive advantage
that allows the species to preferentially colonize a site after it has been
disturbed.
In this chapter, I emphasize the two disturbances that are the most
important and widespread occurrences in the Klamaths: fire and water.
Though we usually don’t think of the two as being compatible, they
coexist here because they occur in different seasons. Fire is confined to
the dry season, and water, primarily to the wet season (but summer
thunderstorms can occasionally create severe erosion). Both have had
tremendous effects on the region in the past, and both will do so in the
future, regardless of dams or efforts at fire suppression.
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fire
We call fire-prone areas “fire environments” because they have environmental conditions that foster the occurrence and spread of fire. The
Klamath Mountains are a classic fire environment. A prolonged summer
dry season reduces the moisture content of dead fuels as well as that of
live vegetation. Thus, ignition is easier, so less energy is necessary to
vaporize the remaining moisture from burning fuels, so more is available to preheat the next leaf or twig, helping to spread the fire faster.
Substantial fires can occur beginning in May and extend into November.
Historical fires that began early in the period had the opportunity to
burn all summer and often did. When C. Hart Merriam was working on
Mount Shasta at the turn of the twentieth century, he remarked, “Of the
hundreds of persons who visit the Pacific slope in California every
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74
Change Is the Only Constant
summer to see the mountains, few see more than the immediate foreground and a haze of smoke which even the strongest glass is unable to
penetrate” (Morford 1984, 9).
Native Americans used fire as their main resource-management tool.
As people of the rivers, they often burned off the valley bottoms, and
many of their fires burned up into the higher country. Lightning was
another source of fire, increasing from the coast inland and from low to
high elevation. Lightning in the Klamaths has a 33 percent chance of
striking any square mile in a year. The lightning-fire history in the centrally located Salmon River drainage (see figure 12) is a startling example of the role that fire must have played in historical forest dynamics.
Dry lightning storms, with little associated precipitation, have the highest chance of starting fires, but the wet lightning storms often pack the
most lightning. This double whammy of lightning on ridges and native
ignitions in the valleys, in an extended summer-dry area, has almost
ensured a substantial presence of fire every year.
Variability in local climate, different species adaptations to fire, rugged
topography, and short-term weather patterns have all contributed to an
extremely complex mosaic of fire histories and effects in the Klamath
Mountains. Coastal and high-elevation areas are the wettest, and
annual precipitation generally declines inland, although a “bulge” of
higher precipitation occurs in the eastern Klamaths (figure 3). Most
forests in the Klamaths have one or more species with moderate to thick
bark, so historical fires seldom have killed all the forest over the entire
area of the burn. Topography plays a key role in fire behavior. South
aspects and steep slopes are drier, and often support hotter fires, than
north-facing or gentle slopes do. Finally, weather systems may dampen
or accelerate fire behavior.
Three types of weather systems in the Klamaths create critical fire
weather: postfrontal, prefrontal, and subtropical high systems. Postfrontal
conditions include strong north and northeast winds following the passage of a cold front. The 1999 Megram fire in the New River area had
its big runs during such conditions. Prefrontal conditions exist when
strong southwesterly or westerly winds follow the tail of a cold front.
The 2001 Oregon Mountain fire that invaded Weaverville was such an
event. The fire started just west of Oregon Mountain summit on Highway 299 and quickly blew east toward town. It was stopped just at the
west edge of Weaverville but burned several homes and left a large landscape scar that will be visible for decades. Subtropical high conditions
exist when air aloft sinks and warms adiabatically (due to increased
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Change Is the Only Constant
75
Figure 12. Fires started by lightning in the Salmon River drainage over a
seventy-year period. (Illustration courtesy of the Salmon River Restoration
Council. Illustrator: Cathy Schwartz.)
atmospheric pressure nearer the earth’s surface), causing warmer, drier
air at the surface. Strong inversions accompany these conditions and
may reduce fire behavior below the inversion. The 1987 Hayfork fires
are good examples of this phenomenon. Of course, other weather patterns of less-than-critical fire weather have also occurred in the region,
adding to the myriad fire weather conditions in which historical fires
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76
Change Is the Only Constant
have burned. In addition, fires burn differently in the day than they do
at night, further expanding the mix of fire effects that are possible in the
Klamaths.
To organize this complexity, fire ecologists have developed simple
classification systems, or fire regimes, to describe the fires that have
occurred in the Klamath region. These fire regimes were the patterns
that maintained the biodiversity of the region over past centuries. The
most commonly used category has three levels: low severity, mixed
severity, and high severity. The low-severity fire regime includes fires
that have been frequent (usually less than twenty-five years apart) and
usually of low intensity, creating so-called underburns that killed few
large trees. The high-severity fire regime includes fires that have been
infrequent (with return intervals of more than one hundred years) but
have often been of high intensity, killing all of the trees in their path.
The mixed-severity fire regime has been marked by a complex mix of
underburned forest with little overstory tree mortality, stands that are
significantly thinned but have significant remaining tree cover and
stands that have been completely top-killed by the fire. Return intervals
for mixed-severity fire regimes have been twenty-five to seventy-five
years in most areas of the West but have been a bit shorter in the Klamath
Mountains. Patterns in historical fire regimes have changed significantly,
with a reduction in low-severity fire and an increase in high-severity fire,
due to a multitude of factors. In the Klamath Mountains, these changes
have not been quite as significant as in the drier ponderosa pine forests
of the Intermountain West.
Sometimes large regions have similar historical fire regimes. In
Canada and Alaska, boreal forests of these areas’ higher latitudes had
and still have a high-severity fire regime over millions of square miles,
and so does the Yellowstone region, illustrated by the massively scaled,
intense fires of 1988. Most western forests show much more diversity.
The eastern Cascades of Washington, for example, had a gradient from
low-, through mixed-, to high-severity fire regime as the terrain shifted
from lower-elevation pine forests to true fir and hemlock forests at the
crest. The Sierra Nevada had a low-severity fire regime in the pine
forests that transformed into mixed-severity fire regimes in red fir forests
nearer the crest. In contrast, the Klamaths contain that same diversity
on the local slopes of individual mountains.
One of the ecological principles of fire is that it thins the forest from
below. Fire first kills the smallest trees with the thinnest bark and lowest
crowns, and as it intensifies, it takes larger trees. At one extreme, in a
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Change Is the Only Constant
77
table 2. bark thickness of mature
coniferous trees of the klamath mountains
Thick Bark
Intermediate Bark
Thin Bark
Douglas-fir
Incense-cedar
Jeffrey pine
Ponderosa pine
Redwood
Sugar pine
Shasta red fir
Western white pine
Gray pine
Knobcone pine
White fir
Port Orford cedar
Mountain hemlock
Whitebark pine
Brewer spruce
Lodgepole pine
Alaska cedar
Engelmann spruce
Western hemlock
Foxtail pine
forest with only large trees and a fire of low intensity, the effects may be
so benign as to be unnoticeable a year later. At the other extreme, a fire
might burn through a forest with a variety of tree sizes under severe fire
weather and kill all the trees, so that tree size is not a criterion for survival. A second principle is that the effects of the fire depend not only
on its behavior but also on the adaptations of the vegetation that is
burning.
Thick bark is the most common adaptation to fire in conifers
(see table 2). This feature is an adaptation to surface fires that move
under the canopy of a forest and do not produce enough heat to scorch
the entire crown. Across the region, Douglas-fir and ponderosa pine,
the two most widely distributed conifers, both have thick bark, and old
trees have been known to survive fifteen to thirty such fires over their
lifespans. Other adaptations exist, too. The knobcone pine’s serotinous
cones contain live seed but remain closed in three- to four-cone whorls
on the branches. Only a fire hot enough to melt the resin sealing the
cones enables them to open, spreading seed into an ashy, competitionfree forest floor. Although such fires are usually hot enough to kill the
mature trees, they also produce conditions suitable for a new group of
knobcone pines to grow. Serotiny is an adaptation to intense fires, and
the widespread occurrence of knobcone pine suggests that hot fires have
been part of the Klamath landscape over past centuries. Sprouting is a
third widespread adaptation to fire. Almost all the hardwoods will
crown sprout from latent buds if the crown is scorched, and most will
sprout from the base if the crown is killed. The bark of most hardwoods
(Pacific madrone, tanoak, California black oak, canyon live oak) is thin
or of intermediate thickness, which puts the trees at a disadvantage to
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78
Change Is the Only Constant
the conifers with their thick bark in the presence of a low-severity
surface-fire regime.
Organizing the fire ecology of the Klamath Mountains by major vegetation types enables us to discuss both the unique fire histories and the
interactions of the various species and their adaptations to fire. My
summary of the historical ecology below is relevant for the past couple
thousand years during current stable climate and vegetation patterns,
up to the early twentieth century, when fire exclusion became national
policy. Later, I discuss the effects of twentieth-century fire exclusion; the
loss of large, fire-tolerant trees due to selective harvest; and plantation
forestry.
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Redwood Forest
Fire and flood built the old-growth redwood forest. Walking along the
alluvial flats where the biggest redwoods grow, one is struck by the
ubiquitous charcoal on the stems of the trees. On the slopes above, even
more char is evident. This charring was not an accidental catastrophe of
nature: it was neither unusual nor catastrophic, except in a very few
instances. The story of fire in the redwoods sheds light on the story of
the inland Klamath. If fire is so important in the land of summer fog,
occurring every few decades, then surely it can be important where the
summers are too hot for fog.
A typical moist redwood forest has a multilayered structure, with
trees of all sizes. The tallest trees are the redwoods, which are usually
many feet in diameter. Sharing the overstory are large Douglas-firs, and
occasionally Sitka spruce is a codominant species. The midstory is usually western hemlock, with some redwood, and the lower tree story is
again hemlock and redwood with evergreen hardwoods: California
laurel and tanoak. Yet we know from the analysis of fire scars that fires
have occurred fairly frequently in these groves, perhaps every twenty to
forty years. How can the current forest structure be consistent with this
history of disturbance?
We can often reconstruct the history of a forest using the age classes
of the trees and their ability to survive with or without disturbance. The
most disturbance-tolerant species is redwood: it can resist a surface fire
with its thick bark and sprout a new crown in place if the fire is hot
enough to scorch the existing crown. The year after such a scorch, the
tree looks like a green telephone pole. Redwood is also tolerant of
shade, so it can reproduce in the absence of disturbance. Douglas-fir
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Change Is the Only Constant
79
also has thick bark but is shade intolerant: it can survive a surface fire
but needs open space to regenerate in redwood forests. Such open space
is associated with hotter fires. Hemlock has thin bark but is shade tolerant, as are the hardwoods. Both types of trees are usually killed by
any fires.
Age-class analyses show redwoods of all ages, usually including a
few that exceed a thousand years old. The redwood age classes appear
to be almost independent of the fire history of the past millennium.
Douglas-fir needs fires that are intense enough to open the canopy and
allow the tree to reproduce. Overstory Douglas-firs usually cluster in
one or more very tight age classes, indicating that they regenerated after
fairly intense fires perhaps two hundred or four hundred years ago.
Thus, we don’t see them in the understory of a mature forest. The hemlocks and hardwoods were all killed, or at least top-killed, by the last
fire, so their ages all postdate the last fire, with the largest specimens
being those that established soon thereafter. Hardwoods, being
sprouters, are usually the first trees to recolonize the understory after
they have been top-killed.
What will happen when this forest burns again? The redwoods will
persist, having added just a bit of char to their bark, although smaller
ones may be top-killed. Large Douglas-firs will likely survive, although
their density may decline a bit. Another age class of Douglas-fir may
become established if the fire has created sufficiently large openings.
The remaining species will be killed to the ground, but the next spring,
the hardwoods will sprout, along with the shrubs, such as California
huckleberry and salal. Away from the coast, and also farther to the south,
redwood forests exist only in riparian or streamside areas, and the forest
type quickly transitions to a mixed-evergreen forest with Douglas-fir as
the overstory dominant. The fire history of those forests more closely
mimics that of the upland forests.
A seemingly unusual ecological effect of surface fires in the redwoods is the combustibility of the basal bark. The Canoe fire of 2003 in
Humboldt Redwoods State Park burned away 6 or more inches of the
bark around the bases of a number of large redwoods (6 feet or more in
diameter), and several years later the trees are being top-killed due to
the loss of cambial tissue, which apparently heated up behind the thin
residual bark. Little or no reference to this effect exists in the published
literature, yet the forest undergoes significant structural change when
these large trees die, even though they sprout from dormant buds at the
ground level.
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Change Is the Only Constant
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Mixed-Evergreen Forest
Mixed-evergreen forest is a simple phrase for a complex and variable
mosaic of vegetation that occurs at lower elevations across the Klamath
Mountains. Douglas-fir tends to be a dominant conifer, but to the
east, ponderosa, Jeffrey, and sugar pines become codominant. Tanoak,
California laurel, and chinquapin are the most common hardwoods to
the west, with California black oak and canyon live oak becoming more
important to the east. Chaparral patches are mixed with forest. Fires
have occurred on average every ten to twenty years in these forests.
Historical forests were more open than today’s, with lower tree density, larger trees, and larger treeless openings. The variable nature of the
available fuels, and the fact that these fires often burned for months,
created a mosaic of fire effects that in turn influenced the complexity
and variability of the next fire. Most of these fires were surface fires.
R. B. Wilson, who in 1904 surveyed the lands that became the Trinity
Forest Reserve (now part of the Shasta-Trinity National Forests),
described them as “ground fires, and easily controlled. A trail will sometimes stop them” (Skinner, Taylor, and Agee 2006, 170). However, we
know from the scattered presence of knobcone pine today that higherintensity fires had to have occurred, or this species would not have persisted to the present.
Douglas-fir would have been the most fire tolerant of the conifers. It
grows over the scars left by fires faster than the pines do, and the Douglas-fir bark beetle that attacks injured trees is less aggressive than are
the beetles that attack the pines. Low-intensity fires were common; they
killed only the smallest conifers and top-killed some of the hardwoods.
The forests were open enough that Douglas-fir was able to establish in
small openings. Thus, a single stand may have five to ten age groups of
Douglas-fir, with each age group linked to a past fire. On steep slopes,
fires were often light enough to enable even the thin-barked canyon live
oak to survive. Other oaks, such as California black oak, also survived
these historical fires because of the light fuels around the bases of the
trees. Frequent fire precluded intense fire.
Geographers Alan Taylor and Carl Skinner have done more fireecology work in the Klamath Mountains than anyone else. Their work
near Happy Camp and Hayfork has shed considerable light on physiographic controls on historical fire patterns. At Thompson Ridge, lowseverity fire was prevalent on lower slopes and to east aspects (see figure
13), whereas high-severity fires were more common on the upper thirds
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Figure 13. Classes of fire severity for historical fires on Thompson
Ridge, north of Happy Camp. The first three columns represent
slope positions from the drier west side of the ridge; the three
columns to the right represent slope positions of the wetter east
side of the ridge. (Data source: table 8 in Taylor and Skinner 1998.
Illustrator: Cathy Schwartz.)
of slopes and on west aspects. Their work at Hayfork further demonstrated the influence of topographic complexity (ridgetops, creeks, geology, aspect) on fire patterns. These features often stopped fires from
spreading, but they acted more as filters to fire than as barriers. Some
fires did cross these boundaries, particularly in very dry years, but many
were constrained by the changes in environment and vegetation that
occurred with changes in physiography.
Vegetation that is adapted to more severe fire grows on the upper
slopes and south- to west-facing aspects. Knobcone pine, shrubby
patches, and even-aged stands are most likely to be here, with the larger,
Douglas-fir–dominated forests more likely to be on lower slope positions
and on east to north aspects. Although these latter forests look a lot like
the Douglas-fir forests far to the north, they developed under an incredibly different fire regime. In the wet Olympic Mountains of Washington,
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82
Change Is the Only Constant
one often finds stands that regenerated after a fire five hundred years
ago, where fire has not revisited the area since. No such Douglas-fir
stand in the Klamaths exists. The Klamath Douglas-fir stands have persisted as “old growth” precisely because they have burned frequently. In
a fire environment such as the Klamaths, a policy of total protection
will only change the nature of fire and its effects. These stands will continue to burn, but vegetation more adapted to severe fires is likely to
expand at the expense of Douglas-fir.
In the eastern Klamath Mountains, fires were apparently more frequent than in forests at similar elevation to the west. At Whiskeytown,
historic fire intervals were 5 to 15 years in forests dominated by ponderosa pine, incense cedar, Douglas-fir, sugar pine, and white fir. A similar story occurs around Trinity Lake, where I found a sugar pine stump
that has thirty-one fire scars it sustained over about a 250-year period.
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Woodland and Chaparral
On drier slopes in the mixed-evergreen zone, and at lower elevations in
the eastern Klamaths, lies a diverse woodland and chaparral zone. Historically in the western Klamaths, ridgetops often supported white oak
woodland. These areas appear to have burned frequently, although
most species do not record fire scars well.
Indians frequently burned white oak woodlands in the western
Klamaths. Both white oak and tanoak were resistant to low-intensity
and short-duration fires. Commonly, these areas were burned in autumn.
Fires were generally of low intensity, and prevented conifer encroachment. Oak savannas crested these ridges, partly because of unstable
terrain and partly due to the frequent fires. Many of these fires would
have fingered down into the associated mixed-evergreen or redwood
forests.
Chaparral patches contain many shrub species that are well adapted
to fire. Most species, such as chamise, sprout a new crown after burning. Others, like buckbrush, are seeders: the plant is killed by fire but
has a seed bank in the soil that is released by burning. Some seeds burn
up, but others have their seed coats crack, enabling them to germinate
the next spring. Chaparral fires are usually intense, because almost all
of the dead fuel is dry and of small diameter, and the living foliage is
often waxy and flammable.
In the eastern Klamaths, juniper woodland dots the valleys and lower
hillslopes. Blue oak is a common tree associate, along with many species
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83
of shrubs. Juniper has thin bark, so historic fires would have favored
other species, such as the oaks. Fires here were likely widespread because
of the continuity of fuels and frequent ignition by Indians and lightning.
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White Fir Forest
White fir forests occur at middle elevations and have many of the same
species found in the mixed-evergreen zone, with the addition of white
fir. These areas have more persistent winter snowpack. The overstory
may be dominated by the conifers from lower elevations, but white fir
is a common understory species. Its importance increases in stands in
which the wind has created canopy openings, releasing the understory
trees to grow and fill the openings. We know less about the local fire
ecology of the white fir zone, but studies at the margins of the zone suggest fire patterns much like those in the mixed-evergreen zone but with
extended fire-return intervals of twenty to forty years.
White fir is quite sensitive to fire when young, but older trees are fire
tolerant because they have developed persistent, moderately thick bark.
In low-intensity fires, the age of survivability may be roughly thirty
years. If a white fir can avoid fire that long, it is likely to survive subsequent fires and persist as a canopy tree into an old-growth condition. As
in the mixed-evergreen zone, a low-severity fire regime was likely most
prevalent. However, because of the persistent low-branching character
of white fir, stands that had a significant understory component of fir
could wick a surface fire into the crowns of the larger trees in the
unusual dry year or on a windy day. One often sees scattered, old white
firs with significant bark char surrounded by a younger even-aged class
of firs without char that regenerated after a fairly severe fire. Where a
knobcone pine seed source was present, knobcone pine may also occur
as scattered individuals or in nearly pure stands.
Higher snow loads in white fir forests also increase the chance of
windthrow or wind snap, which can add to fuel loads and subsequent
fire behavior. If a fire occurs before substantial compaction and decay of
the tree tops, more intense fire than normal will occur. The 1999 Megram
fire burned through fuel accumulations created during a winter storm in
1996, and fire severity was much higher in the wind-snap–affected area
than elsewhere. Would this wind snap have been characteristic of historic forests with possibly lower tree densities? We cannot provide a
definitive answer, but we can surmise that wind damage exacerbated
historic fire severity on occasion.
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Change Is the Only Constant
Shasta Red Fir Forest
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The Shasta red fir forest of the Klamaths is romantically called the
“snow forest.” Growing in a band at a higher elevation than one finds
the white fir forest, it has persistent snow all winter yet still has a prolonged dry season. Common associates of red fir are western white pine
and Jeffrey pine, with white fir common in the transition to lowerelevation forest and mountain hemlock in transition to higher-elevation
forest. Historically, fires were able to spread during the short dry season.
High densities of lightning strikes are common in red fir forests, often
higher than in other forest types because these forests grow in areas
where lightning is common. Many of these fires historically ended up as
spot fires that did not spread much, but some covered wide areas. Our
knowledge of historic fire-return intervals in Shasta red fir forests of the
Klamath Mountains is limited, but in other areas, return intervals range
around forty years. Carl Skinner has documented a nine- to thirty-year
fire-return interval (with substantial variability) for Shasta red fir stands
near Mumbo Lakes in the eastern Klamaths.
A mixed-severity fire regime occurs, because Shasta red fir, when
mature, is resistant to low-intensity fires. So are all of its common associates except for mountain hemlock. Where fires have been intense,
knobcone pine often shows up in patches. A good example of this pattern is on slopes opposite the Cecilville-Callahan road several miles
west of the crest. In the absence of knobcone pine, an intensely burned
patch may revert to shrub dominance, and several such patches exist on
the south aspect of the ridge where Cecil Lake sits. Trees may take a
long time to establish themselves in these locations, and recurrent fires
in the shrubs can create semipermanent shrub patches.
Subalpine Forest
Subalpine forests are limited in the Klamath Mountains because of the
limited high-elevation areas. Most ridgetops are 4,000 to 6,000 feet in
elevation and harbor white fir or Shasta red fir forests. The subalpine
forests usually have a substantial component of mountain hemlock,
along with red fir, whitebark pine, foxtail pine, western white pine, and
lodgepole pine. All of these species have medium to thin bark, so fire,
even if it is of low intensity, will have a mixed-severity effect on the
forest. Because the subalpine zone is transitional to alpine areas that
cannot support forest, its harsh environment usually makes for slow
forest recovery after a fire.
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85
Forest in the subalpine zone tends to be discontinuous and fires are
patchy as a result, because they are unable to cross rock fields or wet
meadows under most conditions. In the China Mountain area, Carl
Skinner found that over 85 percent of the fires detected through firescar sampling occurred only on single trees. Lightning was common
enough, however, to produce median fire-return intervals of ten to fifteen
years. These data suggest that the area sustained many very small fires.
The presence of fire scars suggests that these fires did damage trees, and
most fires probably killed some larger, thin-barked trees.
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Meadows and Openings
Nonforested land in the Klamath Mountains is limited. Most of it is in
the eastern margin in the dry rain-shadow areas between Mount Shasta
and Yreka. But within the forest of the Klamaths are mountain meadows and forest openings. The forest openings were historically more
common than they are today, a result of effective fire exclusion. Now, a
more homogenous pattern is evident, with denser forest and smaller
openings. Mountain meadows were often treeless because of high water
tables that prevented tree encroachment, plus the occasional fire that
moved through the cured herbs late in the summer. Ecological dynamics in these meadows have been complicated by their grazing history
and climatic variation. In the Sierra Nevada, sheep heavily grazed meadows in the 1800s, causing erosion and effectively lowering the local
water table, allowing trees to invade the margins and shrinking meadow
sizes. In the Pacific Northwest, trees invaded snow-dominated meadows
during a regional drought between 1920 and 1940, and those trees have
survived, effectively reducing subalpine-meadow area in the Olympic
and Cascade mountains. All of these factors—fire, grazing, and climate—
have affected meadows in the Klamath Mountains. Like the forest
openings, meadows in the Klamath Mountains have generally been
shrinking.
Morris Meadows in the Stuart Fork is a good example of this phenomenon. My friend Bill Weston took the top picture in figure 14 in
1960, and the bottom picture is a retake of the same scene in 2004. The
meadow was a privately owned enclave within the primitive area in
1960, likely accounting for the stump of the ponderosa pine tree in the
foreground. That tree has since disappeared, probably gone to firewood,
and the area, still privately owned, is now surrounded by the Trinity
Alps Wilderness. The small ponderosa pine tree beside the cut tree in
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Figure 14. Morris Meadows in 1960 and 2004. The pine tree in the foreground has grown considerably, whereas the stump and log have disappeared (probably harvested for firewood). Trees are encroaching at the
meadow edge. (Source: 1960 photograph by William Snow Weston.)
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Change Is the Only Constant
87
1960 is now larger, with an incense-cedar at its side. Shadows indicate
that trees in today’s background are larger, too. A look at the 2004
meadow margin shows much denser tree cover and tree or shrub cover
where meadow was present in 1960. Walking through the area today,
one sees small ponderosa pines appearing in the meadow. The meadow
is slowly shrinking but will likely not disappear altogether.
Is this shrinking a natural cause or a human-induced event? Morris
Meadows does not appear to have been overgrazed as much as some of
the Sierra Nevada meadows have been, but pasture grasses like timothy
are common and were probably broadcast to increase forage for sheep
and cattle. Climatic influences may have played a role in recent tree invasions, and fire exclusion has prevented late-season fires from removing
those trees. Allowing more naturally occurring fires to burn in the area,
such as one that arose on the ridge separating the meadow from the Deer
Creek Canyon in the early 1990s, is a reasonable management action if
and when Morris Meadows becomes public land, and a prescribed fire,
intentionally lit by managers, may be a justifiable restorative action.
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water
Substantial rain and snow fall in the Klamath Mountains each winter.
Once in a great while, a relatively warm and prolonged rain falls after a
cold snap in which snow has accumulated on the surface and soils are
saturated. At these times, great floods pour out of the mountains. These
floods are quite different from the flash floods of the Southwest, where
short but very intense thundershowers can create a wave of water down
the dry washes of the desert. Floods in northwestern California typically occur with a rain of moderate intensity, perhaps only a fraction of
an inch per hour, that nonetheless persists at a steady rate for several
days. The rain must be warm enough to melt the snowpack even at
higher elevations: freezing levels may be above the tallest peaks, which
are at an elevation of only 9,000 feet. The melting snow adds to the
rain, and the streams begin to swell. Creeks and rivers that are easy to
ford on foot in the summer become deep, raging torrents, carrying trees,
sediment, and structures toward the ocean.
Coastal California was raked with a tsunami in March 1964 from
the great 9.2 magnitude Prince William Sound earthquake in Alaska.
The tsunami caused significant damage to coastal towns down through
British Columbia and hit Crescent City, California, with a 16-foot wave
that essentially wiped out the downtown area. Tsunami damage was
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88
Change Is the Only Constant
recorded as far south as Hawaii. After this great push of water onshore,
later that year the entire North Coast was inundated with a great push
of water offshore: the 1964 flood. November and December were wetter
than usual, and a significant snowpack had accumulated in the mountains. With the Berkeley Free Speech Movement in full swing, I left
campus to burn slash piles at the university’s forestry summer camp in
the headwaters of the Feather River in the northern Sierra Nevada. On
December 18, a low-pressure system from the tropics moved onshore at
nearly right angles to the coast and produced high rainfalls in the coast
and the northern Sierra Nevada. Many areas received over 8 inches in
twenty-four hours, with succeeding storm tracks dropping about
20 inches over five days in many areas. We left without doing much pile
burning, because the piles were just too wet. Little did we know at the
time that over the next week, this storm would become the largest in
recorded history for the northern coast of California.
Some rivers reached incredible volumes that week. The Eel River at
Alderpoint ran 90 feet deep, with a peak flow of 752,000 cubic feet per
second (cfs). This flow is hard to comprehend, but if it were directed
into a totally dry Trinity Lake, with no other input, it could fill the lake
in less than two days. By comparison, summer regulated flows from
Trinity Dam have been only 450 cfs. This deluge was a monster flood.
It tore out streamside trees that had persisted for hundreds of years and
buried others in suffocating gravels. It produced record flows on the
Klamath, Trinity, Smith, Van Duzen, Mad, Eel, and Russian rivers.
More sediment was moved in that short time than in the previous
decade. The Eel River, for example, moved 116 million tons of suspended sediment in three days, compared to only 94 million tons in the
previous eight years. Those totals do not count the bed load, which consisted of material too heavy to remain suspended. Along the Trinity
River at Junction City, estimates indicated that the water was flowing at
100,000 cfs, and it redeposited substantial amounts of the dredger tailings that filled the valley at that time. That material can be deposited as
terraces along the stream banks, thereby providing a way to compare
the impact of one flood to that of another.
After the 1964 flood, Ed Helley and Val LaMarche Jr., U.S. Geological
Survey scientists, studied the stream terraces in the Klamath Mountains
for clues to past flood events. The recorded history of regional floods,
although a century and a half long, is short in a geological context.
In December 1955, a similar rain-on-snow event had hit the same area
and caused substantial damage in the Sierra Nevada. The 1955 flood
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Change Is the Only Constant
89
inundated Marysville and Yuba City, and those towns received much of
the press. Though I read the paper every day during that period, having
started my Oakland Tribune route the previous July, and was aware of
the flood damage in the Sacramento Valley, I had no idea that the flood
was also devastating my favorite place: Trinity Alps Resort. When my
family returned in the summer of 1956, the stream banks had been
scoured, several of the cabins on the river had been washed away, and
the fabulous restaurant that spanned the Stuart Fork was also gone,
blasted away by two large trees carried by the raging waters. The restaurant had already been dropped into the water by a stream-powered log
that ripped away its foundation, and when the two trees hit the sagging
wood frame, they reportedly did not even slow down. The restaurant
simply exploded from the power of the stream, and parts of it likely
reached the ocean, some 100 miles away. This type of havoc was being
wreaked across the region.
I experienced a similar event in 1975, in Redwood Creek, in the
southern portion of Redwood National Park. I was working as an ecologist for the National Park Service, and the service was negotiating with
the adjacent timber companies for improved timber-harvesting practices.
Foresters, geomorphologists, hydrologists, ecologists, lawyers, and managers came out for a field inspection in March in the midst of a period of
prolonged rainfall. Redwood Creek, which one could wade easily in
summer, was a raging 30 feet deep and perhaps 300 feet wide. A large
redwood came down the creek broadside and swept into a red alder
grove on the east bank. Without slowing down, it snapped off the stems
of the entire grove of perhaps fifty or sixty alders. Even today, I get
shivers when I remember the roar of the water and the explosion of the
alder grove. Later we saw a tributary stream, Bridge Creek, so actively
eroding its banks that upslope alder trees on the unstable, recently logged
slopes broke off in clumps and slid down several hundred feet into the
creek within seconds, quickly disappearing in a vortex of water and
being moved downstream, as another group of trees eroded down the
slopes. We had to leave, because the road was washing away, threatening to leave us stranded. Without the road and its bridge, no one could
have crossed Bridge Creek, a roiling brown torrent with standing waves
and debris poking in and out of the water as it raced downstream. The
power of water to reshape landscapes was never so vivid to me as on that
day. Needless to say, the timber-company representatives did not make
much of an impression on the federal folks, and the perhaps-inevitable
expansion of Redwood National Park became law three years later.
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Change Is the Only Constant
Floods have always been important events in redwood country. The
groves with the largest trees are on floodplains that have been periodically inundated with water and layers of fine sediment, primarily silt.
The floods favor redwoods by discouraging the competing species.
Douglas-fir, western hemlock, and the hardwoods do not tolerate
having their root systems buried, so they die. Redwoods simply grow
new root systems. Flood-excavated trees have shown many layers of
past root systems, each having been replaced by one above it, over hundreds to thousands of years. Access to moisture and nutrients, along
with the flood weeding-out of competition, have allowed redwoods on
these stream terraces to reach their maximum genetic potential, and
redwoods there are the tallest organisms in the world.
Another great Klamath Mountains flood occurred in December
1861, under exactly the same conditions: rain on snow and warm
winds. We know little about the storm, except that it washed away
almost every gold-mining operation along Klamath and Trinity river
streams and washed Big Bar, which once lay across the Trinity River
from Big Flat, off the map, until it was later relocated about 3 miles
downstream. The sporadic occurrence but great impact of floods
sparked Helley and LaMarche’s interest in studying these events. Which
of the great floods was the largest: the one in 1964, 1955, or 1861? And
did even greater floods occur before then? The researchers used a combination of geological and botanical evidence to compare these floods
with each other and with those of the past. They knew that in the North
Coast region, the 1964 flood was larger than the 1955 flood, although
the National Weather Service (NWS), in its top fifteen California weather
events of the twentieth century, awards the 1955 flood twelfth place and
ignores the 1964 storm. The NWS apparently ranked events based on
their economic impact rather than on their physical magnitude. Helley
and LaMarche selected a number of sites at which they could date minimum ages of floodplain deposits by analyzing tree rings. First, they
mapped the occurrence of deposits of varying ages according to their
thickness and the composition of gravel. The sorting of the deposits by
size and the weathering rind around individual pieces enabled them to
identify and differentiate the deposits, and the ages of the trees growing
there provided minimum ages for the deposits. Their assumption was
that immediately after deposition of these gravels, the surface was bare
and that trees might have immediately regenerated or perhaps have been
delayed for decades on harsh sites. So the method of dating was approximate. Along the Scott River, based on gauging-station records, they
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Change Is the Only Constant
91
estimated that the 1861 flood was comparable to the 1955 flood but
that the 1964 flood was larger.
Along the Trinity River, Helley and LaMarche studied a series of
gravel bars above Trinity Lake at Eagle Creek. Both Eagle Creek and
Ramshorn Creek enter the Trinity River here. The valley is wide and flat,
creating potential for sediment deposition and preservation (see figure 15).
They identified three gravel units in addition to the obvious 1964
deposit, which totally overlaid any 1955 deposits. This finding suggests
that somewhat larger floods are likely to destroy evidence from slightly
smaller floods. Older gravel 1, as they called one unit, is limited to the
mouth of Ramshorn Creek. Older gravel 2, about 5 feet deep, lines both
banks of the river; and older gravel 3, about 12 feet deep, is farther
from the river and nestles against older, nonflood deposits. The
researchers aged seventeen live trees and stumps (they had the date of
cutting) by counting the annual growth rings on cross-sections or increment cores. I added another seventeen stumps to the count.
The resulting calendar dates showed a wide range of ages across the
three older gravels. This age spread stems from several factors. After a
flood, some gravels, particularly those with coarse textures, discourage
the establishment of seedlings, so regeneration can be delayed for
decades. Then, regeneration can be continuous for a long time, as long
as growing space is available. Further, an older gravel can be flooded
from a more recent event that creates a younger and lower gravel
deposit, and this new deposit can provide a fresh sand substrate on the
older deposit to enable trees to establish themselves, even if few of the
existing trees on the older deposit are killed. Helley and LaMarche suggested that older gravel 1, with a single tree date, was at least as old as
1735 a.d. Older gravel 2, in their opinion was older than 1540 a.d.
and older gravel 3 was much older than their oldest tree date of 1500
a.d. The additional data I collected did not shed much additional light
on the matter. I did find a stump on the old gravel 3 deposit with a germination date of approximately 1469 a.d., which set back the creation
date to at least that time. Evidence also exists of widespread tree regeneration between 1707 and 1777 a.d. Almost half the trees in the sample
established themselves in that period. Alternative explanations include
a climate change that may have created better, moister conditions that
enabled trees to establish on the gravel deposits, which would mean the
tree dates are not associated with floods; another disturbance such as a
fire that would have left many trees but perhaps killed some and
allowed regeneration to occur; or a flood of intermediate magnitude
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Figure 15. Alluvial deposits along the Trinity River at Eagle Creek. Old
gravel 1 is located just south of the Ramshorn Creek confluence, sandwiched
between the 1964 and old Gravel 2 deposits. Surfaces 1, 2, and 3 are
described in the text, and “Pre-Q” is pre-Quaternary and may be of old glacial
origin. A cross-section of the river (line A–B on map) is shown in profile
below. (Source: Helley and LaMarche 1973. Illustrator: Cathy Schwartz.)
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Change Is the Only Constant
93
that might have left a thin, fine-textured surface deposit that was more
amenable to tree establishment. In the lower reaches of Coffee Creek,
just downstream from Eagle Creek on the Trinity River, the 1964 flood
left widespread sand deposits across vegetated preflood surfaces. But the
specific dates of the deposits, whatever they may be, are much less interesting than the fact that the older deposits represent very large floods.
Helley and LaMarche suggested that the lack of deposits at Eagle
Creek associated with the 1861 or 1955 floods indicated that, as elsewhere, these floods were not as large as the one in 1964. At Coffee
Creek, John Stewart and LaMarche estimated the 1955 peak flow at
3,360 cfs and the 1964 peak flow at 17,800 cfs. That the 1964 flood
was bigger than the one in 1955 certainly fit my experience, without reference to the numbers. In 1960, I camped on a gravel bar on the Stuart
Fork just downstream of Deer Creek, which was seemingly equivalent
to the Eagle Creek old gravel 2. It was covered with old trees, off the
main trail about 100 yards, and was a fabulous spot to camp. My visit
was five years after the 1955 flood, and I witnessed no significant
damage from the 1955 event. Returning there in 1970, six years after
the 1964 flood, I found that the bar had been totally washed away, and
a small boulder field was in its place. Farther down the river, at Trinity
Alps Resort, several more cabins had washed away, the car and footbridge were gone, and the stream had widened by about 100 feet at the
place where the old restaurant had spanned the river. Had the restaurant miraculously survived the 1955 flood, the larger 1964 flood would
have destroyed it. Coffee Creek was similarly affected. Many older
gravel deposits washed away, with some alluvial fan deposits as much
as 1,700 years old. The water carried away boulders as large as 6 by 4
by 3 feet.
At Eagle Creek, perhaps the most significant conclusion that Helley
and LaMarche reached was that older gravels 2 and 3, based on their
superior position to the 1964 deposit, represented floods much larger
than the one in 1964. Based on the width of the gravel deposits, older
gravel 2 appears to represent a flood about 50 percent larger than 1964,
and older gravel 3 represents a flood twice as large as the one in 1964.
Stream-discharge data from just downstream show that the 1964 peak
flow was about 21,000 cfs, the older gravel 2 peak flow was about
30,000 cfs, and the older gravel 3 peak flow was about 40,000 cfs. Flows
of this magnitude are hard to imagine. They likely represent even more
extreme rain-on-snow events, perhaps occurring a bit later in winter
when more snow was present. And they must have been devastating
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Change Is the Only Constant
to the watershed through which they ran. Yet these large, seemingly
catastrophic events define the character of the valleys. Such events have
the power to move large material and large amounts of smaller material. They are the engineers of the valleys.
Coffee Creek is a good example of a valley that has been repeatedly
sculpted by floods. Its upper portion lies north-south in a broad, flat,
glaciated valley that has been pirated at Big Flat (a different Big Flat
than the one on Highway 299) by the South Fork of the Salmon River
(see chapter 11). Below the terminal moraine, the valley turns abruptly
to the east and narrows, and the stream gradient becomes steep. The
valley widens near its mouth, broad meadows occur across its 1,000-foot
width, and at the confluence with the Trinity River, a half-mile-wide
alluvial fan occurs, which pushes the Trinity River against its east bank.
The alluvial fan creates a deltalike emergence for Coffee Creek at its
mouth. Much of this alluvium was likely deposited during glacial times,
likely before the pirating of the upper portion of Coffee Creek. As with
the Trinity River in the vicinity of Eagle Creek, Coffee Creek has
deposits suggesting it has experienced floods larger than the 1964 event.
The 1964 flood dumped about 10 inches of rain at the mouth of Coffee
Creek and likely much more at higher elevations in the watershed.
Almost all the snow at higher elevation melted.
John Stewart and Val LaMarche evaluated this flood in the lower
Coffee Creek watershed. One of their first findings was that, in contrast
to the views of local residents, no landslide had blocked the stream, as
had occurred in the same storm in the lower Salmon River. There was
simply a tremendous volume of water, which caused extensive erosion
of gently sloping land to flat land in the lower valley. Cabins washed
away, or toppled after being partially undercut by the stream, which
had been nowhere near them before the flood. Beautiful meadows with
scattered trees turned into fields of boulders. A net loss of material
occurred above mile 2 ranging up to 800,000 cubic feet per mile of stream
length. In the first two miles, net deposition was as much as 6 million
cubic feet per mile. Poorly sorted gravel created natural levees along
both sides of the stream. The channel of Coffee Creek moved more
during this event than it had in the previous 110 years of record. New
channels formed as old channels filled with sediment. In other places,
new channels augmented the old channel. In some places, the new channel became the postflood channel, whereas in others, the old channel was
reoccupied after the flood. Stewart and LaMarche identified logjams as a
major cause of stream-channel disruption during the flood.
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95
These scientists attributed the lower severity of floods in Coffee
Creek before 1964 to its snow-dominated hydrology. Unlike the upper
Trinity River, with only about 20 percent of its basin area above 6,000 feet
elevation, Coffee Creek has 40 percent of its basin area above 6,000 feet.
Snow and snowmelt runoff would be expected to be more important in
the hydrology of the Coffee Creek drainage than they are in the upper
Trinity. Stewart and LaMarche noted that in 1960, the upper Trinity
River peak stream flow occurred during a storm in February, whereas
Coffee Creek’s peak stream flow in June during snowmelt exceeded its
peak during the February storm.
One can see differences even between snow-dominated watersheds in
the local area. Swift Creek, the next large tributary stream to the Trinity
south of Coffee Creek, has almost the same proportion of its drainage
area (38 percent) above 6,000 feet, so it ought to act much like Coffee
Creek. However, it suffered damage in its lower-valley portion not only
in 1964 but in earlier floods. Before 1964, broad gravel flats flanked its
channel, whereas the pre-1964 channel of Coffee Creek was flanked by
mature conifers. One explanation for this difference may be that the
upper-elevation portions of Swift Creek are all at its extreme western
edge, so snowmelt from various small tributaries enters the main channel at about the same time, whereas Coffee Creek’s high-elevation
areas border almost the entire length of the valley, so the timing of flow
into the main channel is not so synchronous. Downstream peaks may
therefore be less in Coffee Creek than in Swift Creek. The next big flood
could occur any year. Flood-frequency prediction is evolving but suffers
from a relatively short historical record in the Klamath Mountains.
Stewart and LaMarche estimated that the 1964 flood was a 100-year
event, based on a complicated analysis that related peak discharges to
average precipitation, basin area, mean basin altitude, and other variables. This estimate does not mean that Coffee Creek will flood in 2064
as it did in 1964. It means that each year brings a 1 in 100 chance that
the event will occur, and this probability will change as the record
increases. When I worked in Redwood Creek, the area had a 100-year
storm in 1973 and another one in 1975. This level of discharge downgraded the event to perhaps a 10- to 20-year storm because additional
flow data recognized that this storm was not so unusual.
In the Klamath Mountains, catastrophe drives the riverine landscape.
Flood events such as those of 1955 and 1964 create new surfaces, reset
the successional clock for streamside vegetation, and also damage
human improvements. In such floods, high flows also affect fish habitat
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Change Is the Only Constant
in both negative and positive ways. In areas in which we have buffered
the effect of floods by building dams, downstream areas have generally
suffered substantial losses in rearing habitat for juvenile salmonids,
and nowhere better is that fact illustrated than at the Trinity River.
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insects and pathogens
Thousands of species of insects and fungi live in Klamath forests, but
few represent major disturbances with significant effects on the forests.
The Klamath region has some fifteen to twenty major insects that either
kill or substantially affect forest growth by defoliating or girdling trees,
several foliage diseases, a handful of root rots, a similar abundance of
heart rots and decays, six mistletoes, and three rusts. Generally speaking, two related reasons explain why neither insects nor diseases have
had large-scale effects in the Klamaths. First, the region has a high diversity of forest species, and second, most insects and diseases influence a
limited suite of species. Even with epidemic levels of one species group,
forest composition is rarely so pure that any infestation or disease will
affect all the tree species simultaneously. This situation makes the
Klamath forests unique in the West.
The bark beetles (Dendroctonus) are the most significant insect
group in the Klamaths. The western pine beetle, mountain pine beetle,
and pine engraver, each about the size of a grain of brown rice, attack
only pines. Female beetles of the former two species and male beetles of
the latter attack a susceptible tree and bore a hole through the bark. The
tree responds by attempting to force the beetle out with the flow of
resin, and if it issues enough resin, the beetle will become encased and
the attack will be unsuccessful. A healthy tree holds the resin at high
pressure (up to 200 pounds per square inch). In a tree that is stressed
(perhaps during a drought or after a fire), an attack has a higher probability of success. If the beetle is successful, it emits a chemical known as
a pheromone that wafts through the air and attracts other beetles to the
tree. Mass attacks then occur. The beetles carry fungi on their bodies,
and these fungi invade the water-conducting tissues of the tree, desiccating the crown and killing the tree. The eggs laid by the females then
hatch and develop as they mine the inner bark of the tree, later emerging as adults to renew the process. The pattern of egg galleries is a good
way to identify the cause of death: western pine beetles have a serpentine, crisscross pattern that resembles spaghetti, mountain pine beetles
have a vertical gallery, and pine engravers have a tuning-fork pattern of
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Change Is the Only Constant
97
three galleries, each representing a different female attracted to the site
by the attacking male.
The red turpentine beetle also attacks pines, but usually the tree survives the attack, because the beetle’s gallery, where the larvae swim
around in resin as they develop, is no bigger than a compact disc. The
Douglas-fir beetle attacks only Douglas-fir, and the fir engraver attacks
only true firs. The Douglas-fir beetle has a vertical gallery, but the fir
engraver has a horizontal gallery with vertical, radiating larval galleries
that expand away from the egg gallery as the larvae grow.
Bark beetles are always present at endemic levels and tend to attack
trees of low vigor. At greatest risk are trees that are in dense stands or in
stands stressed by drought or wildfire that did not immediately kill the
trees. The beetles also colonize recently windthrown trees. Once a beetle
population increases above endemic levels, the insects can successfully
attack even healthy trees.
Flatheaded borers (Melanophila) usually attack only dead and dying
trees and are therefore called secondary attackers. However, the flatheaded fir borer is a primary attacker of Douglas-fir in the Klamath
region. The Melanophila beetles are also known as “fire beetles”
because they are attracted to recently burned areas. After substantial
experimental work, E. G. Linsley, a University of California entomologist, established that the beetles have sensory pits on their bodies that
allow them to sense heat or smoke from tens of miles away. Later, scientists determined that these pits are infrared radiation detectors, allowing the beetles to find sites that assure their ability to reproduce.
Root rots and heart rots usually have localized effects at the stand
level. Like the insects, most have affinities for one or more species, but
not all species. Armillaria root rot infects all conifers, although it favors
Douglas-fir and ponderosa pine. Laminated root rot focuses on Douglasfir, and annosus root rot focuses on ponderosa pine and white fir. One
root rot of major importance is caused by Phytophthora lateralis, an
introduced pathogen that has decimated Port Orford cedar. It is carried
by water, so it can spread anywhere that water can take it. Port Orford
cedar root disease has been spread primarily by road traffic, so trees in
unroaded areas tend to be less affected. The heart rots, such as red ring
rot and velvet top fungus, provide a critical wildlife function. They provide decayed wood that birds can easily excavate. Cavity-nesting birds,
either primary excavators like the woodpeckers or secondary cavity
nesters like red-breasted nuthatches and chestnut-backed chickadees,
require decayed wood for successful nest holes.
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Change Is the Only Constant
Mistletoes are usually species specific. A variety of dwarf mistletoes
attack the conifers, but Douglas-fir dwarf mistletoe cannot infect ponderosa pine, and the ponderosa pine dwarf mistletoe cannot infect the
true firs. Conifer dwarf mistletoes tend to be more important on sites
where the conifers are stressed. Douglas-fir mistletoe is absent in the
Olympic Mountains of Washington but is common in the Klamaths.
Any small conifers of the same species are likely to be infected by dwarf
mistletoes growing on larger trees. The dwarf mistletoes shoot out
sticky seeds with amazing velocity, and when the seeds land on shorter
trees of the same species, the mistletoe grows into the small branches.
Although dwarf mistletoes have external growth, the tip-off to their
presence is witches’-brooms, dense branchings that occur around the
mistletoe infection. Small trees infected by dwarf mistletoe generally do
not develop into canopy trees. In large trees with low brooms, fires can
move more easily into their crowns. Yet dwarf mistletoes serve an
important wildlife function by creating localized dense cover for animals that can utilize arboreal habitat.
Two workers saw a great example of that function when they were
cutting small trees to increase the vigor of adjacent large pines that
were serving as eagle-nest sites. As they began to saw down a 10- to 12inch white fir that had a lot of dwarf mistletoe in the crown, the saw
seemed to malfunction, making an odd, roaring sound. When they
turned off the saw, the noise continued. The sound was coming from a
bobcat hiding out in one of the lower mistletoe clumps! Incense cedar
and the oaks have true mistletoes (Phoradendron) that provide excellent hiding and nesting cover, much as the dwarf mistletoes do. The
true mistletoes are the ones that promote kissing at Christmas, so they
serve another major function as well. True mistletoes are an excellent
winter food for deer.
The forests also have one rust of major importance: white pine blister rust. The rust was introduced to North America early in the twentieth century and has spread everywhere, infecting and killing members
of the white pine group that are common in the region: sugar pine,
western white pine, and whitebark pine. The rust requires an alternate
host, gooseberry or currant, to complete its life cycle. On the pine, the
disease appears as a large canker that girdles the stem. In the early
1980s, I worked on old burn sites in the central Olympic Mountains,
which were high-elevation areas that were still largely meadows after
fifty to sixty years. Groups of small white pines, in states ranging from
recently infected to long dead, littered the slopes. They had all been
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Change Is the Only Constant
99
killed by white pine blister rust and had significantly delayed forest
succession on a site that was at least 30 miles from the nearest road.
The long-term future of the white pines is not bright, although some
resistant white pine genotypes appear to exist. The rust can change its
genetic makeup much faster than a tree can.
The newest forest disease threat is sudden oak death (caused by Phytophthora ramorum), a water mold that looks like a fungus that has
entered California and southern Oregon in the past decade. The organism that causes this disease is related to the pathogens that have caused
jarrah (a eucalyptus) dieback in Australia and the Irish potato famine.
Its origin is yet unknown; it may simply be a hybrid of two existing Phytophthora species. Its presence became significant when it began killing
tanoaks in the mid-1990s in central coastal California. Tanoak is the
most susceptible species, but true oaks, including California black oak,
coast live oak, and canyon live oak, are also susceptible. Sudden oak death
has a wide range of hosts, including Pacific madrone, California buckeye, California laurel, hazelnut, bigleaf maple, redwood, and Douglasfir. Infections are usually not fatal on these other hosts. Many
understory shrubs are also affected: rhododendron, California coffeeberry, manzanitas, California huckleberry, salmonberry, poison oak,
and toyon. Somewhat surprisingly, the white oak group (Oregon white
oak, blue oak, and deer oak) does not appear to be susceptible.
Sudden oak death appears to afflict only aboveground parts of
plants, unlike the related Phytophthora that infects Port Orford cedar
roots. Lethal infections occur on branches and stems, killing the tree.
Death can occur rapidly—hence the name sudden oak death. Sublethal
infections occur on foliage and twigs, and are the common expression
of the disease on most hosts other than the oaks and tanoak. As of 2006,
its spread seems confined to areas within 20 miles of the coast below
3000 feet elevation. In northwestern California, this is primarily redwood forest. If sudden oak death were to remain there, its threat to the
Klamath Mountains would be limited. Yet its sudden appearance and
unknown origin suggest that it may have the capability to morph into a
form more capable of moving inland. Certainly the host species are present throughout the Klamath Mountains. The hardwood trees and
understory shrubs that host sudden oak death are responsible for substantial structural diversity in the lower elevation forests of the Klamath
Mountains. If SOD, as it is known, were to become more virulent and
widespread, it would have cascading ecosystem effects. One of the first
would be a loss of acorns from tanoak, black oak, and canyon live oak.
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Change Is the Only Constant
The first victims would be wildlife species such as squirrels and deer
that rely on acorns for substantial portions of their diets, and birds that
prey on insects that favor oak leaves or acorns. Right now, it is not possible to project future impacts of sudden oak death, except to conclude
that widespread control in wildland environments is not likely to be possible. Hopefully, resistant genotypes of the host species will emerge, and
SOD will become an inevitable but less epidemic pathogen in California.
The distribution of sudden oak death appears to be closely related to
fire occurrence over the past fifty years. The relevant burned areas have
little to no SOD, but why the occurrence of a fire as long as several
decades ago is linked to absence of SOD is a largely unanswered question. Perhaps a long-term chemical effect is at work, or an indirect effect
on the presence of SOD-related tree or shrub species, or no cause-andeffect relationship at all, if SOD is simply confined to wetter areas that
burn less frequently.
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wind
Wind can act in many ways on trees in the forest. If fairly strong winds
occur often, they shape the morphology of the stem and the crown. Persistent strong winds create a flagging effect on crowns, abrading and
desiccating leaves on the upwind side and eventually thinning or killing
the crown on the upwind side but leaving the downwind side intact.
This flagging effect is most noticeable along the coast but occurs wherever winds are strong. Trees that are blown around consistently develop
buttressed bases, strong roots that have the shape of an I beam, and
occasionally flutes, or small ridges of sapwood that run vertically along
the stem. Very old trees that have been subjected to winds for centuries
often have their tops blown off; the remaining branches turn up and
grow to the sky, creating a candelabra effect at the top of the tree. But
the major effect of wind is its ability to snap tree stems (wind snap) or
uproot trees (windthrow).
A tree is much like a sailing vessel in this regard. The crown acts as
the sail, the stem as the mast, and the roots as the keel or a anchor.
Winds apply the most stress to dominant trees, whose crowns are largest
and most exposed. This force transfers to the stem. If the stem has
decay, or the tree has two stems because of the past death of the main
leader, the stem becomes weak and may snap. If the force is transferred
down to the roots, shallow-rooted trees are most likely to be uprooted.
Forest stands typically have a range of trees that are vulnerable because
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Change Is the Only Constant
101
of their position in the stand, species characteristics, and susceptibility
to diseases, so wind may act on individual trees rather than affect the
whole stand. As an ecological agent, wind tends to thin stands from
above, first taking the trees with the largest crowns. This characteristic
is perhaps its largest contrast with fire, which thins the stands from
below by first killing the smallest trees with the lowest crowns and
thinnest bark. Wind tends to leave the smaller and usually more shadetolerant trees, effectively releasing them to grow into the overstory.
Near the coast, wind is a much more significant disturbance than it is
farther inland. Estimates suggest that about half the mortality in
Humboldt County forests is due to wind, with the other half occurring
because of fire, insects, and disease. Fire is much more important away
from the coastal areas.
A clear example of wind disturbance, and its synergistic effects with
other disturbances, is a storm that occurred in early 1996. A strong
wind entered the area between South Fork Mountain and the Trinity
Alps after a snowstorm had filled the tree crowns with snow and cooling weather had turned the snow to ice. Above 3,500 feet where the
snow line began, from Highway 299 on the south across to Highway 96
on the north, the crowns of many trees snapped off, creating a hazardous fuels matrix the next summer that covered some 30,000 acres.
Many tops of white fir trees lay on the ground, with all the leaves and
small branches intact. North of Hawkins Bar were some of the worst
conditions. I saw some of this area when I was invited to visit as part of
a touring group associated with implementing the Northwest Forest
Plan. Weather reports predicted that this windstorm would cause
damage as far north as Seattle, but as it moved north, it lost its steam
somewhere around Portland and clocked in at only 40 miles per hour in
Seattle. The Forest Service was later able to treat the fuels along a few
ridges with thinning and slash disposal, but much of the damaged area
was in wilderness. In 1999, two forest fires, the Fawn fire and the
Megram fire, began in the wilderness in August, merged in September,
and moved south and west out of the wilderness. The fire in the windaffected area was more severe than it would have been without those
additional surface fuels. About half of the blowdown area burned with
high severity, compared to less than one-third outside of the blowdown.
The effects of wind made the fire event more severe, illustrating the classic
synergistic effect between two disturbances.
This storm blew down substantial timber elsewhere, too. I was doing
summer work at the time in the Applegate River to the north and east
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Change Is the Only Constant
of the main wind-snap area, and the higher-elevation areas there also
suffered wind damage. In 1998, rather than do my usual bushwhack
from the Stuart Fork to a favorite overlook, I decided on an easy hike
up the Rush Creek Lakes trail. The trail itself had turned into a bushwhack, covered with windthrown trees from the 1996 storm that were
difficult to hike around or through. The trees were later cleared, and a
hiker along the trail now might think that all the logs have been there
for a long time or have accumulated gradually. Instead, the Douglas-fir
and white firs came down almost at once, and young white fir are beginning to grow into the canopy gaps left by the fall of the more dominant
and larger trees. The smaller branches and needles have now fallen to
the ground, and the fire hazard is less severe than it was in the initial
years after the event.
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drought
Annual precipitation varies around some mean level and is rarely
exactly average. The “normal” range spans 5 or so inches, and only significant departures below this range are defined as drought conditions.
Drought can directly affect the mortality of trees, but its effects are
more commonly synergistic: more forest fires or increased levels of
insects or diseases as a result of stress on one or more species of trees.
Southern California endured a tremendous drought in 2001 and 2002.
Whole forests of ponderosa pine died from drought when the area
around Lake Arrowhead suffered a year without precipitation. Evergreen shrubs went deciduous. Tree-killing insects did not even have a
chance to infest the trees before they died; now, the trees are simply food
for wood-boring insects, and for forest fires. Fortunately, the Klamath
Mountains have not had such a radical drought on record. For
Weaverville, with average annual precipitation of 36 inches, the driest
year on record was 22.5 inches. Such dry periods can have significant
direct effects on vegetation but generally do not cause regionwide mortality in the Klamaths such as that in Southern California.
Direct effects of drought on vegetation begin with a slowing of
growth. One of the guiding principles of dendrochronology (the study
of tree-ring patterns) is that trees accrue wider rings in wet years and
narrower rings in dry years, in areas where moisture is a strong limiting factor for growth. By matching the patterns of wide and narrow
rings, which are analogous to barcodes on merchandise, one can reconstruct an index to past climate and identify disturbances like forest
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Change Is the Only Constant
103
fires far back in time. In the Klamaths, any site is likely to have a range
of species, and some are going to be more drought tolerant than others.
The more sensitive species will show the strongest growth declines,
and they are also more likely to die directly from drought or from
drought-related insect attack. Smaller trees of the more sensitive species
are likely to die first, because their root systems are not as well developed as those of larger trees of the same species. Bark-beetle attacks
usually increase during drought because of lowered vigor of the target
species.
Drought can create substantial mortality over wide areas, but it does
not appear to have done so in the Klamath Mountains. Perhaps it will
be an ecological surprise in the future, particularly with global warming
occurring. Global warming could affect storm tracks so that not only
average temperature and precipitation change but their variability
increases.
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other disturbances
Local disturbances such as snow avalanches and soil-mass movement
are part of the diversity of Klamath disturbances. Snow avalanches, of
course, are restricted to the high country where snow accumulates, and
they typically occur in steep terrain, with a broad run-out zone at the
bottom. In spring, these snowy paths look like streaks of vanilla ice
cream dripping down the sides of the taller mountains. Trees often have
a hard time colonizing these chutes because the avalanches occur regularly enough to snap the stems of the conifers or uproot them. Shrubs
remain short enough to avoid damage, and most also have the ability to
sprout. The striated pattern of forest and shrub, following the pattern
of minor ridges and valleys on steep, south-facing slopes, is a common
characteristic of the snow forest. Such avalanche chutes may help partition forest fires, because they are generally less flammable than the
neighboring forest.
When I worked for the National Park Service in the 1970s, I was sent
to Mineral King, a Forest Service area surrounded by Sequoia and Kings
Canyon National Parks. The Forest Service planned to issue a permit
for a ski area in this narrow valley. Two things stood out to me that day:
a rare sighting of a wolverine in the valley, and much of the “developable” parts of the narrow valley were the run-out zones for
avalanches. Development, had it occurred, would have turned to disaster in a year of high snowfall, with permanent targets awaiting the
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104
Change Is the Only Constant
avalanche in the run-out zones. Fortunately, the ski-area plan was
derailed, and Congress transferred the Mineral King area to the Park
Service.
Nature is full of surprises. It always carries remote possibilities of
disturbances we can’t anticipate. Having worked along the coastal parts
of Oregon and Washington since the 1970s, I was impressed by evidence of soil charcoal, indicating that widespread fires could occur in
these moist environments. Then, in the mid-1990s, a light bulb went on
when geologists and ecologists confirmed the presence of a magnitude 9
large subduction earthquake along the coast of Oregon and Washington
in January of 1700 a.d. The scientists used records of a large tsunami in
eastern Japan, together with cross-dated tree-ring records showing that
many western red cedar trees on coastal terraces dropped into tidal
marshes and were killed, sometime after the growing season of 1699
and before the spring of 1700. We had known for a long time of a huge
forest fire or set of fires in the eastern Olympic Peninsula in 1700 or
1701. The working hypothesis is that the quake shook down whole
forests, which then dried out and became extraordinarily flammable in
the next summer or two. The same fire event appears to have happened
in locations on the Oregon coast. Much of today’s old growth in these
areas was generated after these events, which are, in retrospect, large
ecological surprises.
The severe 1964 Alaska earthquake caused a tsunami that hit the
northern coast of California and destroyed much of the downtown
area of Crescent City. We can be almost certain that previous large
coastal earthquakes had a similar effect. In Yurok Myths, Alfred Kroeber
presents an account of an unusual “flood” by an informant (brackets
are mine): “Then the ocean began to turn rough (from the anger of the
old men). A breaker came over the settlement of Siwitsu [at Redwood
Creek lagoon], washed the whole of it away, and drowned everyone.
Then all the people of Orekw ran off to the top of the hill, wearing their
woodpecker-crest headbands: they were afraid” (Kroeber 1976, 186).
Kroeber placed a footnote on this story, noting that he had difficulty
believing that the storm waves were tall enough to remove the village
and saying that the story was likely exaggerated. But the edge of the bar
at the mouth of Redwood Creek is very low, so even a small tsunami
could have devastated a village there. This tsunami may well have been
the one in 1700 that also hit Japan as an “orphan tsunami,” one that
was not accompanied by earthquake; the earthquake occurred on the
northwest coast of North America.
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Change Is the Only Constant
105
Earthquakes probably have the highest potential to cause damage
along the western edge of the Klamaths. South from the Klamaths, the
world-famous San Andreas Fault comes ashore at Point Reyes and runs
south through San Francisco clear to Los Angeles. Other less-known
faults parallel the San Andreas, creating the general northwest-tosoutheast river systems of the north coast, such as the Russian River
(which flows southeast and eventually turns west to the Pacific), Eel
River, and Redwood Creek. Magnitude 7 quakes have occurred along
the north coast in the past twenty-five years, creating structural and
road damage. If a quake as large as 8.5 were to occur, it would likely
create tsunami damage around Humboldt Bay, cause substantial structural and road damage, topple many trees, and create substantial landslides, particularly in winter when soils are wet. Earthquakes can occur
further inland, and many older faults are present: there is a pronounced
fault just west of the Oregon Mountain summit along Highway 299.
But the Klamaths have few active faults. A line around the Klamaths
encircles a dead zone without much recent earthquake activity. Based
on present knowledge, we can place large earthquakes in the “big surprise” category for the Klamath Mountains.
Natural disturbances have played a critical role in the creation and
preservation of biodiversity in the Klamath Mountains. Although we
have tried to exclude fire from the managed forest (whether managed for
wilderness or timber), we have simply changed the type of fire that
occurs, producing a higher proportion of high-severity fires. Fortunately,
not every wildfire has caused total stand replacement, and even in
burned areas, substantial residual vegetation exists. The other common
disturbances are less under human control, although indirectly we have
affected them by altering the compositions and structures of forests. The
major lesson we have learned from natural disturbances is that the spatial and temporal scales of their occurrence and severity have worked to
maintain native biodiversity. Though these patterns are not a strict template for sustainability, the more closely we can emulate them, the better
will be our chances of sustaining the native biota of the Klamaths.
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chapter 8
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First Peoples of the Rivers
The Klamath Mountains have long supported a limited population of
self-reliant individuals. Today, the region’s population concentrates
right along the coast and along the Interstate 5 corridor. If one subtracts
the population within several miles of those two linear features from the
regional total, only about 62,000 people currently inhabit the Klamath
Mountains. The population density is about 4 per square mile, with
about a third of those people living in the five largest rural towns: this
is not a heavily populated region.
The pre-European Indian population has been estimated at less
than this current number: some 25,000 people, or 1.5 people per
square mile. Some valleys had more than 5 people per square mile
concentrated in small villages along the major streams, and population density declined as one went inland to drier landscapes. The Indians
of the Klamath region (see figure 16), based on their language origins,
were the most diverse in North America. Considerable debate still
exists about the number of groups shown in figure 16 and about the
precise boundaries of their lands. Even in Shirley Silver’s chapter in the
recent Handbook of North American Indians, maps of the individual
tribes in different chapters fit together like a poorly designed jigsaw
puzzle. For example, the Chimariko chapter shows the tribe’s range
extending upriver only as far as Big Bar, whereas the Wintu chapter
shows the Chimariko boundary starting at Junction City, another
10 miles upriver.
106
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First Peoples of the Rivers
107
Figure 16. Native American groups of the Klamath Mountains. Much uncertainty remains about group boundaries and even about the number of groups.
KON: Konomehu; NRS: New River Shasta; TSN: Tsnungwes. (Sources: University of California; Washington State University; Silver 2004; J. Rohde personal
communication. Illustrator: Cathy Schwartz.)
Peoples of differing language origins migrated to the area over thousands of years, bringing with them languages shared with tribes that are
now far distant. The only unique language of all the California Indians is
Yukian, spoken by the Yukis of the northern Mendocino area. Robert
Heizer, successor to Alfred Kroeber as the dean of California Indian
anthropology, claimed that the Yuki are the only original California
Indians. The other tribes came from language stocks represented in other
parts of North America, indicating that they immigrated to California.
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108
First Peoples of the Rivers
The coastal Yuroks and neighboring Wiyots had an Algonkian language
family. The adjacent Whilkuts, Chilulas, Tsnungwes, and Hupas had
an Athabascan language family, whereas the more interior Karuk and
Chimariko people had a Hokan language stock. The eastern Klamath
Wintu came from a Penutian language stock. Scholars believe that these
people arrived variously between 0 a.d. and 1300 a.d., so they have
lived in the region for a long time. That the groups’ languages remained
so distinct suggests that they lived in isolation during most of their time
in California.
The Indians of the Klamath Mountains practiced sustainable management of their natural resources. Even with sustainable practices,
nature occasionally withheld an acorn crop or salmon run, and life that
year became difficult. To the extent that their practices were unsustainable, they paid with hunger and starvation. The tribes I list above have
lived here a long time, and they have lived within the limits of the land,
observing practices that Robert Heizer called a “land etiquette.” Their
diversity in language stands in sharp contrast to their similarity in culture, derived from their reliance on the same resources, whatever the
land could offer and sustain. Although they traveled to the high country, they were really people of the rivers. Even the names of tribes reflect
this riparian nature: Yurok means “downriver,” Karuk means “upriver,”
and the Hupas took their name from the valley they lived in. None of
the tribes had a centralized tribal government; instead they operated as
tribelets or communities, living in smaller groups that controlled certain
sections of watersheds. Contrary to modern practice, they seldom drew
boundaries along streams. Instead, they usually drew lines along ridges
and watershed boundaries. This practice reflected the importance of
streams to the cultures of the Klamath Mountains.
Although anthropologists and others have grouped Indian communities into tribes by language stock for classification purposes (as well as
for Western legal purposes), maps such as the one in figure 16 obscure
the defining political structure of the Indians: rarely was a mapped tribal
group a real political entity. Instead, the village or community group
was the instrument of political power. The community leader, or headman, was not a “chief” in the sense of having authority but was rather
a wealthy individual who had considerable persuasive power.
Each community managed its own ecosystem, which because of the
rugged terrain had quite definable boundaries. One’s world might be no
more than 10 or 20 miles in any direction, but rarely would all of it be
visible from a single point. The world was defined around the center of
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First Peoples of the Rivers
109
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Figure 17. The Yurok idea of the world. (Source: T. Kroeber
1959. Illustrator: Cathy Schwartz.)
the universe, which was where one lived. For example, the Yuroks saw
the world (see figure 17) as a large island on which the land floated. The
sky was formed by a mythic person who had knotted a great net and
thrown it into the air. Anyone who spends a clear night in this country
can understand the appeal of this idea. Absent urban light pollution,
views of the stars seem endless, such that each one might represent a
knot in the mesh of the great net. With so many “knots,” the mesh was
clearly very, very fine, containing the known world. Bird migrations
were allowed through a “sky hole.” The “upriver ocean” was created
by a tipping of the earth, such that the ocean flowed up the Klamath
River carrying fish and other sea life far inland. The Yuroks were apparently aware of the headwater Klamath Lakes, although few had ever
traveled that far. After much prayer and dancing, according to the myth,
the water reversed, and the ocean flowed back across the bar at the
mouth of the river. Many other myths help explain the presence and
function of the land and its flora and fauna.
The dramatic foci of these myths are often plants or animals that
began as Ikxareyav (Karuks) or woge (Yuroks), the people who lived
on the land several generations before the modern people arrived.
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First Peoples of the Rivers
The interior Wintus also believed that an earlier people had lived on the
land before their arrival. These early people left or transformed when
modern Indians arrived, but their successors saw them as creators of the
modern world, and the tales of creation serve to explain the modern
world and provide models for appropriate behavior. Almost all natural
phenomena have their origin in myth, as two of these myths illustrate.
The first is a Karuk myth explaining the diversity in acorns. Acorns
were once Ikxareyav maidens, and they were told to weave hats for
themselves. Black Oak Acorn did not finish her hat, whereas Tanoak
Acorn finished her hat but did not clean it. White Oak Acorn finished
her hat and cleaned it, and Canyon Live Oak Acorn did the same. The
maidens spilled from the heavens into the modern world in this way,
shutting their eyes and turning their faces into their hats. Tanoak Acorn
wished bad luck to White Oak Acorn and Canyon Live Oak Acorn
because she was jealous of their nice hats, and as a result, Indians were
said to prefer eating tanoak acorns over either of the other acorns. All
the acorn maidens were painted when they first spilled out, and the
stripes painted on Black Oak Acorn are still present today. Tanoak
Acorn was not painted much, because she was angry that her hat was
not cleaned. Today, all the acorns still have their faces inside their hats
(the acorn cups).
A Yurok myth explains why American crows are black. Wohpekumeu (a woge) went to the sky and saw people eating acorns.
Because there were no acorns on the land, he stole one in his mouth,
and he was chased by people and sealed in a hollow tree. Birds pecked
him free, and in return, he offered to paint them pretty colors. Crow
wanted his body to be painted the red color of the woodpecker’s crest,
but Wohpekumeu told him that if he adopted the red color, he would
have to stay deep in the woods. Crow said he wanted to be near town,
which irritated Wohpekumeu. He told all the birds to close their eyes
while he painted them and then to fly off and look at themselves. He
painted Crow all black, which Crow saw as he flew into town. Crow
was angry, because he had worked the hardest to free Wohpekumeu. He
returned to the place where he had been painted and saw a few small
birds still around. He shoved them into the ashes, which is why they are
dull and not so pretty as other birds.
In general, the northwest California tribes were wealth oriented and
had well-defined property rights. Often, one man had many more rights
than he could possibly use, and he gained prestige by sharing those
rights with neighbors. At the coast, a man might have the rights to a
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First Peoples of the Rivers
111
particular sea stack (a protruding rock in the coastal waters) for the
harvest of mussels. Fishing rights in various pools were owned by individuals, and oak groves for acorn harvest were also allocated to individuals. These resources were threatened by natural catastrophes, but
the tribes of the Klamath region warded off disruptive events as much
as possible with the World Renewal ceremony, which sought to pacify
supernatural spirits for ecological sustainability. This ritual took place
once a year in many of the larger towns, at which time the richest men
(the closest thing to chiefs) would throw a feast for the surrounding
people up to 50 miles distant. The ritual, if conducted with great solemnity and attention to detail, would prevent the powers of nature from
interfering with the salmon runs or acorn crop and would ward off
earthquakes, floods, and the like. If a catastrophe occurred later in the
year, the Indians attributed it to a flaw in the ceremony.
Indian communities’ use of resources went hand in hand with their
great respect for what they took. Because they believed that spirits
resided in the fish, the deer, and the oaks, they saw close interconnections
between natural objects and humans. They felt a sense of responsibility
for any animal they killed and sought to use it as much as possible, not
only because they needed the resources it provided but also because the
animal had died for them. This philosophy tempered the urge to overharvest or overhunt and produced an ethic that allowed the people to
live with the land as well as on it. Yet the ocean provided a significant
source of protein for all the coastal tribes of the West: anadromous fish
that spent but a small part of their life cycle in freshwater rivers. Without that addition to their diets, the people of the rivers would have had
much smaller populations, no matter how well they stewarded the land.
The Yuroks, although they had access to ocean salmon, fished for
salmon in the rivers, much as the inland tribes did. River fishing was
more efficient than ocean fishing, because they could place drift nets in
the lower reaches and construct weirs farther upstream in shallower portions. They cleverly placed “crab bells,” dried crab carapaces, on the
poles supporting the drift net. The rattling of a crab bell signaled that a
school of fish had entered the drift net, and the time had come to empty
the catch. The weirs were intricately constructed dams, which the Yuroks
made by placing the poles across the stream and interweaving smaller
branches. This design allowed water to pass downstream but forced the
migrating fish to funnel into the narrow opening, where fishermen
caught them using woven nets. Similar weirs worked in reverse to capture outmigrating steelhead in the spring.
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First Peoples of the Rivers
The coast tribes had a variety of tideland resources available to them:
clams, mussels, crabs, surf fish, and kelp, the last of which was traded
upstream. They hunted seals with harpoons and harpooned sea lions
when they were basking on rocks. They also scavenged the occasional
dead whale. Lewis and Clark, during their stay at the mouth of the
Columbia River at Fort Clatsop in the winter of 1805–06, heard about
a dead whale along the coast of Oregon, but by the time they reached
the site, it was only a skeleton, having been butchered by the locals.
Northwest California coastal tribes also relied to a lesser extent on land
mammals such as rabbits and deer, which they acquired using snares
and stealth hunting with bow and arrow, and hunters occasionally
scored an unfortunate black bear. Grizzly bears were understandably
avoided. If Wiyot hunters came upon a black bear in a hollow log (most
likely redwood), they would quickly drive stakes into the open end of
the log, trapping the bear inside, and then suffocate the animal by
directing smoke into the opening.
Farther inland, salmon and steelhead were the primary marinederived sustenance, but land-based game increased in importance.
Hunters used snares for quail, rabbits, and deer, and hunting with bow
and arrow was important, too. In the eastern Klamaths, the use of pits
covered with branches was so common that the early gold miners, who
lost numerous horses in the pits, named this area the Pit River. The
Indians sometimes used fire to hunt deer in the inland regions. Hunters
would dig a hole adjacent to a deer trail, build a fire in it, and then at
night enter the warm hole with bow and arrow and wait for a deer to
pass. Occasionally, they used fires to herd deer, but Edward Curtis
noted that the Indians were occasionally trapped and killed by these
fires if the wind shifted or if they moved into dangerous areas ahead of
the fire.
Across the region, acorns were a staple of the diet, although the
species of oaks varied. Tanoak (not a true oak) also helped feed communities on the coast, as did California buckeye where it was common.
Communities stored the acorns until they needed them and then crushed
and leached the nuts with hot water to reduce the tannin content, which
is bitter tasting and interferes with protein digestion. They could then
consume soups and breads prepared from this mash.
The land was critically important to survival. Frank Lake, a student
of traditional ecological knowledge, likens the land to the people’s hardware store, grocery store, and pharmacy rolled into one. Baskets, fishing
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First Peoples of the Rivers
113
tools, food, and medicines all came from the land (see table 3), and the
stewardship to maintain its productivity came from the “managers”
who owned that particular property right.
Tobacco was the one crop that Indian tribes cultivated in northwestern
California. As John Harrington, an early ethnographer, noted, the
Karuk had many animal pets (dogs, bear cubs, raccoons, skunks, and
woodpeckers [which they penned in hollowed trees]) but only one plant
pet: tobacco. The native tobacco was widely grown across western
North America. The first mention by an outsider was in 1579 by
Sir Francis Drake, who visited Indians near Point Reyes (although the
exact location is still debated) and noted baskets and bags of tobacco.
Juan Francisco de la Bodega visited the Yuroks at Trinidad Bay in 1775,
noted gardens of tobacco, and described the pipes used to smoke it. The
species of tobacco that the Yuroks grew, Nicotiana quadrivalvis, is an
annual plant, and each autumn, at harvest, the natives separated the seeds
from stems and leaves. They stored the seeds for cultivation the next
spring and set the leaves in sweathouses to dry, later storing the leaves
in tobacco baskets on shelves in the houses where women and children
slept. The stems, of much less quality for smoking, were crushed and
often mixed with leaf to create a low-quality tobacco that the Indians
offered to visitors of little wealth or used as offerings to the gods (with
no insult implied). To throw good tobacco to the gods would unnecessarily diminish one’s wealth.
In the early spring, the men scattered along the hillsides to choose
garden places, and the tribes burned logs at these isolated, small garden
sites to fertilize them with “ash elements” such as calcium, potassium,
and sodium. This burning also helped reduce competing vegetation.
Shortly thereafter, they sowed the seeds and harrowed them with the
broken top of a nearby shrub. They performed occasional weeding but no
irrigation until the plants of the year were mature and ready for harvest.
The Indians invested considerable care in storing tobacco and created specific baskets for this use. Two-year-old hazel sticks provided the
basket foundation, and hillsides were burned on a rotational basis to
provide a continual supply of two-year-old hazel sprouts. Jeffrey pine
roots, obtained from pine trees growing on serpentine soils, served as
the floor of the basket. The sides of the basket had bear-grass for white
overlays, five-finger fern stems for black overlays, and chain fern fronds
for red overlays, which the basket makers dyed by wetting them with
spittle reddened by chewing white alder bark.
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table 3. selected plants used
by the karuk people
Trees
California laurel
Pacific yew
Ponderosa pine
Redwood
Sugar pine
Tanoak
White fir
White oak
Shrubs
California hazel
California wild grape
Cascara
Gooseberry
Mock orange
Ninebark
Poison oak
Rabbitbrush
Salal
Service-berry
Thimbleberry
Western Labrador tea
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Herbs
Bear-grass
Common horsetail
Five-finger fern
Indian tobacco
Leopard lily
Lupine
Pacific trillium
Soap plant
Spring beauty
White-veined wintergreen
Wild-ginger
Wild onion
Uses
Leaf oil for insecticide, twigs for basket
foundations, nuts for food
Bows, oars, bark tea for stomach aches
and kidney problems
Roots for basketry, nuts for food and for beads
Canoes, house planks, roots for basketry
House planks, resin for chewing gum, nuts
for food
Ground acorns for flour (most important flour
source)
Needles brewed for tea
Ground acorns for flour (not as tasty as tanoak)
Basket foundation, fish traps, nuts for flour
Raw berries for food
Bark as laxative tea
Raw berries for food
Stems for arrows, tobacco pipes
Shafts for obsidian arrows
Contraceptive, treatment of rattlesnake bites
Tea for colds and fever, mashed leaves
for toothache
Berries for dye, syrup, and cakes
Projectile points, berries for food
Raw berries for food
Medicine for high blood pressure
Leaves for basketry
Poultice for sore eyes, stems for sharpening
of mussel-shell scrapers
Stems for weaving black patterns on baskets
and clothing
Cultivation for smoking
Baked bulbs for food
Medicine for stomach problems
Eye medicine, remedy to stop excessive bleeding
Bulbs to stupefy fish, treatment of poison oak rash
Consumption of leaves to prevent scurvy
Root tea for stomach aches
Tea to treat colds, stomach disorders,
and earaches
Food flavoring, poultice for burns, boils,
and insect stings
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First Peoples of the Rivers
115
Pipes were typically linear, 4 to 6 inches long, more in the shape of a
clarinet than in the form of an English pipe in which the bowl is perpendicular to the stem. The Yuroks often used Pacific yew to make the
pipes, whereas the Karuk used mock-orange wood. The pipe makers
lined the bowls of good pipes with soapstone chipped off large river
rocks. The people typically shared the pipes but used them more as a
habitual act of friendship than in peace-pipe rituals such as those
observed elsewhere. Given the events to come, no amount of peace pipes
could have averted the destruction of Indian culture that began in the
mid-nineteenth century.
Because the Indian cultures were isolated from each other, most strife
was internal and thus was often mediated by the village headmen, who
had little formal power but harnessed the strength of the community to
enforce decisions. Crimes were generally resolved by restitution, but if a
poor member of the community could not pay, he or she became a servant, so slavery in a modified form was an institution of most communities. Rarely did wars break out, but they were not unknown. Among
the most memorable wars was that between the Yuroks and Hupas, not
only because of the size of the dispute but because both its cause and
settlement are unclear. The Yurok version is that some Hupas came
downriver to demand that a Yurok woman release her starvation curse
on them. When she insulted them, they pierced her with an arrow and
she died. The Yuroks retaliated by heading upriver, killing Hupas and
burning all the houses in a village; the Hupas followed up this attack
with a downstream raid some months later. Another Yurok version
describes attacks on Yuroks who had married Hupas during visits to
Hupa territory, instigating the Yurok attack as a retaliation. A Hupa
version is that the Yuroks came upriver unprovoked, attacked the Hupa
village, spurring a later retaliation by the Hupas, joined by some
Whilkuts and Chimarikos. All versions agree that large parties from
each tribe did major damage to a village of the other tribe. A notorious
liar, who is Yurok in one version and Hupa in the other, tried to warn
his neighbors, but they would not listen.
The war was fought between villages and communities, not between
tribes. In both accounts, attackers who passed uninvolved communities
of Yuroks and Hupas produced no reaction, suggesting that if two
villages had a quarrel, they were left to sort it out by themselves. Peace
was usually made by payment of damages by both sides, but later informants on this war were unable to describe how the villages reached a
settlement. Common practice was for each side to pay the other for the
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First Peoples of the Rivers
entire loss suffered, rather than having the winner pay the difference
between the losses. As Alfred Kroeber noted, this solution often took a
large toll on the winner, especially in the case of a big victory. Because
this battle, which probably took place between 1830 and 1840, was
among the largest ones in both Yurok and Hupa memory, its settlement
was likely quite large.
According to Edward Curtis, another war started when a young
Tolowa woman met a handsome young Karuk man at a Yurok village
dance. She left with him upriver, and the Tolowa sent a courier asking
for payment. At first rebuffed, the courier was then paid, but he was
ambushed and killed on his way back to the coast. The Tolowa attacked
the Karuk village of the young man, but few Indians were there, most
being in the hills for a ceremony. The Karuk later found that only one
of the attackers returned to the coast alive, all others being killed by
grizzlies, rattlesnakes, lizards (even Curtis added a “!” here), falling
trees, and various other disasters. In the end, each side paid the other
for those killed, and peace was restored.
Twenty years after Lewis and Clark spent the winter at the mouth of
the Columbia River, beginning the end of native civilizations of the
West, Jedediah Strong Smith came to California in 1826. Representing
U.S. fur interests, he moved north from Los Angeles, trapping beaver
along the way. His fur-trapping party spent two years making its way
north through the Central Valley and in 1828, the group traveled west
into Hayfork Valley, where they pursued their trade down the South
Fork of the Trinity River toward the coast. Their encounters with local
Indians were hostile, and they shot and killed several Indians to intimidate them and gain passage. Although Smith did some friendly trading
with the coastal Yuroks, his violent encounters with the interior tribes
were a precursor to the loss of most of his party to Oregon’s Umpqua
Indians later that year. They also presaged the destruction of the tribes
of the Klamath Mountains two decades later, when gold replaced furs
as the resource to exploit.
The discovery of gold in California is the stuff of legend. In 1848,
John Marshall, who worked with John Sutter on the lower American
River in a scheme to develop an agricultural and timber center based on
indentured Indian labor, accidentally stumbled on a yellow metal in the
stream. Ruling out iron sulfide, he concluded he had found gold. As
word spread of the discovery of gold, Sutter’s Mill was abandoned,
along with his idea of an agricultural utopia, and Indians, who had once
outnumbered whites ten to one, were suddenly outnumbered themselves
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two to one. On the upper Trinity River later that same year, near today’s
Douglas City, Major Pierson B. Reading’s party took out $80,000 worth
of gold on its first trip. This windfall initiated a stampede to the Klamaths
by miners from Oregon and other parts of California and began a
fifteen-year annihilation of the Klamath Mountain Indians. Historian
Hubert Howe Bancroft (1890) said of the gold rush’s influence on
Indian history that it was “one of the last hunts of civilization, and the
basest and most brutal of them all” (474).
The hunt was basest and most brutal in northwestern California.
Albert Hurtado explains that the isolation of the Klamath region tribes
from earlier Hispanic or Anglo influence likely made them vulnerable.
In the Hispanic contacts, restricted to Sonoma County and south, Indians
were integrated into the developing society. In contrast, the Anglo
notion was to expel Indians from areas where whites had interests. The
Sierra Nevada Indians, mostly Yokut and Miwok, had a much longer
history of contact with Anglos than did the Klamath tribes, so they
adapted more readily to the new invasion, although the gold rush was a
disaster for their society. In 1852, so-called domesticated Indians were
more than 10 percent of the population in the Sierra Nevada but only
slightly above 1 percent in northwestern California. The Klamath
Mountain tribes, although scattered and beaten, resisted elimination
and segregation until the end of that other war, the Civil War. Gold
money from California, deposited in eastern banks, was a significant aid
in the victory of North over South in the Civil War. The end of that war
coincided with the end of Indian dominance in the “northern district”
of California.
The miners coming into the region had no respect for the Indians or
their place. The miners were visitors who wanted to get rich and return
to some other place. The Indians had a strict code of honor concerning
property rights, and when the whites ignored this code, conflict was
inevitable. With limited places to live, and miners and Indians both
needing river frontage, although for different purposes, peaceful negotiations were few. Most California Indians became known by the derisive
label of “Diggers,” because they used tubers and bulbs dug from the
ground. In Trinity County, Indians were called “Wintoons.” The U.S.
Senate, responding to pressure from the California state government,
did not ratify temporary federal treaties establishing reservations,
because the state was loath to cede any lands to the natives. The constituents of state lawmakers had a different plan: a war of extermination, carried on by white Digger hunters, many of whom became
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First Peoples of the Rivers
“California volunteers.” After all, many whites considered California
Indians to be much less noble than the “savages” living elsewhere on
the continent. According to Heizer, “They were of the Digger tribes,
known as friendly Indians, the most degraded and defenseless of the
race, entirely destitute of the bold and murderous spirit which characterizes other tribes of red men” (254).
Almost immediately, Indians began to experience difficulty getting
enough to eat, not because they had violated their World Renewal ceremony but because they were in direct competition with white miners.
Laws were passed prohibiting their burning of forest openings. Cattle
were consuming the fruits of Indian bulb-foraging grounds. Miners
were muddying the streams to which salmon were returning. Indians
began to steal cattle to survive, and for loss of an Indian life, they retaliated by taking a white life. On the Klamath River, the Karuk in 1851
showed the federal Indian agent a bone with twenty-six notches marking white deaths and twenty-seven marking Indian deaths. But the
“law” of the time was a set of one-sided resolutions by miners. A jury
trial was “suggested” for any white who killed an Indian without cause.
No punishment was due if the killing was for cause, which included
almost any cause. For an Indian who killed a white, the punishment was
death without trial, burning of the village in which the killer lived, or
burning of the closest village if the perpetrator could not be identified.
Indian killing was also allowed for the theft of horses or as a preemptive strike to prevent robbery. The miners ignored even these feeble,
one-sided resolutions, and Indian hunting became unofficial policy in
the region. Men, women, and children were all targets. Adult males and
older women were killed, and younger women and children were sold
as concubines or slaves. No incident is more shocking than the Bridge
Gulch massacre.
In the summer of 1852, a Weaverville butcher headed east of town to
check on his cattle grazing there. When Colonel John Anderson’s mule
returned alone to town, a search party went out and found his body.
The cattle had been stolen or scattered, and a posse was organized to
find the Indians responsible. The search took the posse around Oregon
Mountain, then over Hayfork Divide and up the stream that is today
called Hayfork Creek. Two prospectors in the area happened upon
Natural Bridge, a limestone “bridge” created by dissolution of the rock
by water flowing under it. They saw a large Indian band, most likely
Wintus, in the broad hidden valley above the bridge and reported their
sighting to the posse. Without any evidence that these Indians were in
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fact the perpetrators of the crime, the posse ambushed the group early
the next morning as it readied for the day. The whites had surrounded
the small valley and began firing from all directions. Accounts of the
killing recall attacks on 150 men, women, and children. Several
wounded Indians escaped, 2 children were captured, and the rest were
killed. Other Indians of the region suffered similar fates.
The southwestern Klamath region had much less gold than the eastern
Klamath region did, and major conflict between whites and Indians was
delayed until the mid-1850s. Then, the story became much the same.
With white settlers occupying seasonal resource lands, cattle and sheep
grazing the traditional herb grounds, overharvesting of deer, and no
place to overwinter, Indians had difficulty finding food and shelter.
Whites could kill Indians who simply seemed to pose a threat to
livestock. Placing themselves as victims, whites perceived the genocide
as self-defense, creating, as historian Richard White has asserted, an
inverted view of conquest: the victors pose themselves as victims. This
inverted view was widely held across America, showcased in traveling
exhibitions such as that of “Buffalo” Bill Cody, and is still widely held
today.
The federal government dispatched the U.S. Army to the area, where
the soldiers found themselves in the unusual role of protecting the Indians
rather than fighting them. The standard operating procedure began with
a hungry Indian’s stealing a steer or mule to butcher. The owner of the
livestock would then kill the next Indian he saw, the Indians would kill
the next white, and then whites would kill a number of Indians to
avenge the dead white. The army was significantly understaffed and
could not efficiently play a mediating role, particularly with the rugged
terrain and troops stationed mostly on the coast (Fort Humboldt) or far
inland (Fort Jones and Fort Reading). The California volunteers who
were ready to assist the army were there mostly for blood and were
responsible for some of the worst massacres of Indians.
In 1860, hundreds of Wiyots were still living peacefully around
Humboldt Bay, but white ranchers were upset about cattle thefts and
attacked the tribe. On an isolated island in the bay, 55 Wiyots were
killed, along with 130 others in surrounding settlements, mostly
through slaughter by hatchet of women and children. At roughly the
same time, 250 Yuki were killed near Round Valley, and between 120
and 250 Wailaki were killed along the North Fork of the Eel River.
These and many other brutal massacres often began with the loss of a
few head of stock or as efforts to prevent future livestock depredation.
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First Peoples of the Rivers
Settlers, often solitary miners or isolated farmers, lost their lives in this
period as well, but the sheer magnitude of the Indian losses makes the
white losses pale by comparison. We can have no doubt about who the
conquerors were.
California law forbade Indians, blacks, and Chinese from filing any
legal complaint, and state law permitted indenture of Indians under
thirty-five years of age who were not on reservations. Posses roamed
around, capturing bands of Indians, and after killing the men, sold the
women and children to “apprenticeships” in the larger towns. A certain
irony exists in the fact that this army that was accompanied by and
cooperated with volunteers who sold Klamath region Indians into slavery would soon fight a war to free slaves in the southern United States.
An 1861 article in the Humboldt Times (cited in Keter 1999, 42)
opined, “What a pity that the provisions of the law are not extended to
greasers [individuals of Hispanic descent], Kanakas [Hawaiians], and
Asiatics. It would be so convenient . . . to carry on a farm or mine when
all the hard and dirty work is permitted by apprentices.”
There were a few uplifting stories. A Lieutenant Rundell heard of the
kidnapping of the wife and children of an Indian leader and helped him
file a complaint with a local sheriff. The kidnappers returned the victims
unharmed and paid for court costs. But these small victories were tantamount to bailing a large lake with a bucket. Meanwhile, pressure on
the remaining wild Indians continued. By 1864, the only areas with substantial Indian populations were the Mattole Valley, Hoopa Valley, and
southwestern Trinity County in the Yolla Bollys. Some tribes, such as
the Chimarikos in the middle section of the Trinity River (Big Bar to
Burnt Ranch) were essentially wiped out, although Alfred Kroeber did
interview two Chimarikos in the early 1900s. The army’s strategy up to
1860 was to organize campaigns to relocate Indians to reservations,
where they would have some level of protection. But with the start of
the Civil War, the regulars had left by late 1861 and were replaced by
California volunteers. By late 1864, the situation for the remaining
Indians was desperate. Being chased continually by the army and then
the volunteers, having little to no chance to store food, small bands
were surrounded and either surrendered or were killed. In January
1865, at the close of the Civil War, the army declared the hostilities concluded in Trinity County. Only a few “docile” Indians were left in their
original tribal homelands.
By 1860, the population of Indians across the entire state of California
was about the same as that of just the Klamath region Indians fifteen years
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earlier. Overall, populations continued to decline until 1900. The Klamath Mountains had few free-living Indians; most of those alive were
restricted to reservations, but Congress never ratified the original reservations set up in 1851. In 1855, an Executive Order mandated confinement of the northern Klamath tribes to the Klamath River Reserve, and
in 1864, the 12-mile-square Hoopa Valley Indian Reservation was
established for the Yuroks, Hupas, Chilulas, Whilkuts, Tsnungwes, Chimarikos, and Karuks. In 1870, the Round Valley Indian Reservation
was established for all the southern tribes, including the Yukis, Lassiks,
Wailakis, Pomos, Maidus, Yanas, and Wintus. Indians from numerous
tribes, many formerly enemies, had to share land once more widely
occupied by a single tribe. The Hoopa reservation was expanded in
1891 by adding a Klamath River corridor from the mouth, one mile on
each side of the river, upriver about 50 miles. Soon after, the Klamath
extension and the Round Valley Reservation were taken from common
ownership and allotted to individual Indians as part of the Allotment
Act of 1887, yet such lands were still held in trust by the federal government. The remainder was opened to non-Indian settlement.
Mary Arnold and Mabel Reed, two “field matrons” in the U.S. Indian
Service who spent two years on the “rivers” with the Karuk in 1908–09,
wrote about life on the upriver portion of the Klamath extension. A practical mix of white and Indian customs had become the culture in the area,
which the special agent for Indians in California described in 1909 as the
“roughest field in the United States” (quoted in Arnold and Reed 1957,
13). Some customs, such as the deerskin dance, had survived to that time
and still survive today, but much of the hunter-gatherer economy was
gone: by then, white flour had replaced acorn meal.
In 1920, Indians could have fee title to land, but those who opted for
deeds found themselves liable for local taxation, and with the allotments too small for an individual to make a living on and pay annual
taxes, Indians mostly sold them cheaply to private timber interests. In
1934, during the New Deal, Congress passed the Indian Recognition
Act (IRA), which repealed the Allotment Act. The IRA recognized as
tribes only those Indian organizations that had elected councils and had
well-defined geographical boundaries. Some tribes, such as the Chinook
near the mouth of the Columbia who helped Lewis and Clark during
the winter of 1805–06, have never been recognized by the Bureau of
Indian Affairs because of the interpretations of the IRA. Local landless
tribes such as the Tsnungwes, who live at the mouth of the South Fork
of the Trinity River, are still trying to gain recognition as a tribe. In the
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First Peoples of the Rivers
Klamath region, with its proliferation of villages rather than centralized
tribes, meshing the local culture with the political structure of the federal government has not been easy.
The loss of much of the Indians’ culture made even tribelet identification difficult at times. The controversy over the New River Indians
exemplifies this problem, which stimulated an academic battle between
two of the foremost Indian authorities in the early 1930s. Dr. Roland
Dixon of Harvard University had done his dissertation work on the
Maidu tribe (a North Coast tribe south of the Klamaths) and had studied
under the legendary anthropologist Franz Boas, as had Alfred Kroeber.
Dixon had conducted pioneering salvage work to understand the relationships of the central Klamath tribes in the first decade of the twentieth century, at which time some tribes had only a few living informants.
In 1905, he wrote an article reporting that the language of the Indians
of the New River was somewhat distinctive from that of the surrounding tribes, but he concluded from the few words available that the language stock was common with neighboring Shasta dialects.
C. Hart Merriam, the famed naturalist, had developed an interest in
anthropology about the same time that Dixon did his work, but
although he focused on California Indians, he was overshadowed by
Alfred Kroeber, who had started the Department of Anthropology at
the University of California, Berkeley. Merriam was a pioneering naturalist, but a less noted anthropologist, and, according to Robert Heizer,
was rumored to be jealous of both Dixon and Kroeber. The battle
became public in 1930, when Merriam claimed a “strange tribe” of
Indians called the Tlo-Hom-Tah’-Hoi had lived on the New River. He
made this distinction based on ten words that were distinctive from
those of neighboring languages. He accompanied these conclusions with
boasts of his “excellent and doubly checked” (284) vocabularies in
contrast to the “unlucky guesses” (293) made by Roland Dixon in his
earlier work.
Half a century later, Robert Heizer, who had volunteered to manage
the C. Hart Merriam collection at the University of California and had
published in Merriam’s name much of the material that has made
Merriam a prolific contributor to the literature on California Indians,
suggested that Merriam’s scholarship in ethnography was deficient. In
his introduction to the 1979 edition of Merriam’s Indian Names for
Plants and Animals, Heizer noted that Merriam was untrained in linguistics, had a “bad ear,” and “invented his own kind of ethnography”
(1). Back in 1930, Roland Dixon responded to Merriam’s paper with a
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spirited rebuttal to “Dr. Merriam’s Tlo-Hom-Tah’-Hoi,” suggesting that
the tribe was a figment of Merriam’s imagination. Of the thirty-two
words presented by Merriam, Dixon noted that only four had no reasonable analogues in neighboring dialects, and the four had quite different equivalencies in the various Shasta dialects, hardly justifying a
claim of a distinct language. Noting Dr. Merriam’s “aggravatingly
unscientific spelling,” Dixon (1931) turned Merriam’s own closing sentence against him: “Such inferences from insufficient evidence should
sound a warning against the all too frequent offense of guessing” (267).
Subsequent ethnology experts have been divided on the existence of this
tribe. Both men made significant contributions to the knowledge of
North Coast Indians, but by the time they began work at the very end
of the nineteenth century, only fragments of the Klamath region Indian
cultures were left to study, and there is much we will never know.
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chapter 9
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Gold Is Where You Find It
The modern history of the Klamaths is one largely of exploitation of
natural resources: minerals, timber, and water. Katharine Hepburn,
speaking to Humphrey Bogart in The African Queen, summarized the
attitudes of the times: “Nature, Mr. Alnutt, is what we were put on this
earth to rise above.” In the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, natural
resources were prized for what they could produce: gold, lumber, irrigation, and power. The Klamaths are not unique; use and overuse were
the models of the time. Much of value produced in the region went elsewhere, with little appreciation for the land left behind. Most of the cultural development of the region, particularly land ownership and land
use, has been closely tied to these activities. This cultural history provides an important backdrop, leaving behind challenges and providing
opportunities for a sustainable future.
In 1938, Hollywood briefly moved to Weaverville to film Gold Is
Where You Find It with Olivia deHavilland, George Brent, and Tim
Holt. The film depicts a conflict between gold miners in the Sierra
Nevada and downstream farmers (based on the Sawyer decision, which
I discuss a bit later in this chapter). Holt later starred as Humphrey
Bogart’s sidekick in a more famous gold-fever story, The Treasure of
the Sierra Madre. In the Klamaths, gold seemed to be everywhere: in
the streams and rivers as well as on ridges and mountaintops. In fact,
much of the lode gold was along a fault zone separating two of the
major Klamath terranes: the Central Metamorphic Belt and the Western
124
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Gold Is Where You Find It
125
Paleozoic and Triassic Belts (see chapter 2). Although gold was treasured by ancient Middle Eastern civilizations for thousands of years, the
Native Americans here were not metalworking tribes and appear to
have ignored the gold they must have seen in the streams. The gold rush
of 1848 turned their culture upside down, just as it upset the gravels of
the rivers.
High temperatures and pressures beneath the earth’s crust concentrated gold in places we find it today. In the Klamath Mountains, two
processes were at work to concentrate the gold. One was the subduction of rocks as the North American plate moved west. The associated
high temperature at depth metamorphosed the buried rocks and
expelled water, precipitating ore nearer the surface. A second process
occurred from the intrusion of granitic magma, with hydrothermal
fluids transporting ore and subsequently precipitating gold and other
ores as the metals moved into cooler surrounding rocks. Yet gold often
appears at sites with no associated granitic plutons, so the granitic process
is not the only one that caused gold deposition. Often these deposits
were along cracks and fissures, creating veins of concentrated ore.
Miners found gold in the veins and in downstream placer deposits in
places where the vein had eroded into stream deposits. Because gold is
heavy, it concentrates at the bottom of these stream deposits. Miners
used a variety of technologies to exploit the veins and the placer or
stream deposits.
After the discovery of gold on the American River near Sutter’s Mill,
Major Pierson Reading discovered Klamath gold on Clear Creek and
in the summer of 1848 left his rancho near today’s town of Redding
and revisited a place on the Trinity River where he had earlier done
some trapping. He named the river the Trinity, erroneously going along
with the popular belief that it entered the Pacific near Trinidad Head.
His crew of whites and Indians came away with $80,000 of gold before
being chased off by a group of Oregonians. Reading and his group were
the forerunners of the gold rush. The earliest miners showed up knowing little to nothing about mining, and many of them eventually left
knowing little more. Technology was crude, but environmental damage
was limited because of the small scale of operations. Some miners got
lucky, finding large nuggets along streams. The earliest miners largely
used gold panning to recover their finds. They shoveled stream gravels,
or placer deposits, into the flat gold pan and swirled it to concentrate
the heavier rocks by gravity to the bottom of the pan. This method
limited production to about a cubic yard of material a day. Coarser gold
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Gold Is Where You Find It
could be picked out from the concentrate once most of the other rock,
known as gangue, was floated out of the pan. At Douglas City, there
were so many miners that if they had lined up, there would have been a
panner every 8 feet along the Trinity River. The few miners fortunate
enough to find the original sources of gold in rock veins adjacent to the
streams could remove chunks of gold with their knife blades.
The abundance of gold in California became known worldwide.
Miners from every part of the world showed up, most notably from
China. In 1848, there were reputedly 54 Chinese in the entire state, but
that number swelled to 25,000 by 1852, mostly because of immigrants
from southeast China. Trinity County had 2,500 Chinese immigrants
during this time. The industrious immigrants banded together in the
camps and small towns, doing service-related work as well as mining.
They encountered discrimination but fared better than the Indians:
“John Chinaman is pretty numerously represented along the riverbanks.
It is no question as to his industry, for when did you find a John idle? It
is singular that this degenerate race should be suffered to dwell in the
midst of the chosen people, while the aboriginal people of the soil, who
showed every mark of generosity and friendship, should be hunted
down like wild beasts” (Cox 1940, 37).
A prohibitive state tax on foreign miners was passed in 1850, which
backfired in that most foreigners, including the Chinese, were jobless
and flocked to unprepared cities. The tax was repealed but passed again
in 1852 at $4 per month. The Chinese continued to mine and by 1853,
had amassed enough capital to construct the first joss house (a Chinese
temple) in Weaverville (the temple burned down twenty years later and
was rebuilt in its current form in 1874). The largest local loss of Chinese
life was self-inflicted, due to a tong war between Cantonese and Hong
Kong factions. The combatants had local blacksmiths forge a variety of
iron weapons for a battle near Five Cent Gulch, close to the current
intersection of Highways 3 and 299 in Weaverville. Reputedly, between
eight and twenty-seven Chinese were killed. One European who shot
into the melee was himself fired upon and killed by an onlooker. The
Cantonese, who were outnumbered and looked to be losing, ultimately
won when they pulled pistols out from under their jackets. After the
war, peace settled in, and the Chinese became known more for their
noisy firecracker celebrations than for violence directed against others.
Towns soon replaced the mining camps, but most buildings had
rough wood frames. Much of Weaverville, like many early towns of the
West, burned down several times before brick construction appeared.
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Gold Is Where You Find It
127
The sturdy brick buildings, with windows framed with iron shutters,
began to appear on blocks of wood-frame construction, and by 1859,
twenty such buildings fronted the main streets of town. Fires still
occurred, in 1866, 1897, and 1905, the latter burning much of the
remaining Chinatown. The development of water systems and modern
firefighting equipment stopped fires in town from spreading. Today, the
biggest fire threats to towns are fires that start in wildlands and move on
wide fronts into urbanized areas, such as the Oregon Mountain fire in
2001 and the Junction fire of 2006, both of which burned to the west
edge of Weaverville; the Lowden Ranch fire of 1999, which burned
parts of Lewiston; and the French Gulch fire of 2004, which burned
part of the historic town (twenty-six houses and seventy-six outbuildings) along Clear Creek.
Within a year of the discovery of gold, technological improvements
such as sluice boxes and rockers replaced the gold pan in most operations. Miners could procure much more material, and thus recover more
gold, this way. The sluice box required a steady stream of water, so
miners created small diversions of creeks and rivers to feed the sluices,
and they were thus able to process as much as several cubic yards of
material a day. The box had a corrugated bottom that trapped heavier
material as the lighter rocks and sand flowed through and back into the
stream. Development of the sluice allowed the mining and processing of
large volumes of gold-bearing gravels next to a stream; the process
depended on a source of water. This method was the beginning of
hydraulic mining and the appropriation of water rights. Water rights
were described in “miner’s inches,” which although they sound like a
unit of volume, are instead a measure of flow rate. In California, a
miner’s inch is equal to 1.5 cubic feet per minute (or cbm, although cfm
would seemingly be more clear), or 11.2 gallons per minute, but the definition varies elsewhere. In British Columbia, a miner’s inch is equal to
1.68 cbm, and in New Zealand, it is a whopping 60 cbm.
Because the geology of the gold-bearing deposits of the Sierra Nevada
was similar to that of the Klamath Mountains, observations made in
one place found application in the other, but the technologies were
usually refined first in the Sierra Nevada. In both places, miners found
“old gravels” away from current stream networks, deposited by fossil
rivers tens of millions of years ago. In the Klamath Mountains, some of
these deposits were as much as 800 feet deep. The most prominent were
the “auriferous” or gold-bearing gravels of the Weaverville basin (see
figure 18). Ambitious venture capitalists of the day dreamed of large-scale
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Gold Is Where You Find It
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Figure 18. Gold-bearing gravels of the Weaverville basin. The
graveled area stretched from the East Fork of the Stuart Fork
south to Oregon Mountain just west of Weaverville. (Source:
Diller 1911. Illustrator: Cathy Schwartz.)
operations that could remove the gold sitting on these dry ridgetops. In
the meantime, large-scale operations in the rivers were expanding. In
1851, the Arkansas Dam, named for the investment company that constructed it, diverted the Trinity River just upstream of Junction City to
allow mining of the main channel for about a mile downstream. After a
couple of winter blowouts, the dam held for several years, but it had been
abandoned by 1857, because the location did not yield sufficient gold.
The first hydraulic mining occurred in the Sierra Nevada in the spring
of 1852, where miners applied water to placer deposits to loosen them
for removal. “Frenchy” Chabot used a hose at the end of a flume to
concentrate pressure and actually hose the gravel down into his sluice.
Soon, larger and larger operations appeared, and the debris discarded in
the rush for gold began to clog the streams.
Downstream in the Sacramento Valley, so much debris was deposited
that boat travel was impossible, and mining operations left up to 8 feet
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Gold Is Where You Find It
129
of gravel on downstream farmlands. A plume of muddy water flowed
out of San Francisco Bay, giving new meaning to the “Golden Gate.”
Sacramento Valley farmers formed the Anti-Débris Association and
went to court as their fields became gravel dumps and marshes. In 1884,
the issue was resolved with the Sawyer decision, which forbade further
dumping of gravel into streams and thereby terminated hydraulic
mining, but only in the Sierra Nevada. The decision applied only to the
Sacramento and San Joaquin river drainages. The Klamath drainage,
because it drained to the Pacific without affecting major farmland areas,
was exempt from the Sawyer decision on the basis that operations there
caused no damage and generated no controversy. Only those Klamath
region rivers that drained into the Sacramento, such as Clear Creek,
were protected from further hydraulic mining.
Hydraulic mining began at the same time in the Klamaths that it did
in the Sierra Nevada. An 8-mile flume served Sebastopol, on the East
Fork of the Stuart Fork, by 1853. The flume helped miners find gold in
the northern portion of the auriferous gravels. Hydraulic mining along
the Klamath River began at the same time, often powered by water
wheels, which in turn were driven by diverted flows of the Klamath.
Early hydraulic mining used canvas hose wrapped tightly with manila
rope to increase its resistance to pressure. A nozzle at the end confined
and directed the water. These hoses were later replaced with metal
“giants,” but these larger hoses were no aquatic Bigfoots. The giants
were huge metal nozzles connected to iron pipes that carried water from
an elevated reservoir. The giants pivoted on a large, rock-ballasted base
and could shoot an 8-inch stream of water 200 feet distant against a
graveled hillslope. By 1880, a ditch had been extended beginning along
the east side of the Stuart Fork above Oak Flat. A siphon carried the
water across to the west side, where the flow of Owens Creek and Van
Matre Creek joined in to assist in the hydraulic mining of Buckeye Ridge
(now south of the Stuart Fork Arm of Trinity Lake) in the center of the
auriferous gravel belt. The company that was mining the area, Buckeye
Water and Hydraulic Mining Company, owned 1,100 acres of goldbearing gravel on Buckeye Ridge, and its ditch cost over $100,000, so
gold mining was becoming a rich man’s game. After the Sawyer decision, hydraulic-mining companies had one of two options: go bankrupt,
or go west to the Klamaths. The smaller mining towns in the Klamaths
eventually dried up. Ridgeville, also known as Golden City in the early
1850s, was essentially a ghost town by 1870. It is now being reborn as
an upscale subdivision next to Trinity Lake.
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Gold Is Where You Find It
The La Grange Mine is synonymous with hydraulic mining in the
Klamath region. The construction of the La Grange ditch to the upper
reaches of the Stuart Fork provided a steady source of water for the erosion of the entire side of a mountain just west of Weaverville, along the
southern tip of the auriferous gravels. Baron and Baroness de La
Grange, representing the interests of the La Grange Hydraulic Mining
Company, purchased existing claims in the Oregon Gulch area. Water
from a reservoir at high elevation, fed by the La Grange ditch, flowed
through iron piping to the “giants” that systematically washed the
mountain away. As the slurry flowed into a large sluice, it was washed,
and the cobbles and boulders poured out of the sluice while the gold
was collected by amalgamation with mercury retained in crevices along
the bottom of the sluice. The gravels were rich enough for the baroness
to remark that she recovered $700 in gold from a 6-foot sluice box set
up to catch debris from minor road realignment.
During its life, the La Grange Mine moved about 100 million cubic
yards of gravel and netted about $8 million in gold. At its peak production after the La Granges sold their interests to others, the La Grange
mine was the largest hydraulic operation in the world. Sluices light
enough for a man to carry had morphed into 2,400-foot-long sluiceways
that were 4 feet high and 6 feet wide. They could carry 1,000 cubic
yards of material an hour, and the water could carry boulders as heavy
as 7 tons. Most of the gold was recovered in the first several hundred
feet of the sluice, but substantial fine gold washed out into the tailings.
One of the dead mine’s “giants” sits today along Highway 299, overlooking Oregon Gulch, the depository for the tailings, which in some
spots exceed 200 feet in depth. During the construction of Highway
299 across Oregon Mountain in the 1930s, the hydraulic operation was
reopened to help excavate the right-of-way, although workers used a
nearby water source in place of the then-unusable La Grange ditch.
Hydraulic mining was finally outlawed in 1948, a century after the gold
rush began.
Mining operations commonly used mercury to increase the recovery
of fine gold that was lost in earlier passes. Heating the mixture of mercury and gold in a retort to about 675oF would vaporize the mercury,
leaving a relatively pure cake of gold, and the mercury could be captured for reuse by cooling and condensation in the bottom of a bucket
of water. Cinnabar ore was mined to produce mercury, or quicksilver,
primarily from mines in the Coast Ranges. Two of the largest local
quicksilver mines were the Altoona and Integral Mines, at the headwaters
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Gold Is Where You Find It
131
of the East Fork Trinity River. Cinnabar Sam’s, a restaurant in Willow
Creek, is named after a supposed historic miner who exploited a
cinnabar deposit in the upper New River area. However, this area never
produced a significant amount of mercury, and Cinnabar Sam has probably done better in the restaurant business. The Altoona Mine produced
about five flasks daily, each containing about 75 pounds of quicksilver.
In the early days, much of the mercury used to recover gold was released
into the environment. It either slipped into the streams from sluices
along with the unwanted gravel, or it vaporized when the amalgamations were heated in frying pans over open fires. Many of the miners
did not trust commercial firms to separate their gold from quicksilver
fairly, so they did a little home cookin’, and many were surely poisoned
by mercury vapors. Residual mercury from nineteenth-century gold
mining remains with us today in the streams of the Klamath Mountains.
It complicates restoration of the main stem of the Trinity River (see
chapter 16) as managers attempt to minimize disturbance of methylated
mercury during reshaping of the river channel.
Lode mining, which extracts the gold from its primary sources in
quartz veins, was the next gold boom in the Klamaths. Starting in 1872,
with the discovery of rich lodes in the Deadwood area between French
Gulch and Lewiston, miners began to burrow into the hillsides, following the quartz veins and extracting ore. The ore then needed to be
crushed for the miners to obtain the gold. Early ore crushing was done
with crude arrastras that resembled a mortar-and-pestle approach.
Arrastras were circular and consisted of a bed of hard stone with a post
in the middle and a cross-member in the post. To the cross-member
were attached large stones, which were dragged around the center post
to crush the ore placed on the flat rocks beneath. The power in the crudest arrastras might be human, with donkey or mules being a step up,
and waterpower being the most advanced. Where the paste of the
crushed ore came in contact with mercury, an amalgam would form on
top of the flat rocks that the miners would remove after sufficient gold
collected in it. Later, and in all the larger operations, steam-powered
stamp mills did the crushing. The mills crushed the ore by using a waterpowered camshaft to lift and drop heavy iron “stamps” onto the gold
ore, which was fed into an iron box enclosure surrounding the stamps.
A small two-stamp mill operates today at the Jake Jackson Historical
Museum in Weaverville, but larger mills were common. Lode mining
appears to have peaked in the period around 1910, when the Canyon
Creek mines near Dedrick were in full production. The Globe Mine, at
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Gold Is Where You Find It
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Figure 19. A typical dredge configuration. Dredge is moving from right to left.
(Source: May 2001 Trinity, Trinity County Historical Society, Weaverville,
CA. Illustrator: Cathy Schwartz.)
the headwaters of the Little East Fork, sank a 1,700-foot tunnel into the
high ridge country between Canyon Creek and the Stuart Fork, all the
way through the mountain, and crushed the ore in a twenty-stamp mill.
Dedrick, which served the Globe, Chloride, and other Canyon Creek
mines, was a flourishing town in 1900. Botanist Alice Eastwood (1902)
described it as the “terminus of civilization” (45), but it had been abandoned by the start of World War II and is identified today only by a
stone historical marker. The King Solomon Mine up the Salmon River
used an open-pit method to remove finely divided gold that was dispersed and incorporated in sulfides (mostly pyrites) mixed with quartz
and metamorphosed limestone. Discovered in the 1890s, the deposit’s
major producing years were in the 1930s, and the mine never reopened
after its closure at the start of the war. The ban on gold mining during
the war forced increased mining of metals that were strategic to the war
effort. For example, the Gray Eagle copper mine opened near Happy
Camp in 1942 on a deposit that had not been mined for twenty-five
years. It was the largest producer in California at the time.
Removal of alluvial gold by dredges was in full swing by the time
that lode mining hit its peak in the early twentieth century. Dredges
were essentially boats with large digestive systems: they removed gravels
from quiet water, spit out the boulders, and then sorted the smaller material for the gold within. The most common configuration (see figure 19)
placed a dredge in a constructed pond deep enough to float the dredge.
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Figure 20. The arc pattern of gravel deposited from a dredge near Junction
City. (Photograph courtesy of the Trinity County Historical Society,
Weaverville, CA.)
The “chewing” end of the dredge was a bucket-and-chain system that
pulled material into the dredge. Buckets came in various sizes, from 1 or
2 cubic feet to the huge Estabrook dredge buckets with capacities of 20
to 22 cubic feet. The dredge was held in place with a “spud,” a large
steel cylinder driven into the bottom of the pond. The dredge pivoted on
the spud, so that the tailings were spit out in an arc (see figure 20).
When the arc was complete, the spud was lifted and the dredge repositioned; the pond slowly moved across the landscape as the dredge excavated in front and filled in the rear. Dredges were built as early as 1860 in
New Zealand, and the first Trinity dredge was built by the Kise Brothers
in 1887. It floated just north of the point that is now Lewiston Dam in
1889 and washed away in the big flood of 1890. Several dredges were
working in the region by the early 1900s: on the Trinity, the Klamath,
and the Scott rivers. Dredges were also active in the Sierra Nevada
placer deposits, because they operated adjacent to the rivers and did not
appreciably add debris to the stream. However, they left a wasteland of
boulders adjacent to the stream. The Sierra Nevada dredges were often
quite large, over 500 feet long and capable of displacing 4,000 tons. They
could dig 125 feet into the gravels. Klamath dredges were usually smaller,
displacing 1,000 to 1,500 tons and capable of digging 30 to 40 feet
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Gold Is Where You Find It
deep. One of the major challenges was to build a dredge that fit the river
it was mining. In Coffee Creek, miners imported a dredge piece by piece
up to the confluence of Adams Creek, to mine the gravels there, but the
large boulders made the operation a failure. The dredge was disassembled, leaving behind the boulder piles that still exist today in the upper
valley, and later was reconstructed in South America.
In 1905, about 1,000 acres were considered suitable for dredging in
Trinity County, with another 1,000 in Siskiyou County and 1,500 in
Shasta County. Eventually, a much larger area was dredged as technologies improved. The Estabrook, the largest wooden dredger ever
built, could work more than 6.5 acres a month. Dredging continued as
hydraulic mining died out and lode mining declined. After the Second
World War, during which all gold mining shut down, the dredge that
operated near Junction City was moved to Minersville in 1948. It sank
once, was refloated, but eventually succumbed when Trinity Lake was
filled. The last dredge to mine the upper Scott River near Callahan in
1938 was moved to Brazil in the late 1970s to mine diamonds. The
larger dredges could move as much material as the La Grange mine did
but didn’t transport the debris much past the length of the dredge.
Smaller dredges, called dragline dredges or doodlebugs, were developed
in the 1930s to exploit the smaller streams. The dragline dredge was a
small boat that processed material fed to it by a “dragline” bucket suspended on a cable from a crawler crane that moved on the stream bank
in front of the boat. Generally, it left behind small linear piles of tailings,
which later allowed visitors to identify the mining method. The East
Fork of Coffee Creek, another small stream, was mined by a Canadian
company in the 1930s that used shooter dams. The company constructed temporary wooden dams in the stream and then blew them up,
allowing a 20-foot-tall wave of water to shoot down the stream and
clear the overburden and leaving the gold-rich bottom of the stream
exposed. The East Fork today still has unstable banks resulting from
this repeated sluicing of its channel.
A number of people criticized dredges as fairly inefficient ways to
recover gold, because they would break down if their buckets repeatedly hit bedrock, which was where much of the gold was deposited.
Nevertheless, the Trinity dredges were reasonably productive. A good
deposit might average 50 cents of gold per cubic yard, and a dredge
could excavate 250,000 yards per month. If the dredges got all the gold,
they could earn their owners $125,000 a month, but no machine has
ever been designed to get it all. At Callahan, the dredges averaged over
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Gold Is Where You Find It
135
$40,000 per month, with one ten-day record take of 1,875 ounces
(worth $65,625 at the old price of $35 per ounce). Recovery per cubic
yard was much greater than at the La Grange hydraulic mine, but of
course, the dredges were working gravels of much different age and
quality, so comparisons are difficult.
In 1971, the United States deregulated gold and allowed its price to
vary. Prices increased from $35 per troy ounce to over $800 in 1980,
and since then, the price has declined to about half that amount. A new
gold rush began, but this time in a different world. New environmental
laws made large-scale operations next to impossible, and conflicts arose
between land-management agencies and the new gold miners. The technology that we see today is primarily suction dredging, done from rafts
anchored in the streams (see figure 21, top). A small motor on the raft
creates suction that pulls water, sand, and gravel from the stream
bottom to the raft, where the gold is separated from the gangue and the
rocks and sand are dumped back into the stream. Mining operations no
longer use mercury to amalgamate the gold. Instead, they use riffle mats
to capture the gold and simply collect it off the mat.
When a suction dredge is cruising the bottom of a river, it always
encounters surprises. One such surprise was Percy. A team of suction
dredgers that was working the main stem of the Trinity River in the
1980s came upon a gold tooth. This find, of course, generated a lot of
conversation over the campfire that night. The next day, the rest of
Percy began to emerge from under an old tree stub buried in the blue
clay that coated the bedrock of the river. During the next two days, the
team recovered sixteen coins, a crescent wrench, a pocket watch with
the initials P. C. on the back, a small knife, and a wallet with a small
gold coin. The gold coin likely was Percy’s lucky piece: on one side was
a small picture of a golden bear; on the other was the inscription One
Half Dollar, California Gold. A few rivets and parts of a belt and a
buckle were all that were left of his clothes, except for a knee-high laced
boot with bones inside. Percy’s lucky piece apparently deserted him in
the 1920s or early 1930s, based on the dental work and the dates of the
coins. Old-timers in the area recalled a Depression-era family that lived
across the river from the highway. Each day the father crossed the river
by boat with his children to allow them to catch the school bus. One
day the father did not appear to pick up the kids, and he was never seen
again. The suction-dredge team gave all the items it found to the county
coroner. Though gold may be where you find it, occasionally you find
other remarkable things.
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Gold Is Where You Find It
Figure 21. Top: Suction dredge operating on the Salmon River. Bottom:
The Modern Gold Mine on the upper Trinity River.
Gold mining is inherently exploitive, because the gold removed is not
renewable in any socially meaningful time frame. How damaging it is to
the environment is a complex question with more than one answer. The
type of extraction method has certain direct impacts, and the process of
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137
separating the gold from the gangue has indirect impacts. The earliest
miners, such as Major Reading, had such little impact that people who
visited the area the next year would have had difficulty finding evidence
of the extraction. But gold panning, and its descendants the rockers and
sluice boxes, soon increased the ability to work larger volumes of placer,
if only by dint of the sheer number of miners present in the early days
of the gold rush. Any concerns about these more efficient mining techniques were soon overshadowed by the advent of hydraulic mining,
which tore apart sizable areas of the Sierra Nevada as well as the Klamath
Mountains. The Sawyer decision recognized the downstream impact on
farmers and by effectively prohibiting hydraulic mining in the Sierra, it
allowed those streams to regrade over the next few decades and restore
aquatic habitat for invertebrates and fish. The remaining slug of sediment eventually made its way to San Francisco Bay to create one of the
first, albeit inadvertent, landfills to occur there.
Hydraulic mining, through the miners’ ability to divert water,
enabled exploitation of almost any land downstream of the diversion.
During the heyday of such activity in the Sierra Nevada, some lands
were so degraded that they still look like moonscapes 150 years later.
Yet others that were mined have a conifer cover that to the untrained
eye looks like any other forest. However, the site quality of the land, its
ability to grow trees, is likely much lower than it was before the mining
took place. The same story applies in the Klamaths. Along Highway 3
west of Trinity Lake are lands that were obviously hydraulically mined,
and some areas have continued to erode, with pygmy trees desperately
trying to reclaim the land. But in other areas, the forest has come back,
and though the new growth may differ in some respects from the
primeval forest, the area appears to be recovering.
The era of dredging has left the most permanent scars. Waves of boulders litter the streamsides where the dredges worked. In the early 1900s,
when people expressed outrage about the appearance of the land, the
California State Mining Bureau argued that dredging reclaimed farmland by improving the fertility of the land, and it published photographs
of such reclaimed lands that looked like the planet Mars with a couple
of planted trees surviving. Junction City, Carrville, Callahan, and many
spots along the Klamath are wastelands of rocks from the dredging
activities that occurred there. The beautiful meadows that lined their
streams are forever gone.
Callahan dredging operations began in 1903 and expanded with
the arrival of the Yuba Dredging Company. Downstream dredging
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Gold Is Where You Find It
operations were eventually stopped at the edge of the Wolford Ranch.
John and Absolum Wolford had settled in the valley in 1854, running a
productive cattle ranch. In the early 1900s, John’s widow, Margaret
Christina Wolford, and her four sons ran the ranch. A small dredge had
been hauled in to the upper Scott Valley by John Wolford II, who
worked for a freight company at the time. Along with a second small
dredge, areas in the vicinity of Callahan were excavated by small companies. The much larger Yuba dredge came in later and began to dredge
down the banks of the Scott River toward the Wolford Ranch. But Margaret, backed up by her sons, was shocked at the transformation of the
productive grazing and agricultural lands of the upper valley, which
these dredging operations had turned into rock piles. She politely
refused to sell the ranch, thereby stranding the dredger at the Wolford
property boundary. With no easy way to dismantle the dredge and move
it downstream of the Wolford Ranch, the dredge had to turn around
and dredge back upstream. The Wolfords, through their love of the land,
saved the Scott Valley downstream from their ranch from dredging.
One dredge operated by the Trinity Dredging Company between
1913 and 1925 was unique in that it had no tailings stacker. It covered
the coarse gravel and cobbles with the fine gravel and sand, which hastened recovery of the land. This system must have been economically
inefficient, because later dredgers did not incorporate this design.
Lewiston and Trinity lakes now cover most of the area worked by this
dredge, and the dams themselves contain immense quantities of dredge
tailings. The smaller streams, having been worked with smaller equipment, appear to have recovered better, with trees growing amid the rock
piles lining the banks. The effects of dredge methods on the smaller
streams more closely approximated natural flood impacts, and the same
natural mechanisms have aided the recovery of vegetation on the
smaller streams. However, the riparian zones in these areas, where vegetation should reflect the moist nature of the landscape, often appear no
more moist than the uplands because of rocky debris piled by the stream
edges. Vegetation has to establish itself on coarse-textured rock debris,
and the process can be slow, with the plants that are best adapted to
drought having an edge over more moisture-dependent species.
Today, the most widespread gold-mining technique, in number of
people, is recreational panning of surface deposits, but suction dredging
moves the greatest volume of material. Suction dredging moves only a
few thousand cubic yards of material per year in the region and essentially drops it in place. Dredging creates turbidity directly downstream,
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Gold Is Where You Find It
139
but most studies indicate that the effect is transient, invertebrate populations are not severely affected, and high flows generally rework the
stream bottoms so that the impact largely disappears by the next season.
One of these studies focused on Canyon Creek. Some dredgers argue
that with the Trinity Dam muting the high flows of the Trinity River,
they are actually doing the work of nature on the river’s main stem by
shuffling the stream bottom. The Department of Fish and Game regulates suction dredging in California, but seasonal permits vary considerably by stream, sometimes allowing activity during anadromous fish
runs. The main-stem Klamath River between the Salmon River and
Scott River and the main-stem Trinity from the South Fork confluence
to the North Fork confluence are open year-round for suction dredging.
Smaller tributaries have more restrictive limits: the main-stem Salmon
River is open July 1 to September 15, for example. One reason that suction dredging has had limited impact is its limited scale. Measuring the
impact of isolated operations in larger stream systems is difficult, but
effects would become more apparent if more operations were active. If
gold prices were to soar as they did in the late 1970s, and if suction
dredging were to intensify, the associated environmental impacts might
be more intense as well.
Larger-scale operations are still legal, but they face more constraints
than they did in the early days of hydraulic and dredge mining. One
such operation is the Modern Gold Mine (see figure 21, bottom), a
modified dredge operation on the upper Trinity River floodplain above
the confluence of the Little Trinity. Unlike the old days, multiple permits
are now required: an environmental evaluation approved by the U.S.
Forest Service, the California Department of Fish and Game, and Trinity
County. Under the antiquated 1872 Mining Law, the Forest Service can
require mitigation measures for operating plans but cannot disallow
mining outright (see chapter 14). Under California’s Surface Mining
and Reclamation Act, the Modern Gold Mine had to acquire a bond of
$50,000 before it could begin the operation. The mining operation used
an excavator to about 40 feet depth and then took the material to a centrally located extraction device. The operation ended up losing money
and was not active in 2006, with the claims up for sale. The bond money
will be used to rehabilitate the site after the operation is complete. This
type of operation clearly has impacts, but much of the area looks as it
might have looked soon after the 1964 flood, and the reclamation bond
will help restore the old floodplain. The restoration will likely include
regrading of the floodplain and planting of willow and other streamside
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Gold Is Where You Find It
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Figure 22. Early twentieth-century dredge spoils in the Scott Valley,
photographed almost a century later.
vegetation. This type of dredging is still fairly disruptive to the environment, but it creates much less permanent destruction than the old methods did. Decades after rehabilitation, this site will be recovering, whereas
the Scott Valley dredge rocks will look just the same (see figure 22).
One of the longest-lasting, significant, yet invisible impacts of mining
has resulted from the sloppy use of quicksilver to amalgamate the gold.
Over 200 million pounds of mercury was produced from California
mines, mostly in the Coast Range, and about 26 million pounds found
use in California gold mining. The best placer mines annually lost about
10 percent of the mercury, and an average loss was 30 percent. The U.S.
Geological Survey estimates that an average sluice lost several hundred
pounds of quicksilver per operating season. It slipped through cracks in
the sluice and was washed out with fine gold particles in the gravel slurry.
Additional mercury was lost in stamp-mill and dredging operations.
Locally, production of quicksilver from the Altoona and Integral mines
also created a mercury-contaminated environment. Though natural
sources of mercury are present, they are at low levels in unmined gravels.
At the sites of the gold and mercury mines, and areas downstream, levels
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Gold Is Where You Find It
141
are still several times the background levels, more than a century after
deposition.
The loads of mercury released into the streams could have longlasting effects on small aquatic organisms, fish, and higher portions of
the food chain, including humans. Elemental mercury becomes oxidized
and then methylated through sulfate-reducing bacteria and other
microbes that live in low-oxygen environments. Methylmercury can be
incorporated in biological tissues, and it biomagnifies: the concentration of mercury increases each step up the food chain. If one were to
mirror the story of DDT biomagnification so eloquently written by
Rachel Carson in Silent Spring with the story of methylmercury, the title
might be Silent Stream. Concentrations of mercury in fish, downstream
from some historic mining operations, are at levels toxic to humans and
to other organisms that eat fish, such as ospreys and eagles. In humans,
mercury poisoning causes hair loss, depression, memory lapses, and
tremors. Dr. Jane Hightower, a San Francisco physician, noticed these
symptoms in those of her patients who ate a lot of sushi and swordfish.
Although the source of the mercury in this case was ocean fish, the
same pattern occurs with mercury-laden freshwater fish. The blood of
Dr. Hightower’s patients had high mercury levels, which declined along
with their symptoms when they reduced their fish intake.
More than a century after the glory days of gold mining, Trinity Lake
bass and catfish contain mercury concentrations that are high enough to
prompt the California Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to issue
a warning to avoid excessive consumption (more than 2 pounds of fish
per month for a 150-pound person) of bass, catfish, and to a lesser
extent, other fish from Trinity Lake, the Trinity River above the lake,
Coffee Creek, Carrville Pond, and the East Fork Trinity River and its
tributaries. For women of childbearing age and for children under the
age of six, the EPA suggests lower consumption levels. I used to think
that the sole threat from the river was falling in at high water, and I still
have difficulty accepting that such a beautiful river carries significant
health risks from century-old mining.
In addition to gold and mercury mining, copper mining also occurred
in the Klamath Mountains, but large operations started much later
than the gold rush. Most of the copper was used in early telephone
cables, and the boom years were the early 1890s to 1919 in the eastern
Klamaths. Miners found major copper deposits in an arc that follows
the arms of Shasta Lake (created after the mining in the 1940s), and
both copper mines and smelters to process the ore lay along this arc.
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Gold Is Where You Find It
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Figure 23. Remnants of snags near today’s Shasta Lake. These snags are the
only reminders of copper-smelter operations in 1922, after the boom years
of the mines. (Source: USDA Forest Service photo by E. N. Munns.)
Some of the copper mines began as silver or gold mines. Among the
miners at the Iron Mountain operation was Charles Ruggles, who along
with his brother, John, was one of the notorious Ruggles brothers who
held up the Weaverville-Redding stage in 1892. In the process of robbing the Redding-bound stage of its Wells Fargo strongbox, they killed
a man, and they made off with between $25,000 and $70,000 in gold.
Charles received a load of buckshot in the face during the holdup and
was soon captured, but John successfully got away with the loot. John
was eventually captured, and the two were in the Redding jail awaiting
trial, when a lynch mob hauled them from the jail one July night and
hanged them. John reportedly never revealed where he hid the strongbox, and the gold has never been recovered.
Annual copper production peaked in 1909, when almost 60 million
tons of ore were removed from local mines such as the Mammoth, the
Keystone, the Iron Mountain, and the Balaklala. The smelters needed
wood to burn, and much of the local forest was cut. The forest that was
not cut was killed by the poisonous fumes that the smelters spewed
across the landscape. Fumes were so thick that visibility was measured
in feet, and the county hospital in Shasta moved to Redding to escape
them. More than 240 square miles of mixed-conifer forest were transformed into a raw, eroding moonscape (see figures 23 and 24), which
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Figure 24. Vegetation and stream changes at Butter’s Dam on Big Backbone
Creek (on the west side of today’s Shasta Lake) as a result of copper mining.
Top: 1904. The forest is mixed evergreen with ponderosa pine, Douglas-fir,
canyon live oak, and California black oak. Bottom: 1939. Background vegetation is mostly brush and grass. The pool behind the dam has filled in with
sediment that has washed off the denuded hills. (Source: USDA Forest Service
photos, 1904 by D. M. Ilch and 1939 by Rene Bollaert.)
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144
Gold Is Where You Find It
has recovered at best to a scrubby landscape of manzanita, poison oak,
and a few ghost pines nearly a century later. Copper mining also
occurred from 1915 to 1930 in the western Klamath Mountains near
Horse Mountain, southwest of Willow Creek, and at Island Mountain.
Ore at Horse Mountain had to be hauled to rail, so miners needed to
find high-quality ore (more than 20 percent copper) to justify the
expense. Island Mountain was reachable by rail, and miners shipped
ore from both locations to Tacoma, Washington, where a smelter operation processed it. As a result, the landscape around Horse and Island
Mountains was not poisoned like the area around Shasta Lake. Later,
after the local smelter closed, Shasta Lake ore was also shipped by rail
to Tacoma.
The Iron Mountain Mine, just northwest of Keswick, now produces
among the most acid mine waters ever reported (with a negative pH!),
and the area has been classified as a federal EPA Superfund site. The
waters emanating from this mine contain up to 200 grams per liter of
metals, including substantial amounts of cadmium, zinc, and arsenic. A
regular wine bottle filled with this water would contain one-third of a
pound of these metals! Water leaching through abandoned ore piles and
from the mines has reached the Sacramento River at times and killed
hundreds of thousands of fish and contaminated the Redding water
supply. Rocks in local creeks have been stained a bright turquoise. Fortunately, remediation operations are under way, and they are reducing
some of the toxic threat, yet scientists expect the problem to continue
for the next 3,000 years.
The glory days of mining in the Klamath Mountains have long
passed. They have left a legacy of turned-over or washed-away mountains and streamside terraces, poisoned hillsides, and toxic waste. The
romantic gold panner of the 1800s is far from the real picture of industrialized exploitation that the glory days memorialize. Those days are
largely now the stuff of local museums, and we are lucky it is so. Yet the
threat of large-scale gold mining is still locally with us. In 2004, Master
Petroleum, Inc., a Weaverville company with origins in Texas, proposed
to expand its 40-acre mine in Canyon Creek to an additional 22 acres
of public land, which is legal under the currently applicable Mining
Law of 1872.
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chapter 10
Green Grass and Green Gold
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The limited open country and widespread forests of the Klamaths
supported the Native American communities of the region long before
the days of the gold rush. Natives fished and hunted but, with the exception of growing tobacco, cultivated little land and kept little domesticated stock. Soon after the gold seekers arrived, supporting industry
developed to feed both the miners and the structures they required for
housing and mining activities. The isolation of the region, broken only
with a few trails, demanded that crops, livestock, and timber be provided
locally.
green grass
Ranchers played a vital role in sustaining the gold-rush mining activities
of the region, and ranching has persisted to the present as a more stable,
albeit smaller, industry than either logging or mining. As different as the
white culture was from the Indian culture that preceded it, the land
shaped the cultures in similar ways. The idea of a world bounded by
mountains in every direction, with little interaction with distant communities, was common to both cultures. The isolated Klamath Mountains had few roads well into the latter half of the nineteenth century,
and until 1858, none connecting the goldfields to either the coast or the
Sacramento Valley. Travel of any distance was constrained by lack of
roads and seasonal high water. Development of local sources for grains,
145
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Green Grass and Green Gold
beef, and dairy was inevitable the day that gold was discovered.
Ranches were successfully established in the eastern Klamaths that year,
but development in the southwestern Klamaths was delayed more than
a decade due to continuing friction with the Indians.
Ranchers soon imported cattle and sheep in great numbers to graze
the high country of the Trinity Alps in summer, and many of the place
names there reflect this ranching history. Foster Lake is named for
William Foster of the Trinity Farm and Cattle Company (TFCC) at
Trinity Center; Ward Lake, for Whit Ward, the chief cowhand for
TFCC; Van Matre Meadows and Van Matre Creek, for Mart Van
Matre, a Lewiston cattleman; Morris Meadows, for James Morris, a
Weaverville cattleman; Stoddard Lake and Meadows and Siligo Meadows, for John Stoddard and Louis Siligo, local cattlemen; Portuguese
Meadows, for John Costa, cattleman; Conway Lake, for Fred Conway,
another cattleman, and Eleanor Lake, for his wife; Bowerman Meadows, for John Bowerman, a Minersville cattleman; Black Basin, for local
sheep men; Mount Eddy, for Nelson Eddy (no, not the movie actor), an
upper Shasta Valley rancher; and Stonewall Pass, not for Stonewall
Jackson but for a wall of stone that blocked grazing stock from moving
from Siligo and Van Matre Meadows to Red Mountain Meadows. Some
of the names were less celebratory: Poison Canyon was so named
because of the deaths of a large number of sheep after their consumption of Sierra laurel, a poisonous shrub. At the end of summer, most of
these stock were moved to the Scott Valley or to the Sacramento Valley
for winter, although exporting was still difficult because of the lack of
rail access until the 1880s. Stock had to be driven to riverboats at Red
Bluff if they were to be marketed outside the region.
Open lands at lower elevations became sites for dairy operations or
a variety of crops. Coffee Creek Ranch began as a farm for hay and vegetables, and Norwegian Ranch, a swampy 160-acre meadow just south
of the original Trinity Center that was part of a cattle, grain, and vegetable operation, reportedly grew a record 23-pound cabbage in 1860.
Lower Canyon Creek was filled with hay farms, fruits, and vegetables
by the late 1850s. In Weaverville, the Felter Ranch grew strawberries
and sponsored an annual all-night Strawberry Festival in late spring
that attracted guests from many miles around.
The largest agricultural valley in the eastern Klamaths was Scott
Valley, originally a swampy, poorly drained valley that was full of beaver.
Thomas McKay, in 1836, trapped 1,800 beaver out of Scott Valley and
later settled there. He claimed the area had the highest concentration of
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Green Grass and Green Gold
147
beaver he had encountered in trapping widely across the West. As early
as 1851, oats were planted in Scott Valley, and by 1855, Scott Valley
was producing 60,000 bushels of potatoes, 24,000 bushels of barley,
60,000 bushels of wheat, and 37,500 bushels of oats. The presence of
grain meant that spirit production was not far behind. By 1854, a
whiskey distillery was operating on Whiskey Creek (a now-defunct
name) in Scott Valley, and almost every mule heading to the Salmon
River country had a sack of flour on one side and a barrel of whiskey on
the other. The flood of 1861 transformed Scott Valley into “one vast
sea, upon whose bosom floated the debris from a hundred farms” (Wells
1881, 42). The distillery on Whiskey Creek also floated away. But the
farmers persevered, and in 1877, production of grain exceeded that of
1855 by 50 percent. Much of this output was consumed locally. In
1873, ranchers shipped 138 tons of produce alone from Scott Valley to
the mines in Salmon River country, all by mule train.
The most impressive agricultural venture in the early days was Forest
House. Several disenchanted miners in Scott Valley decided that the
Klamaths needed a “place like Sutter’s” (Burton 1965, 1)—that is, like
John Sutter’s utopian agrarian effort on the American River. Sutter’s
effort failed after the discovery of gold, when all his workers left to find
their fortunes. In 1863, the Forest House entrepreneurs established a
large farm in the headwaters of the East Fork Scott River, and by 1867,
they had 10,000 apple trees, the largest orchard in California. The nursery contained 10,000 fruit trees and all kinds of berries. Naturally, cider
and wine production flourished, which Forest House claimed was produced specifically for family use. In 1870, Forest House produced 600
gallons of claret wine, a harbinger of the emerging wine industry in the
region today.
In contrast, the southwestern Klamaths (Hyampom and southwest
from there) were the slowest part of the region to develop. The area was
very isolated, so that starving and desperate Indians could easily
ambush individual ranchers. When the large-scale killing and roundup
of Indians and their relocation to reservations was largely complete in
1865, the exploitation of what James Bartlett called the “splendid grazing lands” began in earnest (“South of the South Fork” 1978, 5). This
area was almost a topographical reversal of the rest of the Klamaths:
the natural openings used for crop and grazing lands were often found
on ridges rather than valleys. In this subregion, cattle were initially preferred over sheep, because they provided a wider range of products for
isolated ranchers—work animal, leather, beef, and milk—and cattle had
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Green Grass and Green Gold
fewer predators than sheep. But beyond cows’ ability to meet the immediate needs of the family, the animals were bulky and difficult to transport. Wool could be transported out of the region much more easily
than could a large bovine. Sheep soon became the preferred stock,
although herders and dogs were required. Cattle outnumbered sheep
about 15 to 1 in 1855, but by 1870, sheep outnumbered cattle in
Humboldt County 170,000 to 26,000. As early as 1860, a good sheepdog was worth $150 if it would aggressively chase bear and coyote but
not deer or sheep. Its typical reward for such heroic behavior was cold
mush, with an occasional feast of meat. By 1880, sheep ranchers were
shipping almost a million pounds of wool from Eureka and Shelter
Cove. A rough, snowy winter in early 1890 killed all but 11 of 3,000
sheep on one ranch, along with a majority of sheep on most ranches in
the southwestern Klamaths. The development of rail transportation
from the south, which allowed shipment of cattle to San Francisco; burgeoning demand for beef from redwood lumber camps on the coast;
and competition from wool growers in Southern California began to
favor cattle production over sheep ranching by 1890.
Land tenure in the eastern Klamaths was fairly stable by 1870, but in
the southwestern Klamaths, the end of the Indian “problem” ushered in
another problem. Gang violence was common in attempts to consolidate rights for grazing, water, and land. The isolated ranches were easy
targets for hired thugs to rustle cattle and either frighten off or kill
ranchers on smaller properties. One rancher described this life as a
“rough, tough, half-outlaw style of living” (Jones 1981, 340). George
White and his brother William Pitt were among the early settlers who
decided to expand their ownership in southern Trinity. George boasted
that he controlled most judges in the area, and a San Francisco newspaper judged him to be the richest rancher in Northern California. From
the 1870s to the 1890s, George ruled the roost in the area, and anyone
who opposed him was either harassed or killed. At least nineteen mysterious killings occurred in the Long Ridge area during this time.
Poor Bill Nowlin was an early rancher who irritated George White
by forcing one of White’s sheepherders off his land at gunpoint. Nowlin
was arrested and incarcerated in Weaverville for a couple of months.
When he was released and returned home, his house and fences had
been burned, his sheep were gone, and White’s sheep were grazing his
land. After a failed attempt to poison Nowlin, White sent an assassin,
who was killed by the faster-drawing Nowlin. This killing earned
Nowlin an eight-year prison term, but he was released after five years
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Green Grass and Green Gold
149
table 4. grazing permitted
in klamath national forest
(Number of Animals)
1908
1910
1918
1924
1936
1947
Cattle/Horses
Sheep/Goats
Hogs/Others
Total
9,200
12,500
10,000
10,061
4,714
3,200
4,100
24,000
32,000
4,818
1,508
550
3,600
2,000
800
276
0
0
16,900
38,500
42,800
15,155
6,222
3,750
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source: Armstrong n.d.
and came back to find his house, barn, and fences burned again. Nowlin
stayed in the area, but his case was typical of the plight of smaller ranchers in the area. The southwestern Klamaths were a place to be avoided
by the proper citizens of Weaverville and Hayfork.
By the 1890s, relative peace came to the southwestern Klamaths, and
the ranching community there stabilized, with some families still living
on or near the original homesteads. The next biggest change for ranchers across the Klamaths was the beginning of the forest-reserve system,
which eventually resulted in the regulation of grazing on public lands.
Before 1906, livestock had freely grazed the high country for decades.
These forest reserves were later renamed “national forests,” and ranchers needed a grazing permit to graze the high country. The Trinity Land
and Cattle Company was reportedly the first recipient of a federal grazing permit. At first, there was little knowledge about proper numbers of
stock, and throughout World War I, numbers steadily increased (see
table 4). Control of livestock numbers began soon thereafter, and the
heavily grazed high country slowly began to recover. “Recovered”
meadows meant that plants covered most of the ground, not necessarily
that the native vegetation had recovered. Some loss of species was likely
inevitable, although we have little basis on which to reconstruct the historic diversity of the high-country meadows.
After World War II, ranchers in the western Klamaths saw no future
in timberland once it was cut. A new crop would take generations to
grow to maturity, whereas grazing or hay production produced an
annual yield. Ranchers clear-cut and repeatedly burned timberlands to
convert them to rangeland. But the attempt to convert timberland to
range was hit and miss: sometimes it worked well, and at other times, it
simply resulted in a conversion to brush fields. Economic analyses by
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Green Grass and Green Gold
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Figure 25. A worldview from Hayfork, conceptually similar
to the Yurok view of the world in figure 17. (Source: Adapted
from poster in Jake Jackson Memorial Museum, Trinity
County Historical Society, Weaverville, CA. Illustrator:
Cathy Schwartz.)
Adon Poli and E. V. Roberts of the University of California suggested
that only on the lowest-site-quality lands, those that were not very productive for timber, was such conversion profitable in the long run. Conversion attempts continued until the economic value of timber increased
during the late 1950s, while livestock values declined.
This isolated region shapes its people as much as its people shape the
land. A 1930s advertisement for Hayfork (see figure 25) closely mirrors
the Yurok worldview (figure 17), yet both cultures would deny they had
much in common. The town is the center of the universe. Beyond recognizable local communities or watering holes is a boundary separating
the valley of Hayfork from places beyond. There is no connection to the
outside world but simply roads that lead to nowhere. The physical elements, in this case a stylized sky instead of ocean, dominate the other
world, and the importance of other communities decreases with distance from Hayfork. Community isolation remains higher in Trinity
County, southeastern Humboldt County, and western Siskiyou County
than in surrounding areas.
Over time, agricultural lands have been subdivided for houses, some
of the hay meadows near the gold-bearing rivers have been dredged,
and dams such as Shasta and Trinity have transformed historic open
country in the lowland Klamaths into lakes. Two developments in
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151
recent decades will continue to supplement the existing agricultural
activity in the Klamaths: one illegal and one legal. The illegal industry,
and by far the largest cash crop in California, is the growing of marijuana (also, “grass,” “boo,” “bud,” “ganja,” “maryjane,” “weed,” and
many other names). In the 1970s, Humboldt, Mendocino, and Trinity
counties became known as the Emerald Triangle (a takeoff on the
opium-growing Emerald Triangle of southeast Asia) because of the high
quality of the weed grown there. This area was the largest producer of
marijuana in the United States at the time, but the high value of the
crops, and their clandestine nature, led to confrontation and violence:
booby traps, shootings, and kidnappings. Concentrated law enforcement eventually drove much of this activity out of the region or indoors
and has become a model for reducing pot-growing activities. However,
large marijuana-growing operations are now common across the length
of California, and gardens are still tended on private and public lands in
the Klamaths. Law enforcement is fighting an uphill battle. In 2005,
112,000 plants were removed from Shasta-Trinity National Forests,
three times the amount that was removed across the whole of California
fifteen years earlier. An individual mature plant has a street value of
several thousand dollars, and the resulting profit potential has encouraged drug cartels to supplant the historic individual entrepreneur. The
pressure on the growers has increased, with law-enforcement personnel
seizing a million plants worth $4.5 billion across California in 2005
(a twentyfold increase since 1990), making most identifications from
helicopter. Though growers have damaged some lands in the process
(through erosion, pesticide use, garbage, and litter), these effects happen
in legal agricultural operations, too. Roger Rodoni, county supervisor
for rural southeastern Humboldt County, questions the effectiveness of
spending public funds ($4 billion nationwide on marijuana eradication
in 2004) with no visible reduction in activity. Yet legalization, for all the
sales tax it might generate, carries social burdens as well, and the debate
will continue, just as the grass will keep growing in the Emerald Triangle.
The most surprising legal growth in the agricultural sector has been
cultivation of grapes for the emerging wine industry in the region. On
the east side of Trinity Lake, Alpen Cellars began growing white wine
grapes in the 1980s on the East Fork Trinity River, and other grapegrowing operations have flourished in Lewiston and Hyampom. Alpen
Cellars makes Pinot Gris and Chardonnay from East Fork grapes and
a Sangiovese from Hyampom Valley grapes. Potential production (up
to 4.5 tons per acre) is less than that in other grape-growing areas in
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Green Grass and Green Gold
California (which produce 7 to 10 tons per acre), but the quality is quite
high. Yet this yield is much higher than Pinot Noir plantings in off years
in the Willamette Valley of Oregon, which have produced under a ton
per acre. In 2004, the U.S. government formally recognized a “Trinity
Lakes” viticultural area, consisting of about 90,000 acres surrounding
Trinity and Lewiston lakes down to Douglas City, even though only
about 30 acres across that wide area are currently planted in grapes
(compared to about 500,000 acres across California). This recognition
will be a major marketing advantage for local grapes and wines, because
it allows a designation of origin for local wines.
Development of better transportation into the region, so that residents can reduce their dependence on locally grown produce, and the
destruction of alluvial farmland by gold dredging and dams, has limited most modern local agricultural development. For example, only
Alpine and San Francisco counties currently have lower agricultural
output in California than Trinity County, at least through legal crops.
The two largest regional valleys, Scott (Siskiyou Co.) and Hayfork
(Trinity Co.), still are large hay producers, but the area now imports
most vegetables. Conversely, the access to larger markets will be a boon
for local wineries, which can now distribute Trinity Lakes wines around
the world.
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a lot of logs
In contrast to the limited amount of agricultural land, plenty of forestland and trees exist in the Klamaths. It might appear that the trees are
growing faster than we can cut them or that perhaps we haven’t cut very
many. The truth is that we have cut quite a few trees, and most cutover
lands have regrown new forests. The region probably has more trees
now than ever before, but these trees tend to be, on average, smaller
than the average one in historical forests. The history of logging in the
region is colorful and complex. But there are many shades to this history, depending on when events happened and who had the rights to
harvest. The earliest loggers, of course, were the Indians, but their lack
of metal technology limited the impact they could have on the land.
They often used trees that had fallen and split the stem into planks for
use in building houses and other purposes.
Exploitation of Klamath timber by whites followed the track of the
gold rush. Water-powered mills operated in Sebastopol and Santa Cruz
(both near San Francisco) by the early 1840s, but operators had no way
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to build a mechanized mill in the Klamaths until the 1850s, when wagon
roads finally pierced the upper Trinity River region. The earliest type of
mill was a long pit over which a log was placed, with one man at the pit
bottom, eating sawdust, and the other astride the log. Using a long
crosscut saw known for obvious reasons as a “misery whip,” the men
hand sawed planks off the log. Surely, one of the pit sawyers must have
invented the phrase “This is the pits.”
By the time the gold rush had attracted white immigrants, Mexico
had ceded California to the United States, and despite claims from the
Indians that the lands were theirs, the Klamaths became unrestricted
public domain controlled by the federal government for the hopeful
miners streaming in to find their fortunes. The policy of the United States
was to divest its lands to private ownership as an incentive to settle the
West. The Preemption Act of 1841, the Homestead Act of 1862, and the
Timber and Stone Act of 1878 all provided ownership opportunities for
individuals who honestly settled on the lands to which they received title.
But the largest beneficiaries were the railroads that served the West as a
result of the Railroad Land Grant Act of 1866. To encourage the construction of rail lines, the United States gave the railroads ownership of
alternate sections of land (each a square mile) for a distance of 20 miles
each side of the tracks. If the land adjacent to the tracks was already in
private ownership, the strip could be extended to 30 miles from the
track. This approach created a checkerboard ownership pattern of public
domain and private ownership in wide swaths along railroad rightsof-way, a policy that complicates good land management even today.
Fraud became rampant as ownership of “green gold” was consolidated into large companies. The intent of disposing of the public
domain, as naïve as it might seem today, was to encourage settlers to
live sustainably on 160-acre blocks to which they were given title. On
the coast, “settlers” were brought in; each settler staked out a land
claim, installed a doll house 12 by 14 inches (the law specified a 12 by
14 cabin, implying but not specifying that the measurement was in feet),
and then sold the parcel to a land and timber company. Much of the
valuable redwood region was “settled” in this manner, which accounts
for the high proportion of privately owned land there (about 75 percent),
versus 30 to 40 percent private ownership in the Klamaths, where the
timber largely consisted of less valuable “whitewoods” like pine and fir.
The railroad companies, like the timber companies, also violated the
terms of the law, and the Oregon and California Railroad land grant is
a classic example.
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Congress, in 1866, granted the states of Oregon and California the
usual checkerboard ownership, with the authority to designate a company to build a railroad and receive the lands in return for the construction costs. Under this law, it was quite legal for, and in fact
expected that, these companies would sell the land to recover the costs
of rail construction. But no company came forward to construct the line
in either state, so in 1869, Congress reauthorized the land grant, specifying a new deadline and setting forth three conditions for selling the
lands: the purchaser had to be a bona fide settler, no individual could
purchase more than 160 acres (a quarter square mile), and the land had
to be sold for $2.50 an acre or less. In both Oregon (the Oregon and
California Railroad Company [O&C]) and California (the California
and Oregon Railroad Company [C&O]), these restrictions were commonly ignored. In 1870, the C&O Railroad Company reorganized as
the Central Pacific Railroad Company, and in 1887, it became the
Southern Pacific Railroad Company. By this time, Southern Pacific also
controlled the O&C Railroad Company. In 1903, Southern Pacific realized the financial power that its land base provided and discontinued
the sale of land. In Oregon, the state legislature thought that this new
policy would hurt settlement of the region, and by 1908, it had convinced Congress to reclaim all unsold “O&C lands.” In 1916, after
much litigation, Congress passed an act returning 2.4 million acres in
Oregon to the federal government as recovered public-domain land.
Management of these O&C lands fell to the General Land Office, and
later to its successor, the Bureau of Land Management. In areas where
the railroad checkerboard had been carved out of lands later designated
as forest reserves, now called national forests, the reclaiming of the land
resulted in a checkerboard where the Forest Service and Bureau of Land
Management manage alternate sections under different management
direction, creating a bureaucratic nightmare that has yet to be untangled. The recent Northwest Forest Plan has homogenized some of the
disparate management issues (which I discuss later in this chapter and
in chapter 15).
In California, the railroad checkerboard lands stretched from the
Sacramento River valley west into the Klamath Mountains, reaching
about 10 miles west of existing Highway 3. Unlike Oregon’s legislature,
California’s was more effectively lobbied by Southern Pacific, which
had successfully marketed the settlement of Southern California.
Southern Pacific also had much more to lose in California, because it
owned more than the old C&O railroad land grant that parallels
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today’s Interstate 5. Through its successful lobbying, the railroad retained
its position as the largest private landowner in the state, with its holdings including the checkerboard lands of the Klamath Mountains.
Southern Pacific temporarily merged with the Santa Fe Railroad, and
the new entity’s land holdings became The Santa Fe Pacific Timber
Company. The company sold its lands to Sierra Pacific Industries (SPI)
in 1987, the year of the big fires in the Klamaths. When the smoke
cleared, SPI had increased its holdings by over 500,000 acres, and over
80 percent of these new holdings were in Trinity, Shasta, and Siskiyou
counties.
SPI is a family-held dynasty whose president, “Red” Emmerson,
started in the mill industry in Arcata with his father in 1949. By 1974,
the company had incorporated and gone from private to public ownership and back again. The company now owns over 1.6 million acres in
California and runs fourteen sawmills; in 2003, it did $1.3 billion in
sales. Emmerson is considered the largest landowner in the United
States, with holdings worth $2 billion to $3 billion, although by the
early 2000s, he was much less active in company management. Most of
the company’s Klamath holdings are in the eastern portion, but SPI is a
major player in the future of forestry in the Klamaths. SPI’s timber harvest has been much more aggressive than has that of its predecessor,
Southern Pacific, and SPI has involved itself in local controversies,
receiving criticism for too much clear-cutting and closure of the Hayfork
mill, actions that were perhaps economically sensible for the company
but were less sensitive to local people and the land.
Bracketing the western Klamaths are the holdings of the Simpson
Timber Company, another powerful family-held company. Forged in
Washington state in 1890, Simpson expanded into California and now
owns over 400,000 acres, primarily in the redwood belt west of the
Klamath province. About one-third of the company’s lands are in the
lower Klamath River area. When the public domain of the West was
being carved up, the Klamaths were fortunate in being so remote and
in having forests that, though diverse, were not as economically valuable as more accessible forests like the redwoods. Outside of patented
gold claims and railroad grants, much of the Klamaths remained unreserved public domain into the late 1800s. In 1891, Congress passed the
Forest Reserve Act, which reserved no actual forest but allowed the
president to set aside and reserve “any part of the public lands wholly
or in part covered with timber or undergrowth . . . as a public reservation.” President Benjamin Harrison promptly set aside fifteen reserves
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covering 13 million acres, and his successor, Grover Cleveland, added
another 5 million acres. In 1897, Cleveland added thirteen more reserves
and 21 million acres and, in response to substantial criticism of this
expansion, supported the Organic Act of 1897 that essentially defined
the mission of the reserves.
The reserves were managed under the Department of the Interior,
which had previously managed the lands as public domain. But a burgeoning Bureau of Forestry in the Department of Agriculture, led by
Chief Gifford Pinchot, managed to wrestle the 63 million acres of forest
reserves from the Department of the Interior to the Department of Agriculture in 1905, as part of the creation of the Forest Service. The
reserves were renamed “national forests” in 1907, setting in place the
modern national forest system. In the Klamath region, the Forest Service
created the Klamath, Shasta, Six Rivers, and Trinity National Forests.
The national forest system has since grown to 191 million acres, and the
government has consolidated its administration, but more significant
than its increase in size has been its shift in mission.
The Forest Service recognized that recreation on national forest lands
was an important use of the lands, but the national parks, in place since
the 1872 creation of Yellowstone National Park, were the anointed federally managed “grounds” for tourists. The early Forest Service didn’t
help its image by lobbying for control of the parks and suggesting that
limited logging would be tolerated there. Gifford Pinchot, after being
fired as chief of the Forest Service, added fuel to the fire by his support
in 1913 of the Hetch Hetchy Dam that flooded the Hetch Hetchy Valley
in Yosemite National Park, a valley comparable in grandeur to Yosemite
Valley, for the purpose of supplying domestic water to San Francisco.
His vocal but unsuccessful opponent was John Muir, who died shortly
after losing the battle for Hetch Hetchy, and these two ex-friends
immortalized the schism between use and preservation. When the
National Park Service was created in 1916, friction between the Forest
Service and this new competing land-management agency continued for
decades. New national parks were often carved out of national forests.
The Forest Service responded by creating its own system of administratively defined wilderness, beginning with the Gila Wilderness in New
Mexico championed by noted conservationist Aldo Leopold. In the
Klamaths, administrative designation of the Trinity Alps Recreation
Area, consisting of 136,000 acres, took place in 1926, and in 1932, the
area became the Trinity Alps Primitive Area, one of the largest primitive
areas in the national forest system.
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In 1964, President Lyndon Johnson signed the Wilderness Act, but
controversy over proposed wilderness in California delayed establishment of most of today’s formally designated wilderness. Local citizens
were concerned that the Trinity Alps would lose formal wilderness
status if the two sides did not break their stalemate. Leonard Morris
and Alice Jones were among the members of a committee that recommended not only retention of the original primitive area but the addition of as much roadless contiguous land as possible as formal
wilderness; surprisingly, the county board of supervisors endorsed the
action. The Forest Service had proposed deleting portions of the old
primitive area that were in the railroad checkerboard ownership, primarily in the eastern section and the area north of Coffee Creek. The
San Francisco Chronicle wrote an article titled “A Granny Assails Watt”
about Weaverville resident Florence Morris’s criticism of Interior Secretary James Watt’s prodevelopment and antiwilderness agenda. After
numerous hearings and chock-full public meetings, and election of a
new California state senator, Congress passed the California Wilderness
Bill, and in 1984, former governor and then president Ronald Reagan
signed it. Wilderness in the region now exceeds a million acres, including the 500,000-acre Trinity Alps Wilderness, plus another 600,000
acres in the Marble Mountain, Yolla Bolly–Middle Eel, Siskiyou, and
smaller Russian Peak, Red Buttes, Chanchelulla, Castle Crags, and North
Fork wildernesses. In the eastern part of the Trinity Alps Wilderness, land
trades since 1984 have resolved much of the checkerboard ownership,
allowing the Forest Service to consolidate its ownership in the wilderness and enabling SPI to consolidate its holdings outside.
National forest lands outside of wilderness have been subject to some
of the most contentious debates in American society. Gifford Pinchot
first enunciated a policy of multiple use through the Forest Service publication of a small booklet called The Use of the National Forest Reserves
in 1905, which defined appropriate multiple uses. His goal of managing
forestland for the “greatest good for the greatest number over the long
run” became a mantra for the agency, but management by the forest
rangers was largely custodial until after World War II. In the press of
increased demand for housing, timber production became more important and was a particularly visible part of how the Forest Service was
directed to manage national forests. In 1960, the Multiple Use Sustained
Yield Act encoded the multiple-use mandate in law but left the balance
of competing uses to administrative prerogative. Stunned by a decision
against clear-cutting in West Virginia, the Forest Service pushed for new
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enabling legislation and received it in 1976 with the National Forest
Management Act. Congress asked for detailed forest-level management
plans, presumably as a blueprint for funding, but then largely ignored
these expensive plans. The forest plans quantified outputs such as recreation days and timber production with a complex computer program
called FORPLAN, but the program’s strict assumptions, limited scale,
and nonspatial quantification was insufficient to deal with aesthetics,
fish habitat, and other issues that relied as much or more on what was
left behind than on the outputs of national forests. This situation reminds
me of a TV ad for a mail service in which a harried clerk repeatedly picks
up a phone and says “We can do this!” but after repeating this exercise
about ten times, he stares into the distance and moans “How am I gonna
do all this?” The Forest Service was in a similar bind in its attempts to
deal with conflicts between timber production, recreation, and wildlife.
In the 1980s, the Reagan administration pushed for greatly expanded
timber outputs from the national forests. In the Department of Agriculture, the new assistant secretary for natural resources and environment,
responsible for supervising the Forest Service, was John Crowell Jr.,
former counsel for the Louisiana-Pacific Corporation, which had major
redwood timber holdings in Northern California. As timber production, primarily by clear-cutting, ratcheted up, a little-known owl raised
a big hoot. The northern spotted owl, known to inhabit older forests of
Northern California, Oregon, and Washington, was declining in population, in part because of fragmentation of its habitat by logging.
Through a succession of unsuccessful plans, the incompatibility of
intensive timber production and spotted owls became obvious, and in
1990, the owl joined the list of “threatened” species under the Endangered Species Act.
In 1995, the piecemeal forest-by-forest approach to management of
northern spotted owls gave way to an ecosystem-based plan called the
Northwest Forest Plan. The plan sharply curtailed timber production
on public land across the range of the owl, lowering it from its high of
about 6 billion board feet per year to less than 1 billion. It also designated large areas as “late-successional reserves” to protect old-growth
dependent species. Riparian, or streamside corridors, were ruled offlimits to timber harvest. Today, ten years later, there is talk of amending
the Northwest Forest Plan to keep what has worked well and change
what has not. Of course, depending upon the values of the person one
talks to, every piece of the plan has either worked great, needs some
fixing, or has been a disaster.
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Figure 26. The Brown Bear Quartz Mill at the appropriately named town of
Deadwood. The picture is undated but is likely from the late 1800s. Wood is
stacked to run the boiler in the mill. (Source: Trinity 1962. Photograph courtesy of the Trinity County Historical Society, Weaverville, CA.)
Early logging centered around the gold-mining settlements that utilized the wood for mine timbers, heating and cooking, and housing.
Loggers had no market outside the region because they had no way to
transport the wood any distance. Radiating out from the settlements
were areas that even today have never seen the saw. By the 1870s, mules
were hauling in temporary mills piece by piece to remote locations like
Deer Creek on the Stewart’s Fork (today’s Stuart Fork), where milled
lumber was needed to build the flumes and bridges carrying Stewart’s
Fork water to hydraulic mining operations. Steam-powered stamp mills
at the sites of gold-bearing quartz veins required substantial wood to
keep the mills operating at maximum capacity (see figure 26). But the
timber industry was small in the region until after World War II, when
better transportation developed and demand was high for Douglas-fir,
the dominant species along with ponderosa pine in the region.
One exception to this slow-starting industry was in the eastern
Klamaths, where the Lamoine Lumber and Trading Company, at the
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Figure 27. Lumber production in Siskiyou and Trinity counties,
1948–2001. (Source: State Board of Equalization, California.
Illustrator: Cathy Schwartz.)
turn of the twentieth century, logged mostly old-growth ponderosa pine
with railroad logging systems. Lamoine’s lands were in the watersheds
along what is now Interstate 5 across the crest of the Trinity Mountains,
from current day Lakehead north to Castella. Temporary small-gauge
railroads were constructed through the area to enable harvest of mostly
large ponderosa pine, most of which was made into fruit boxes. The
railroad carried “steam donkeys,” powerful steam engines attached to
long spools of cable, which could haul logs from some distance to the
tracks, where they were loaded onto railcars and taken to the mill at the
town of Lamoine. The lumber was then shipped south by rail to Redding and beyond. Many smaller outfits in the eastern Klamaths, such as
Lamoine, Northern California Lumber Company, and Weed Lumber,
eventually were consolidated into larger companies such as Fruit Growers Supply Company and Sierra Pacific Industries.
After World War II, timber production in the redwood region shifted
from primarily redwood to both redwood and Douglas-fir, and peak
lumber production occurred between 1955 and 1964 in the coastal
counties. Much of the production came from private lands, because
only 25 percent of the timber base was publicly owned there. In the
Klamaths, where public lands predominated, a double peak in production occurred (see figure 27). The first production peak for Trinity and
Siskiyou counties was consistent with the 1955–64 peak for the redwood region. I remember seeing trucks racing down the dusty red roads
when I first began visiting the Trinity Alps in the 1950s; with their loads
of huge pine and fir logs, the semis seemed oblivious to our poor family
sedan. With the dust they created and the dust we stirred up, everything
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161
in our car always had a generous coating of red by the time we arrived
at Trinity Alps Resort. A second peak in lumber production began in the
late 1970s; production dipped in the early 1980s recession and then hit
a peak almost as high as the one in the 1960s during the Reagan-era
push for increased timber harvest. Beginning in 1988, the “spotted owl
effect” came into play, and production has continued to decline to the
present because of the harvest delays necessitated by some of the “bells
and whistles” constraints set by the Northwest Forest Plan. Public-land
harvest is unlikely ever to reach peaks as high as those of the 1960s and
1980s. Public-land timber is mostly reserved, and even when it is available, capacity to mill lumber is more limited now: fewer than 25 percent
of the lumber mills that were operating in the 1960s still operate today.
Before 1972, California had a weak forest-practices act “regulating”
private forest harvest; the act essentially relied on the goodwill of private
landowners to harvest using sustainable practices. The impact of logging
between 1945 and 1970, particularly the effect of roads, was tremendous,
and the legacy of that erosion still creates problems today in some locations. Not only were access roads placed at high density, but also logging
methods here almost exclusively used tractors to pull the logs to the landings, for loading onto trucks. On steep slopes, the tractors crawled up the
slope, were tied onto a load of logs, and then dragged the logs down the
hill. Repeated use of the same skid trail essentially created a road network
across the harvested unit that drained water right to the landing. Up to
one-third of a tractor-yarded unit could be covered with these entrenched
skid trails. The use of cable systems, a much less damaging yarding method
for steep slopes, was common in Oregon and Washington but almost never
employed in northwestern California before the 1970s. Most skid trails
were not water barred (by angling a small berm of dirt across the road to
direct water off the road), and loggers simply abandoned many early roads
after they had removed the timber.
In 1973, a new Forest Practices Act was signed into law, and with
regulations to date, it is one of the most stringent forest-practices laws
in the nation. Though regulations allow clear-cutting on private land,
the size of any cut is restricted, and the operation must demonstrate
reforestation before cutting an adjacent area. Road and skid-trail
restrictions mitigate many of the effects of harvest. Monitoring of fish
and wildlife is common for the industrial forestry sector (but not for the
smaller, nonindustrial landowners). Some critics say that even these
tighter restrictions are not tight enough, and their argument has some
merit, yet the regulatory environment is very costly to landowners.
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Figure 28. Cumulative volume of stored sediment in Redwood Creek
in 1947, 1964, and 1980. Between 1947 and 1964, sediment increased about 30 percent in the drainage. By 1980, the total amount
had not declined, but the area had less sediment in the middle
reaches and more in the lower reaches, indicating a slow flushing
process at work. (Source: Hagans, Weaver, and Madej 1986.
Illustrator: Cathy Schwartz.)
The cost of preparing individual timber-harvest plans that describe the
activity and mitigation of impact can reach into five figures. Though
today’s harvest methods are much less damaging than those of the past,
they are occurring in watersheds often damaged by past practices. The
incremental impact of a current operation on a landscape damaged by
past practices is known as a cumulative effect.
One of the best-studied watersheds for cumulative effects is Redwood
Creek, which forms much of the western border of the Klamath Mountains. Home to the southern portion of Redwood National Park, Redwood Creek is covered with coast redwood near its mouth and has a
mosaic of Douglas-fir forest, oak woodland, and prairie farther
upstream. The upper watershed was heavily logged after World War II:
more than 20 percent of the watershed was logged between 1949 and
1954. Erosion from largely unregulated logging roads and skid trails
dumped enormous amounts of sediment into the main channel of
Redwood Creek (see figure 28). In 1947, about 10 million cubic meters
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of sediment were stored in the river channel. By the time of the 1964
flood, the amount of stored channel sediment in gravel bars and terraces
was almost 50 percent above the 1947 volume. This “slug” of sediment
has been slowly working its way downstream since then. Each storm
activates some sediment, moves it downstream, and then redeposits it.
By 1980, total sediment load had decreased along much of the channel
length to below its 1964 levels (the difference between the 1980 and
1964 lines in figure 28), although it was still well above 1947 levels. At
the boundary between the upper and middle reaches, the recovery has
been about halfway back to the 1947 level, whereas at the boundary
between the middle and lower reaches, recovery is about one-third of
the way back to the earlier level.
Estimates are that the slug will persist for twenty-five to one hundred
years, eventually working its way to the ocean. Along its journey, it will
continue to raise the level of the channel, decrease the average bedload
size, widen the channel where it currently sits, and decrease the number
of pools. At the mouth, little change in sediment storage occurred
between 1964 and 1980 because of delivery of sediment from upstream;
about 5 million cubic meters of additional sediment sit in the lower
reaches of Redwood Creek. So current harvest, under much-improved
practices, nevertheless takes place in a watershed that has suffered from
previous land use, and it should be evaluated from that perspective.
Unfortunately, little technology is available to do an adequate job of
identifying cumulative effects, and the professional foresters who
prepare timber harvest plans tend to ignore such effects. Sustainable
management demands better methodologies and training.
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chapter 11
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Dam the World
On the approach to Trinity Dam (see figure 29), I am awed by the sheer
magnitude of this engineering marvel. The canyon is filled with tons of
earth, forming a dam a half mile wide at its top and a half mile thick at
its base. It can hold 2.76 million acre-feet of water (an acre-foot is a
volume equivalent to one-foot deep over an area of one acre), a volume
difficult to imagine. This amount is a bit less than a cubic mile of water
but comprises one of the largest lakes in California. Now commonly
known as Trinity Lake, the lake was originally known as the Fairview
Reservoir and then was renamed Clair Engle Lake after the congressman who ushered through the legislation in the late 1950s that allowed
the Bureau of Reclamation to build the dam. During construction, most
of the land upstream of the dam below dam elevation was skinned off
to bare dirt. Some places, like Carrville and Trinity Alps Resort, were
above the 2,370-foot-elevation contour and were spared. Other places
below that contour, such as the original Trinity Center and Minersville,
were either razed or moved. The old cemetery at Trinity Center, which
contained many graves more than a century old, was moved uphill.
Most Native American sites were simply inundated due to lack of information about their locations. The project was the largest clear-cut I ever
saw. The damming of the Trinity, which was completed in 1962, was
not the first such project on the Trinity and was certainly not intended
to be the last. But Trinity Dam, along with its small, immediately downstream companion Lewiston Dam, is the most permanent.
164
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Figure 29. Trinity Dam above Lewiston, California. (Source: U.S. Bureau
of Reclamation.)
The first dam on the Trinity was built in the gold-rush days. Known
as Arkansas Dam, after the company that designed and built it in 1851,
it was engineered about 2 miles south of Junction City as a means to
clear the riverbed of water to allow placer miners to remove gold from
downstream pools. The dam’s builders constructed a race on one side of
the floodplain to contain the river flow, exposing the gold-bearing gravel
of the river for almost a mile. The first dam and its successor were both
washed away by high water; the poorly engineered structures gave way
in the first rains. The third attempt in 1854 was more successful as a
dam but less successful as an investment. The dam successfully diverted
the river, but the excavations of the dry channel proved to be monetarily disappointing, and the dam was abandoned in 1857.
The second known dam on the Trinity was an act of nature, created
by a large landslide in the vicinity of Burnt Ranch. In early February
1890, a rare but characteristic flood event took place in the Klamaths.
A large snowfall was followed by a “pineapple express,” a warm, rainy
storm moving in from the Pacific. Such storms drop a lot of rain, even
at high elevation, which melts the snowpack and chokes the streams
with runoff. The raging Trinity River, already at flood stage, undercut
the bank of an unstable area, and a huge landslide began to rumble
down the south side of the canyon. Another slide had taken place along
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the same path about ten years earlier, killing a number of miners working on the gold-bearing bar below and creating a temporary dam on the
Trinity River that breached within hours. The 1890 slide filled the
canyon with enough material to create a 100- to 150-foot-high dam,
causing major damage both downstream and upstream. The landslide
produced its own tsunami that rushed downstream and swept away a
Chinese mining cabin that was supposedly 300 feet above the river.
Reportedly, only two of the five or six Chinese miners who lived there
were home at the time, and they were swept to their deaths. The slide
became known as China Slide. It backed up the Trinity River, and the
swollen channel, choked with debris from the slide and from upstream,
became a large lake, increasing in depth and flooding houses on
upstream flats during the first day. The lake extended from Burnt Ranch
past Taylor Flat, now known as Del Loma. The water created a 13-milelong lake that stabilized by late afternoon as the floodwaters finally
breached the dam. The water level was about 100 feet deep at the dam
at that time, and the river slowly began to erode the dam, receding to
about 75 feet deep by day four. It took about ten years for the river to
regain its old bed. Today, China Slide is identified on topographic maps
but is unmarked on the highway except for the occasional slide debris
that continues to waste away from upslope. Driving west on Highway
299, one can see the slide just past the Burnt Ranch transfer-station
road, and a turnout just past the slide gives the visitor a panoramic view
of the river and the slide.
The third big dam occurred in the Salmon River during the big flood
of 1964. In December 1964, the circumstances were much the same as
in 1890. A pineapple express inundated the snow-covered backcountry,
and the steady rain created a swollen river that undercut an unstable
slope about 7 miles upstream from the confluence with the Klamath
River. Just like the China Slide, the Blommer Slide of December 22 was
so massive that it filled the Salmon River canyon and created a dam
150 feet deep. With the steeper gradient of the Salmon River, though,
the lake was only 3 miles long when the dam catastrophically failed.
Floyd Long, who owned the store near the mouth of the river, had
retreated to a cabin up the hill about 5 p.m. as water entered the store.
At about 10 p.m. he noticed that the flood-stage river quickly dropped
about 6 feet, even though the heavy rain continued unabated. An
upstream blockage was his logical conclusion, and it was confirmed
about 20 minutes later when the dam broke. The roar of the wall of
water and debris was preceded by a hurricane-strength wind, pushed
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ahead of the torrent and breaking and uprooting almost every tree in its
path. Though the Department of Water Resources estimated the time of
breach at about 5 p.m., Floyd’s story in a letter to Cliff Pierce, which was
mailed out on the first Marine helicopter to reach the Salmon River, is
the best evidence available for the time of the dam’s rupture. This slide
and the massive debris torrent that followed became only a footnote in
the chronicle of devastation created by the flood of 1964. That flood
swept two couples away from their home downstream at Bluff Creek as
a logjam broke at the Highway 96 bridge. Two of the people were found
suspended in trees downriver, and the other two washed up on a beach
north of Eureka. Today, overgrown traces of the old Highway 96 bridge
and the store are barely visible from the Salmon River road.
California’s Department of Water Resources (DWR) jumped on the
opportunity to exploit the 1964 flood as justification for more dams in
the North Coast country: “Each time the dark swirling waters find more
works of man built to slow and control them. But in California, man is
not yet to that inevitable point in time when he is master of the flood situation, and he is particularly defenseless in the North Coast” (California
Department of Water Resources 1965, 1).
Whereas the DWR appeared to focus on local interests, the reality
was that for three decades state authorities had argued that water in the
state did not occur where it was needed (Southern California) and that
the water projects were primarily for water diversion to the south rather
than for flood control. The primary areas to be exploited were those
river systems west of the Sacramento River drainage that flowed unimpeded to the sea, including the Eel, the Klamath, and the Trinity rivers.
Somehow, if the water of those rivers could be diverted east to either the
Sacramento River or a variety of aqueducts and reservoirs in the Sacramento River drainage, they could then be diverted around the delta
region where the Sacramento and San Joaquin rivers converged, thereby
supplying water farther south in the San Joaquin Valley and also over
the Tehachapi Mountains to Los Angeles. The state argued that coastal
dams would help control floods in the North Coast but claimed it could
not find economic justification for single-purpose flood-control dams.
At the time of the 1964 flood, plans had been under way for a decade to
dam every North Coast stream and to push that water south.
The story of California is essentially a story of water. The northwestern California portion of the story began in earnest in 1933, when
the state legislature passed a plan to dam the Sacramento River north
of Redding and to release the flows more uniformly into the river,
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Dam the World
increasing historic summer flows and buffering the winter high flows.
The water would move by gravity to the freshwater delta east of the
saltwater San Francisco and Suisun bays and then would be pumped
south into the San Joaquin Valley before it was lost to the sea. In these
Depression years, the state was not able to market its bonds, and the
project lay dormant for two years. President Franklin Roosevelt revived
it by signing an emergency relief proclamation authorizing the Bureau
of Reclamation to construct a large dam on the Sacramento River.
Shasta Dam was finished in 1945 as the cornerstone of the Central
Valley Project (CVP), and the canal system that sent the water south
from the delta by a massive system of pumps began operation in 1951.
As a young boy, I remember seeing this artificial river flowing down the
west side of the San Joaquin Valley, but I had no idea where all that
water came from or why it flowed up the gentle gradient of the valley.
The federal project was also illegally providing water to San Joaquin
Valley farmers, because under the 1902 Reclamation Act, the Bureau of
Reclamation could provide water only to farmers who owned 160 acres
or less and resided on the land. Though later legislation in the 1980s
increased the acreage limitation to 960 acres and eliminated the residency requirements, these new requirements still were too restrictive for
the corporate farmers of the Central Valley. California had a mantra of
growth, and the populist vision of the Bureau of Reclamation was too
myopic. California needed its own water plan that was not subject to
federal regulations, and this time California would pay for most of it.
In 1944 and again in 1952, California offered to purchase the CVP
from the federal government but was refused. The state’s independent
planning for water resources began after World War II with passage of
the State Water Resources Act, but simultaneously the Bureau of Reclamation continued its grand water plan for the West. Both institutions
planned to harness the “excess” water of the north state and ship it
south. The bureau’s plan, however, was more regional in scope, with
plans to ship water between states, and had also been in process several
years longer than the state plan had.
In California, the bureau focused on diverting the Klamath River
system inland and south. Diverting it south through Shasta Valley into
Shasta Lake was relatively easy, but the real water lay to the west where
precipitation (figure 3) and runoff were much higher. The flow of the
Klamath near its mouth is much greater than at the point that it
crosses Interstate 5. The Klamath diversion was first proposed in a document called the United Western Investigation: Interim Report on
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Reconnaissance, which Marc Reisner, in his book Cadillac Desert,
called “the best kept secret in the history of water development in the
West” (275). The diversion was but one of many grand schemes that
might be described as engineering on steroids. The centerpiece of the
project would be an 813-foot-high dam near the mouth of the Klamath
named Ah Pah dam, in the language of the Yurok people whose lands
(and those of the Hupas) would be flooded. It would stand almost as
tall as the Transamerica Pyramid building in San Francisco but of course
be much more massive. It would flood 40 miles of the Trinity River, the
lower Salmon River, and 70 miles of the Klamath River. It would then
pump all this water upstream in the Trinity and through a large Trinity
tunnel to the Sacramento River. It and its adjacent reservoirs would
capture 15 million acre-feet of water for the south.
What saved the Klamath from the Ah Pah dam had nothing to do
with the dam’s local impact. Oregon and Washington interests were
outraged that the bureau’s “final solution” might well involve diverting
Columbia River water to the south. Southern California interests also
fought the Klamath diversion, thinking the plan was simply a way to
divert their attention from the potential loss of Colorado River water,
which they were using far in excess of their allotment. The bureau was
authorized in 1955 to complete Trinity Dam on the upper Trinity, which
would divert about 2.5 million acre-feet to the south, but it was never
able to revive the large-scale Klamath diversion. Soon after the completion of Trinity Dam, the bureau published a new plan that focused on
the Colorado River basin. This plan called for damming the Grand
Canyon on both sides of Grand Canyon National Park and constructing two more dams on the Trinity River, leaving open the possibility of
the Ah Pah dam as well.
But the water amounts proposed by the plan clearly could not be met
without diverting the Columbia, and in 1965, Washington senator
Henry “Scoop” Jackson slipped a rider onto a fish and wildlife bill that
prevented the bureau from doing feasibility studies without congressional approval. When the bill passed, it prevented the bureau from surprising Congress with requests for project authorization, because it
required congressional approval for preliminary feasibility studies.
Though Jackson’s concern was to prevent diversion of the Columbia
River system, his rider also slowed down any further bureau studies of
the Klamath River system. Instead, California continued the fight to
divert the North Coast rivers through its own California Water Plan. Its
intent for the North Coast streams was to “pirate” the water that would
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Dam the World
otherwise flow to the sea after successful diversion and then transport it
south where it was needed most.
Just as nature had built lakes from streams by creating earth-fill dams
through landslides, so had it diverted water from one stream to flow
down another. Geomorphologists call this process “stream pirating.” It
occurs when one stream erodes into the watershed of a second stream
and captures the flow upstream from that point, leaving the second
stream without its original headwater. Stream pirating can occur in a
variety of ways. Where geological formations include very soft bedrock,
water can erode much faster through this rock, essentially move its
headwater, and divert the upstream portion of any adjacent watershed
into which it erodes. A second pirating option is a glacially controlled
diversion, whereby meltwater streams in an ice-filled valley begin to
erode a low-lying ridge along one side of the valley.
One of the best examples of this second form of pirating is in the
Trinity Alps. Robert F. Sharp of the California Institute of Technology
wrote in 1960, “Any geologist working in this area who fails to report
the diversion of the former headwaters of Coffee Creek into the South
Fork of the Salmon River at Big Flat will be characterized by his successors as totally blind” (339). As one moves westerly up Coffee Creek
from the Trinity River, the creek bends sharply to the south into a wide,
glacial valley now filled in with coarse gravel and in the summer, shimmering with corn silk and sedge and the occasional dude ranch. But the
creek becomes smaller and then just disappears, leaving the wide valley
called Big Flat without a stream. At the end of the public road another
mile up is a Forest Service campground, and to its side is a typical roaring stream exiting the high country of Josephine Lake and heading
straight down the valley. But when the stream passes the campground,
it turns sharply to the west and descends through a narrow gap into the
Salmon River drainage. Big Flat is now the headwater of Coffee Creek,
a stream that once continued several miles upstream to the south. Sharp
hypothesized that in some past glacial period, the meltwater stream on
the west side of the valley glacier ran across a low point of the western
ridge of the valley and began to erode the ridge (see figure 30). Because
the meltwater eroded about 750 feet of resistant metamorphic bedrock
and has now created a fairly open and stable gap, Sharp thinks the event
happened before the last glacial period that ended some 10,000 to
15,000 years ago. A typical camper at the Forest Service campground is
likely unaware that a major pirating episode occurred there or that he or
she would have been sitting on a thousand feet of ice when it happened.
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Figure 30. Upper Coffee Creek seen from the west. The upper basin used
to flow north (top view) and was the headwater of Coffee Creek. During
glaciation, a flow began to the west (middle view), and erosion allowed
the South Fork of the Salmon River to pirate the headwater. Today this
area is the headwater of the South Fork. (Illustrator: Jack DeLap.)
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Humans did some stream pirating in the Trinity basin when they
used giant monitors for hydraulic mining. The most elaborate diversion
system was a series of ditches, tunnels, flumes, and siphons to take water
from the Stuart Fork and carry it to Oregon Mountain, some 29 miles
away. A first, much shorter ditch was designed to divert West Weaver
Creek. It was extended to Rush Creek in 1893 and was named the
Chaumont Quitry ditch for the father of the Baroness de La Grange
(another story has the ditch named for the engineer who designed it, but
the baroness’s maiden name was Chaumont-Quitry). The baron and
baroness owned the company with rights to the La Grange gold
deposits, and they needed a good supply of water to hose the mountain
away. The abundant water of the Stuart Fork encouraged Baron de La
Grange to organize an expedition up the Stuart Fork to the “twin lakes”
(Emerald and Sapphire lakes), and on his return from his ten-day trip,
and after a bit of recuperation, he decided to extend the Chaumont
Quitry ditch.
The baron constructed a small dam at the mouth of Emerald Lake to
raise the water level, and the diversion began downstream at Deer
Creek, a couple of miles beyond the earlier Buckeye diversion above
Oak Flat. Through a system of flumes and ditches, La Grange’s ditch
extended down the east side of the Stuart Fork, picking up additional
water at Deep Creek, and proceeded to Bridge Camp, where it crossed
the river in a 30-inch inverted siphon and later an accompanying 18-inch
siphon. In November 1893, to celebrate the completion of the ditch, the
baron tossed a live rabbit into the siphon, and the poor lagomorph,
drowned and crushed by water pressure, emerged dead into the hands
of the baroness waiting on the opposite side of the river. From there, the
ditch carried water along the western flank of the river, passing through
a 9,000-foot tunnel to Rush Creek, where it joined the older Chaumont
Quitry ditch. Two more tunnels and several siphons eventually brought
the water to West Weaver Creek, where it entered a reservoir at the top
of Oregon Mountain. The hydraulic pressure of a gravity feed from the
reservoir powered the giant monitors for the mine, which was the
largest hydraulic mine in the world at its time of peak production.
The entire 29-mile ditch system became known as the La Grange ditch.
The system required tremendous maintenance, and after abandonment
by its ditch tenders, was inoperable by the early 1920s. Today, remnants of the trestles, tunnels, and ditches remain, and at the terminus of
the eastern side ditch on the Stuart Fork is a small wooden cross, representing the end of a ditch and the end of an era.
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173
The California Water Plan was the master water pirate of all time.
The state described it as an “amazing venture.” But it had to be paid for
by bonds authorized by the voters of the state. In 1958, Democrat
Edmund G. “Pat” Brown became governor, following Goodwin Knight.
Although the plan had been fostered by Republican Knight and his
predecessor, Earl Warren, Brown saw it as his legacy: “I wanted to build
that goddamned water project. . . . I wanted it to be a monument to me,”
he said in later years (Reisner 1986, 361). The state legislature, through
the Burns-Porter Act, authorized $1.75 billion in bonds, well below
what they knew the plan would actually cost. Brown, a Northern
Californian, strongly supported the bond issue in the 1960 election,
even though it largely benefited Southern Californians. He defended this
stand by stating that if the bonds didn’t pass, Southern Californians
would move to where the water was and despoil Northern California.
Of course, the water plan as initially proposed would have despoiled
Northern California more than any Southern Californian could, so
Governor Brown’s desire for a personal monument was more likely the
real reason. Surprisingly, Southern California water interests initially
opposed the bonds. They were afraid of losing their hold on Colorado
River water and opposed subsidies for southern San Joaquin Valley corporate farmers. But they came around and helped carry the Southern
California counties in favor of the bonds. Only ten of the fifty-eight
counties voted in favor of the bonds, but the populous Southern
California counties had the votes, and the bonds passed by less than a
1 percent margin.
California’s plan was initially more provincial in design than those of
the Bureau of Reclamation, focusing first on a large dam on the Feather
River, a major tributary to the Sacramento River near Oroville. The
state legislature approved the Feather River Project in 1951, and during
the years needed for specific design work, the State Water Resources
Board developed the California Water Plan, with the Feather River
Project as its initial unit. The Oroville Dam would augment flows from
Shasta Dam down the Sacramento and help generate power to pump
water over the Tehachapi Mountains to Southern California. But
beyond the Feather River Project, the California Water Plan was mostly
conceptual, dealing with the storage and diversion possibilities in each
large hydrologic unit. In recognition of the critical role that water would
play in the state’s growth, the board was bureaucratized as the Department of Water Resources in 1956, the year that the California Water
Plan was released to the public.
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Figure 31. Dams proposed on northwestern California rivers by the California
Water Plan of 1957. (Source: California Department of Water Resources 1957.
Illustrator: Cathy Schwartz.)
The North Coast rivers were a central theme of the California Water
Plan. Each revision of the plan tended to be a variation on the Bureau
of Reclamation Klamath diversion. Over the next decade, a number of
alternative dam and water-conveyance proposals were released, and
every one contemplated damming almost the entire length of the Klamath
River (west of what is now Interstate 5) and the Trinity River. One dam
would back up water to the foot of the next dam, so that water coming
down the Klamath River could be pumped up the length of the Trinity
and then conveyed via tunnel to the Sacramento River system. The
water would then be shunted south, primarily to feed agricultural interests to the south. The names of the dams and lakes changed at various
times, but the plan remained the same: save the great waste of water to
the sea.
The first iteration of the plan called for dams along the Klamath,
Smith, Van Duzen, Mad, and Trinity rivers (see figure 31). As in the
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175
Bureau of Reclamation plans, little actual siting information was available, so engineers placed dam and reservoir locations wherever they
wanted. There were a lot of good engineering reasons why dams in the
most unstable terrain on the Pacific Coast were foolish, but that fact did
not stop planners from pursuing the engineering opportunity of a lifetime. They proposed unstable dam sites with caveats: “Recent geologic
exploration at the Slate Creek dam site [main stem Klamath] has
unearthed unfavorable foundation conditions which indicate that it
may be more economical to select an alternative site” and “However,
preliminary geological examination indicated conditions which appear
somewhat unfavorable to the most economical construction and, in
consequence, further study is in process to find a more favorable alternative [Ranger Station dam site on the Mad River]” (California Department
of Water Resources 1957, 167, 168).
The voters of California appear to have saved the main stem of the
Klamath from the California Water Plan by passing an initiative in 1924
that prohibited dam construction west of what is now Interstate 5; later
reinterpretation of the initiative’s legal implications was the ultimate
salvation. The Bureau of Reclamation’s Ah Pah dam would not have
been constrained by state law, but it was less clear whether state law
would constrain state agencies. For the initial years of the water plan,
the DWR interpreted this law to apply only to private individuals, and
not to the state. Yet after the first iterations of the plan, the main stem
of the Klamath began to disappear from the radar screen. By the
mid-1960s, the maps showed as many planned but abandoned dam
sites as new proposed dams. Five dam sites were abandoned on the main
Klamath.
Proposed or enlarged reservoirs on the Van Duzen and Mad rivers
would flow through tunnels to the proposed Eltapom Reservoir on the
South Fork Trinity River, which would flood Hyampom Valley, and
then move through a proposed War Cry tunnel to Burnt Ranch Reservoir on the main-stem Trinity River. Pumps would push this water
upstream to Helena Reservoir, which would back water up clear past
Douglas City, where it would be pumped through a tunnel, parallel to
the existing Clear Creek tunnel that services Trinity Lake, over to the
Sacramento Valley. Unlike the Ah Pah proposal and the first water plan,
the new plan would spare the Hoopa reservation at the mouth of the
Trinity River. This project was a major contraction from previous plans
and would net only 3 million to 6 million acre-feet of water. In addition
to flooding almost every settlement in the vicinity, it would have
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required complete relocation of Highway 299 where it parallels the
Trinity River.
In 1966, Ronald Reagan was elected governor of California, and the
DWR apparently thought it had gained a new life. The Bureau of Reclamation (irrigation), the Corps of Engineers (flood control), and the
DWR had joined forces in an interagency effort to tame the North
Coast rivers after the big floods of 1964. Within a month of the floods,
DWR issued a bulletin documenting the damage and extolling the
virtues of flood-control dams. In 1967, alternative new plans were proposed for the lower Trinity and Klamath rivers. Although the previous
proposal for the Humboldt dam near the mouth of the Klamath was not
resuscitated, the new plan suggested that this project should not be
dropped from further consideration. The new plans were “neutral” on
the issue of dams on the main stem of the Klamath; a DWR bulletin that
year noted that no new dams were being proposed on the main stem
west of Hamburg. The Hupas were not so fortunate. On paper, a proposed Beaver Reservoir would again flood Hoopa Valley, although this
action was clearly illegal without consent of the federal government,
because the Bureau of Indian Affairs managed the Hoopa reservation in
trust. Indian-allotted lands, those that had passed to individual Indian
ownership, could be condemned by the state, so individual Hupa
landowners or members of other tribes that had no formal reservation
land had no special federal protection (which, of course, for most
Native Americans is an oxymoron). The bulletin suggested that perhaps
a trade or lease could be negotiated, without federal legislation, and
that the Indian issue might be legally complex and emotionally difficult,
but not impossible. With an old movie cowboy in office, almost anything was possible for the state of California.
The 1967 plan contained nine options. The Beaver Reservoir was the
key element in eight of them, which didn’t look good for the Hupas if
one were a betting person. One of the compelling reasons to flood the
Hoopa Valley with a dam near the confluence with the Klamath River
was that it opened the door to a wing-dam diversion of the Klamath
River. Construction of a wing dam would not be constrained by the
1924 law prohibiting a full-channel dam, and the water could be
diverted into the Beaver Reservoir and then upstream (see figure 32),
fulfilling at least part of the original promise of the Klamath River to
deliver water south. With the exception of the Beaver Reservoir, most of
the options were similar to those in earlier plans, calling for pumping
upstream and a variety of optional tunnels to move the water into the
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177
Figure 32. One of the nine options in the 1967 California Water Plan for the
northwestern rivers. PP = pumping station; PH = hydroelectric power station.
(Source: California Department of Water Resources 1967. Illustrator: Cathy
Schwartz.)
Sacramento River drainage. The plan also contained a number of
options for moving the water south, once it was out of the coastal area.
But then a cowboy rode to the Indians’ rescue.
Some of the worst flooding in 1955 and 1964 had occurred on the Eel
River because of development on downstream floodplains. The Eel, like
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Dam the World
many of the coastal streams in the North Coast province of California,
flows southeast to northwest along fault lines and is separated from the
Klamath province by South Fork Mountain, one of the longest continuous mountains in the world. In the aftermath of the 1964 floods, floodcontrol dams were proposed along the Eel, with the Corps of Engineers
in charge of planning. The only dam to survive early planning was the
large Dos Rios dam, which would store twice as much water as Shasta
Lake but have minimal effects on downstream floods on the main Eel.
A local rancher, Richard Wilson, calculated the downstream effect of
the dam on a Middle Fork flood and determined that it would reduce a
12-foot crest of the river to 11 feet, 6 inches; his arguments were watertight. But more importantly, the lake would drown the town of Covelo,
which included the Round Valley Indian Reservation. Governor Reagan
had to make a decision, and in 1969, he decided against the dam,
reportedly saying that the government had already broken enough
treaties with the Indians. The death of Dos Rios, together with the spiraling cost of finishing the original plan of the California Water Project,
brought the era of large dams in the Klamath region to a close. William
Warne, who had worked for the Bureau of Reclamation and headed the
California Water Plan, chose to ignore his failure to tame the rivers of
the North Coast, instead taking credit for a grand integration of nature
and culture in his 1973 history of the Bureau of Reclamation: “The
people accept the great project as a part of their way of life. This may
well be the ultimate accolade bestowed upon a bureaucrat; his work is
so well done that his handiwork, in the thoughts of those whom it
serves, becomes one with the mountains and the valleys, the rain and
the sun. They accept it and cannot do without it” (160).
The people of the Klamath Mountains did not accept Warne’s dedication and have been able to live without it. Wild and Scenic Rivers
legislation, passed by Congress on October 2, 1968, the same day that
coastal Redwood National Park was created, finally stopped the arrogant bureaucrats who tried for almost four decades to completely dam
the North Coast. In January 1981, just before the inauguration of
President Ronald Reagan, Secretary of the Interior Cecil Andrus proclaimed “wild and scenic river” status for most of the threatened
reaches of the Klamath, the Trinity, the Smith, and the Eel rivers, ending
forever the dreams of the dam builders.
But the battle for water continues to the present. As much as 90 percent
of the flow of the Trinity River above the dam, in the early years of its
operation, was diverted out of the Trinity basin and east through Clear
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Creek tunnel to Whiskeytown Lake and then to the Sacramento River.
Diversion has averaged 74 percent since the inception of the dam (until
the implementation of the Trinity River Restoration Program [see
chapter 16]). The Trinity River below the dam, after 1964, became
about as exciting as the flow from a hose. The whitewater I saw as a
child became an overgrown thicket of willow and alder, and the habitat
for rearing anadromous fish precipitously declined. The Klamath downstream began to look like a gray water drain, soapy and full of excess
nutrients from subsidized agriculture in the Klamath basin. In late
summer 2002, a massive number of salmon died in the lower Klamath,
and the water wars became habitat wars. How much reclamation is
necessary to metamorphose into restoration? In addition to restoring a
fully functional natural stream flow, what must we do to allow native
organisms to persist at viable levels?
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chapter 12
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Modern Myths and Monsters
When novelist James Hilton visited Weaverville, he remarked that the
area was the living embodiment of the Shangri-La of his famous novel
Lost Horizon. First published in 1936, and the first-ever paperback in
1939, the book describes a remote, secluded paradise of great beauty and
tranquility. The Klamath Mountains are remote, secluded, and beautiful,
yet along with tranquil times have come turbulent ones. Native cultures
have been disrupted, sensational killings have occurred, and mysterious
beings have at times appeared. The modern (post–gold-rush) history of
the Klamaths is more than one of gold, timber, and great dams. Though
modern culture is in part a reflection of these events, it has also been
influenced by myth and monsters.
mysteries in the mountains
All mountainous terrain has its unknown places. When the mountains
are as remote as the Klamaths, unknown places are often joined by
unknown beings. Such is the lure of the place: the surprise that may
lurk around any corner, stirring the imagination and making the heart
beat faster. Traditional unknowns include animals of the woods we
know: black bears, cougars, rattlesnakes, and the like. But nontraditional unknowns, humanoid and other, also have their place, and the
Klamaths have more than a fair share, a strange mix of the natural and
supernatural.
180
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Although Mount Shasta is not geologically part of the Klamath
Mountains, it has great views of the Klamaths to the south and west,
and the communities nearby reflect the cultural mix of the region. In the
late summer of 1930, Guy Warren Ballard visited Mount Shasta to
unravel a rumor that a society of divine men, the Brotherhood of Mount
Shasta, lived on the mountain. Though Native Americans believed that
the mountain itself was a spiritual being, Ballard and his followers saw
and channeled human incarnations on Mount Shasta. The Brotherhood
of Mount Shasta, representing a branch of the Great White Lodge
(referring to light-derived whiteness rather than racially derived whiteness), introduced itself to Ballard as he rested on a trail. The Ascended
Master Saint Germain spoke to him, and after consuming a creamy
liquid offered to him by the Master, Ballard left his body and immediately reappeared in southern France. Ballard had many more such
“Beam-me-up, Scotty” experiences on the southern slopes of Mount
Shasta in succeeding months. He visited Yellowstone, the Tetons, Peru,
and the Amazon, a regular world traveler on the cheap. The Ascended
Masters gave him advice on eliminating discord and imperfections in
one’s life, which he published (although some allege the books were
actually written by Guy’s wife, Edna) in a series of books under the
pseudonym Godfré Ray King. One of Ballard’s vivid encounters was
with a friendly talking panther (of tropical origin), which eventually
died in a fight with a ravenous local mountain lion that was going to eat
Ballard.
The “I AM” movement that Ballard founded, which was quite popular in the late 1930s, spawned other sects inspired by Saint Germain
(who was not actually a saint but a count in the 1700s in France: his
name was Saint-Germain) and the other Ascended Masters. Foremost
among them was the Church Universal and Triumphant, headed by
Elizabeth Clare Prophet and located just north of Yellowstone National
Park. The group was in the news continually in the 1990s because of
allegations of firearm stockpiling (supposedly to defend against the
apocalypse) and brainwashing. Other sects related to “I AM” were
Astara, founded on memories of life in ancient Egypt and headed by
Earlyne Chaney. Chaney and her husband met a Master on the south
side of Mount Shasta at Panther Meadows and described seeing a huge
brilliant cathedral on the summit of the mountain. Nola Van Valer
founded the Radiant School after she happened to meet a spiritual
master on the slopes of Mount Shasta several months ahead of Ballard
in 1930, although she did not reveal her claim to have temporally
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trumped Ballard until much later. Norman Westfall met Saint Germain
and other Masters on Mount Shasta in 1940, but Godfré Ray King did
not accept his Johnny-come-lately visions. Westfall went on to change
his name to Mah-Atman-Amsumata and to claim an exclusive right to
represent the teachings of Saint Germain and the other Masters. He is
best remembered for his nonfiction account of the King of the Lemurians.
Lemurians were dwarfs from the ancient continent of Lemuria who
channeled spiritual wisdom that contained elements of Atlantis,
Krishna, angels, and the like. Of course, some stories grow over time,
and Lemurians appear to have grown as well. More recent legend
depicts the Lemurians as graceful and tall, bearing long flowing hair,
wearing white robes and sandals, and having a walnut-sized organ
growing out of their foreheads. Living in gold-lined caves inside Mount
Shasta, they possess supernatural powers that enable them to disappear
at will or to will intruders away.
The channelers’ view to the west must have been underwhelming,
because the humanoid incarnations occurred only on the south side of
Mount Shasta. But the Klamath Mountains have their own legends,
some fictionalized and some apparently real. One of my favorite local
novels is The Turquoise Dragon by David Rains Wallace. Wallace concocts a former dope-growing forest ranger who gets caught in a scheme
to extirpate an extremely rare (in fact unknown to science) salamander
called the “turquoise dragon” from the remote reaches of the Trinity
Alps. George Kilgore, the ex-ranger, inherits information about the rare
creature’s location from a murdered friend and winds his way into the
backcountry of “Limestone Creek” to discover a creature seemingly
made of “turquoise and lapis lazuli, with ruby belly and topaz eyes” (68).
But his friend had planted the salamander there to stop a dam project,
so the real native habitat of the salamander remains unknown until near
the end of the book. Although Limestone Creek is fictional, Wallace
describes it well enough, with real landmarks, to place it several miles
southwest of Cecilville. Hired thugs poison the creek to kill the salamanders so that the dam project may proceed, and the source of the
endemic amphibian turns out to be in the Kalmiopsis Wilderness about
50 miles to the north. The story has real wildlife interest because of the
rich variety of salamanders in the Klamaths. In fact (sometimes stranger
than fiction), a new species of salamander—the Scott Bar salamander—
was discovered in 2005 where the Scott River meets the Klamath River
(see chapter 6). Of course, the novel features a beautiful herpetologist
(she studies reptiles and amphibians), along with a few murderous
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183
cocaine dealers, one of whom collects exceptionally rare creatures.
Wallace’s ability to describe the wild country of the Klamaths and the
desperate attempts to save the dragon make for a wonderful story.
When I finished reading The Turquoise Dragon, I recalled a story I
had read when I was in high school about an expedition to the Trinity
Alps to find a giant “dragon” that a miner reported seeing in a lake deep
in the primitive area. In about 1920, the miner saw a giant alligatorlike
“lizard” floating under the surface of a lake not far from Wallace’s fictional Limestone Creek. Sallie Tisdale in Stepping Westward also mentions reports of giant salamanders 5 or 6 feet long in the Klamaths (the
region has a real species of salamander called the giant salamander, but
it is only a foot or so long). I’ve never been able to relocate the story of
the expedition that sought the miner’s lizard, but I can offer a close
approximation. After the report filtered out of the backcountry, a retired
army colonel mounted an expedition from Sacramento to reach the lake
and capture the creature. The lake was somewhere along the SalmonTrinity divide. The expedition reached Weaverville and then struck out
for the backcountry, heading up the North Fork of the Trinity River. Of
course, the trip was much rougher than expected. Some of the group’s
stock slipped off the trail to the canyon bottoms, and several of the
colonel’s party deserted and headed back down the canyon. The colonel
and his remaining stock and crew finally reached the lake, worried
about how they would capture a giant dragon with their remaining
resources. Fortunately for them, they never found the dragon, although
they observed a large submerged log that moved back and forth under
the water. The colonel quietly retreated to Sacramento and resumed his
retirement, surely not wanting to publicize such a grand failure.
In 2003, I decided to resurrect the hunt for the gigantic salamander
by mounting a carefully timed expedition into the area. Not sure of the
exact lake, I chose Cecil Lake, which is at the head of the North Fork of
the Trinity River and comes closest to matching Wallace’s description
of the fictional Limestone Creek. One problem that I quickly disposed
of was that Cecil Lake drains into the Salmon River, not the Trinity,
though it is right at the ridgetop, and a five-minute scramble allows a
magnificent panoramic view to the south across the entire North Fork
drainage. I reasoned that the colonel probably had poor maps and
decided that traveling up the North Fork would be easier than circling
around the old Oregon-California stage road and across the CallahanCecilville divide to get to the lake. My trip was much easier than the
colonel’s, because the road to Cecilville is now paved, and another hour
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of winding up old logging roads past Cecilville now takes travelers
within spitting distance of the lake.
Cecil Lake is at about 5,500 feet elevation, tucked into the northfacing ridgeline separating the Salmon River drainage from the Trinity
River drainage. As I hiked up in mid-June, I dodged patches of snow
clustered around the trunks of red fir trees. Lichens begin to grow on
the trunks about 8 feet up, which shows the average winter snow depth
in the area. I wasn’t sure where the lake was, so I simply followed the
largest rivulet in the area, continuing to gain elevation. Finally, I saw the
beginnings of a small amphitheater with a large snow patch at its base,
a perfect setting for the several-acre Cecil Lake. Working my way
through the trees, I saw the topography flatten and then spied the crystal blue lake. A reptilian head poked out of the shallows, but the creature did not move. It was wooden: in fact, it was wood. Cecil Lake was
very shallow, and a few red firs and mountain hemlocks had fallen into
it and remained partly submerged, their eroded ends emerging from the
water. No one would have mistaken these branches for live animals. In
fact, the lake was so shallow that an adult could walk all the way across
it in some directions without being submerged. In the winter, the water
probably freezes all the way through, an event that would not necessarily be fatal to an amphibian but is probably not conducive to survival of
a giant member of the class.
I ate my lunch in the company of dragonflies, apparently as close to
a dragon as I was going to get on this trip. The weather was cool but
clear, and I thought of stripping down and taking a swim, but the water
was too shallow to swim in. Someone had walked over much of the lake
bottom, leaving very large footprints. The wader must have stirred up
the mud of the lake bottom, and I puzzled at this lack of wilderness
etiquette. Visitors for a day or two after this walk were sure to encounter
a muddy pond rather than a beautiful clear little subalpine lake. After
lunch, I walked around the lake and up to the divide, which was a rocky
knife-edge ridge. Sword ferns and stonecrops hugged protected areas
among the rocks, and off to the west, a forest fire (probably from 1987)
had burned through the red firs, killing some and leaving others. In the
distance to the east, I could see the core of the Trinity Alps, and to the
south and the west stood ridge after ridge of wild country, protected in
the large Trinity Alps Wilderness Area. The setting was perfect for an
unknown creature like a giant dragon, although dispersal from lake to
lake would have been quite difficult for the creature. Maybe the terrain
was better suited to a fully terrestrial unknown creature. I scrambled
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Figure 33. Foot impression at Cecil Lake. The coin is a quarter.
down off the ridge and crossed the outlet of the lake, when I saw something extraordinary.
There on the muddy edge of the small outlet of the lake was the
imprint of a large, bare foot (see figure 33). The back half of the print
had been pressed into mud underwater and had washed away. The front
part was about 5 inches wide, and the projected length was about 12 to
14 inches. The print appeared to show a reverse arch, given the extra
depression behind the big toe. The number of toes was not clear: at least
four and likely five. The size was not out of the possible range of length
for a human foot, but it was quite large. I couldn’t believe that a human
had made this track, given the number of sharp-pointed sticks, rocks,
and debris in the area. A human would have at least worn water sandals. Only one explanation made sense, given my solitude and the
remoteness of the area: Bigfoot, the hairy backwoods primate! That
explanation fit with the footprints crisscrossing the lake and the feeling
I had, increasing by the moment, that I was being watched. I sniffed the
air, much like Smokey the Bear sniffing out forest fires. But I smelled neither the acrid smoke of a fire nor the alleged stench of Bigfoot. Quietly
and quickly, I retreated down the slope to the nearest road and wended
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my way back to the safety of my car and the world of the known. As I
headed back to Seattle the next day, I thought of the motel manager
who had greeted me the previous evening with a bout of the flu and a
malfunctioning swimming pool that was an algae-clogged mess. Bigfoot
had much better lodgings than I did.
The legend of Bigfoot has parallels around the world, but the Klamath
Mountains are truly the center of the Bigfoot myth. If Bigfoot is just a
hairy Lemurian, he has expanded his range considerably beyond Mount
Shasta. And, from most accounts, he is in serious need of a bath. The
center of Bigfoot sightings is Bluff Creek, a rugged and remote tributary
of the Klamath River. The notorious film of Bigfoot was shot here in
1967 by Roger Patterson and Bob Gimlin. It is the only known film of
Bigfoot. Patterson was an avid Bigfoot hunter, but Gimlin appears to
have been along for the ride. The men chose Bluff Creek on the recommendation of Ray L. Wallace, who told them they had a good chance of
seeing a Bigfoot in this area. This source immediately raises some suspicion about the lead, because Ray Wallace was a grand orchestrator of
pranks. In 1958, he had a friend carve large wooden footprints out of
pieces of alder and used them to walk around a site where his crew was
doing road construction. The crew reported the find, and a local newspaper reporter called the creature “Bigfoot.” The story soon received
national and international press, and Bigfoot was born in legend, if not
in the flesh. Wallace maintained a straight face until his death in 2002,
when his family revealed the carved wooden feet. Ray also admitted to
a magazine editor that the Patterson film was a hoax and that he knew
who was in the Bigfoot suit that day when Roger Patterson filmed the
creature.
Patterson and Gimlin had ridden horses into the headwaters of Bluff
Creek. Patterson had a film camera, and Gimlin had a rifle for protection. In late October 1967, they bumped into Bigfoot squatting along
the bank of Bluff Creek near its headwaters. The horses spooked, and
Patterson fell off his horse. Gimlin dismounted and held his rifle. Unlike
the Bigfoot “hunters,” he was reluctant to shoot unless he absolutely
had to. Patterson was able to retrieve his camera from the saddlebag
and record a modest amount of jumpy footage as he skittered across the
floodplain of the creek. The Bigfoot was a female with pendulous
breasts, weighing anywhere from 900 to 1900 pounds and sporting
40-inch-long arms and an 80-inch waist and chest. In the film, she looks
back over her shoulder toward the camera as she disappears into the
woods. Though experts agree that the film itself is real, the question of
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whether the subject of the film is real persists forty years later. Some of
the film is in good focus, and the rest is somewhat out of focus because
of Patterson’s efforts to get the camera rolling and his unfamiliarity with
the rented camera. Some who have seen the film are impressed with the
rippling of the muscles as Bigfoot marches off, but others see the flapping of a loose-fitting suit. One wonders why an imposter would risk
being shot, knowing the pursuers had a rifle, but such is the mystery of
Bigfoot. Even those who agree that Bigfoot’s appearance was a hoax
offer varying stories, depending on whether Patterson was part of the
plan or the victim of it. As part of the plan, he allegedly arranged with
Hollywood makeup artists to obtain a Bigfoot suit. The chief suspect
for the building of the suit is John Chambers, who worked on Planet of
the Apes and Lost in Space. If this story is true, it explains why Patterson
found Bigfoot in Bluff Creek and why Gimlin did not shoot at it. The
other storyline claims similar origins for the suit but presents Patterson
as the victim of the hoax. If the Patterson-Gimlin film is indeed a hoax,
it is a beauty. For many believers, this film offers key evidence of Bigfoot’s authenticity, and the film has not been convincingly debunked.
Even if the film is a hoax, like many other images purporting to be Bigfoot, this fact would not disprove Bigfoot’s existence: the myth lives on.
Legends of large, hairy primate creatures abound throughout the
world. The Yeti, or Abominable Snowman, hides out in the Himalayas.
Sasquatch hides out in the Pacific Northwest. Other “ape-people” have
been reported around the world. But nowhere is the density of sightings
higher than in Northern California. Although many local Native
Americans claim to have seen Bigfoot, the creature is remarkably absent
from Indian myth in northwest California. The closest mythical creature is the Yurok’s woge, but the woge were small humanoid beings
who withdrew to escape human influence, either leaving the country or
becoming landmarks, birds, or small mammals. Noted folklorist Alan
Dundes suggests that the woge may be the Yuroks themselves as they
became disenfranchised by the white man. The Yokuts of the San
Joaquin valley represented a “hairy man,” or Mayak datat, in pictographs on Painted Rock, but this location is far from northwestern
California. Although the Yokuts were of Penutian-language stock, like
the Wintus of Northern California, no hairy men appear in northwestern
Californian tribal myth. Various rumors that “Omah” was the Yurok
and Hupa name for Bigfoot appear to be just that. The modern white
man’s search for Bigfoot seems to grasp for Indian history in an attempt
to make Bigfoot more real. But the natives had many mythical creatures
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that served a societal purpose. And, of course, if Bigfoot were real, he or
she would have less reason to appear in Native American myth. In reality, segments of modern culture demand Bigfoot’s existence, want to
believe it, and perpetuate it as modern American myth.
Most “sightings” are in the form of tracks, some are howls, and some
are actually visual sightings. In 1995, I attended a book reading by
Robert Michael Pyle, author of Where Bigfoot Walks, and was treated
to a tape recording of a screeching, wailing Bigfoot, recorded by a
Native American gentlemen who refused to reveal the exact location of
the event. That howl counts as a sighting in the rules of Bigfoot lore,
and because it was recorded, it gets high points for authenticity. The
first reported Bigfoot sighting, a visual one, was in 1886, south of
Happy Camp, about 12 miles as the crow flies (or as Bigfoot walks)
from the Patterson film site. Two sightings in the 1930s were by Dave
Zebo, who saw tracks on Weaver Bally Mountain near Weaverville. The
trail went cold until 1947, when a couple saw two Bigfoots (Bigfoot?
Bigfeet?) near the Pit River east of the Klamaths near Fall River Mills.
After Bigfoot acquired a name in 1958, the sightings increased: twentyone in the last two years of the 1950s, seventy-six in the 1960s. The
number of reports tapered off to sixteen in the 1970s, seven in the 1980s,
eight in the 1990s, and a handful after 2000. Apparently, Bigfoot is now
more endangered than the northern spotted owl.
The pattern of sightings is closely associated with the logging history of the region. The lumber production (figure 27) of Del Norte,
Humboldt, and Trinity counties, for example, closely matches the sighting history of Bigfoot. Did better access mean that more people were
around to see Bigfoot? Or is Bigfoot a creature of the early seral landscape, preferring logged areas over old growth? My guess is that the
potential for acclaim affects the pattern: At first, every report is guaranteed to receive publicity; then, when the potential for publicity declines
over time, people make fewer reports.
The lack of recent sightings seems only to have intensified the search
for Bigfoot. In September 2003, the first International Bigfoot Symposium took place in the center of Bigfoot habitat: Willow Creek, California.
Willow Creek advertises itself as the gateway to Bigfoot country, and
Highway 96, leading north along the Trinity River to its confluence
with the Klamath and then up the Klamath, is called the Bigfoot Scenic
Byway. I once saw a Bigfoot-sized brown animal on this highway, in
1995 or 1996. As Is headed north toward Happy Camp, I saw it
crouched near the centerline of the two-lane highway. As I approached
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at 65 miles per hour (55 mph if the Highway Patrol is reading this), it
heard the hum of my Toyota pickup and stood up. I probably came
within 200 yards of it, and it appeared to be 6 or 7 feet tall. It then lumbered off into the woods, alternating between an upright and fourlegged stance as it ran. In the 1950s, a black bear was shot in the Stuart
Fork for garbage stealing, and it more than filled the back of a full-size
pickup. I hadn’t forgotten my Highway 96 creature as I downloaded my
conference registration form off the Web.
The conference advertised the “new respect” scientists had garnered
for evidence of the existence of an unknown primate living in North
America. Arriving in Willow Creek after three weeks upstream in the
Trinity Alps, I carried many preconceptions of the people who would
attend, none of whom I thought would be like me. Based on Bob Pyle’s
book, I expected mostly old guys who didn’t want to find Bigfoot as
much as they wanted to be Bigfoot. But as I walked into the auditorium
of the Trinity River School, I was pleasantly surprised by the attendance and by the diversity of the gathering. Almost 250 people had
packed into the audience on a hot, sticky day: about 50 women, some
kids, and another 50 to 75 people younger than thirty-five. The attendees included a few outfitted Bigfoot hunters, with cargo pants, field
shirts, Leatherman on the belt, and boots, but the audience was quite
mixed.
The opening speaker was to have been Dr. Jane Goodall, who has
studied the great apes in Tanzania for decades. This bid for respectability was thwarted in the late spring when Dr. Goodall either came to her
senses or realized Willow Creek was a long way to come for such a
small group. Speakers lamented that she was perhaps not “on board”
as they had hoped. Nonetheless, they carried on without her. One thing
everyone agreed upon was that Ray Wallace was a hoaxer, but they
also agreed that this fact had no bearing on the rest of the evidence. I
was somewhat disappointed with the rest of the evidence reported in
numerous “scientific” talks. Most speakers suggested that the fact that
no one had disproven Bigfoot’s existence was good evidence that he did
exist. The newest line of evidence, presented by Jimmy Chilcutt, an entertaining police fingerprint expert from Texas, was dermal ridges on the
casts of some footprints. Chilcutt’s assertions that these ridges would be
hard to fake and that they did not match those of other primates were
believable. Dr. Jeff Meldrum, a professor from Idaho State, discussed the
pattern of Bigfoot prints, suggesting that the creature’s flat, flexible foot
may be the norm for hominids throughout history. However, he was
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noncommittal when I showed him a photograph of my Bigfoot print
(figure 33).
Most of the other talks were either less convincing or altogether
ridiculous. A Bigfoot hunter from Washington summarized the most
recent financed expedition to find a Bigfoot in southern Washington,
near Mount St. Helens. Outfitted with thermal imaging equipment,
the expedition failed to find a Sasquatch but did find several pieces of
evidence that will be useful in the documentary planned by the expedition financiers, an Australian film company. The filmmakers left
fruit in the road and came back some eighteen months later to find
half a beehive in the exact place where they had left the fruit. They
recorded an “angry” response by a Sasquatch from their position on a
boat on a lake but unfortunately had not played back the recording in
the intervening three years. They were worried that waves splashing
against the boat might have affected the sound quality. The most
remarkable find was an impression of an apparent primate in mud,
appearing to lounge while eating fruit that the expedition had left at a
bait station. The filmmakers removed hair from the impression and
sent it for DNA testing, and they had a plaster cast, called the
Skookum cast, made of the impression. After three years, no results of
the DNA tests were yet available. Why the team found no footprints
leading to the fruit is unclear, and the cast of an animal supposedly
lying on its side had, to be charitable, many interpretations. Overall,
this story was as muddy as the substrate in which the Skookum cast
was made.
The most surprising aspect of the symposium was the believability of
the local people reporting on their sightings of Bigfoot. They weren’t
trying to make money, nor had they pursued a Monty Python–like quest
for decades, and their stories seemed honest and true. Did they really
see Bigfoot? I wasn’t sure, but I did believe that they saw something that
they didn’t understand in a place they understood well. I arrived at the
symposium thinking I would put Bigfoot to rest, but like a phoenix, the
creature rose again in my imagination. I hope we never find Bigfoot. If
we do, we would set off a frenzied search for and harassment of the
remaining creatures. Not finding Bigfoot keeps the creature alive, either
in the forest or in our imaginations. Amazon.com currently lists forty-six
nonfiction Bigfoot books, along with eighteen children’s books and a
few videos. Whether real or imagined, Bigfoot remains a metaphor for
wild land and our desire to retain the element of surprise in our encounters with the wilderness.
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murder at chanchelulla gulch
The western hound’s tongue, Cynoglossum grande, together with some
real hounds, was part of one of the most sensational crime stories of the
1950s in California, with remote Trinity County reluctantly playing a
central role as staging ground. In April 1955, a fourteen-year-old
Berkeley girl, Stephanie Bryan, was kidnapped near the Claremont
Hotel while on her way home from middle school. Although the police
investigated a number of possible sightings, the only clue that soon surfaced was the discovery of her French textbook in the Berkeley hills,
along Franklin Canyon Road. A thorough search of the hills after the
discovery yielded no further evidence, and the investigation stalled.
Months later, in mid-July, an Alameda woman found the girl’s purse
in a box in the basement of her home. Recognizing Stephanie Bryan’s
name from the newspapers, Mrs. Georgia Abbott called the Berkeley
police, who hurried over to retrieve the purse and interview her and her
husband, Burton. Mr. Abbott seemed unconcerned about the discovery
of the purse, even when FBI investigators later that night unearthed
from his basement Stephanie Bryan’s glasses, two library books checked
out in her name, a book on parakeets she had purchased the day of her
disappearance, two of her notebooks, and a torn bra. After the discoveries at the Alameda home, hundreds of spectators ringed the sidewalk
and nearby park for days, in anticipation of further discoveries, perhaps
even the body of the unfortunate victim. Burton Abbott’s calm
demeanor during this discovery phase was in stark contrast to the media
frenzy surrounding the case. Although Abbott was the central and only
suspect in the case, he claimed to know nothing about how Stephanie’s
belongings came to be buried in his basement.
I was glued to the newspaper every day, as I had just turned ten years
old and had started a newspaper-delivery route for the Oakland Tribune.
The Tribune decided to make this case a centerpiece, hoping to outsell
the rival San Francisco papers in the process. Along with most other
Bay Area citizens, I was privy to all the lurid details, although none of
the circumstantial evidence had yet led to a body. Police investigators
who interviewed Abbott linked his visit to a family cabin on an old
mining claim in Wildwood, along Hayfork Creek in the southeastern
portion of Trinity County, to the time Stephanie disappeared. Trinity
County! How, in the land I cherished, could someone have committed
such a dastardly deed on a young girl who was about the same age as
my sister? Abbott, as even his wife called him, had ostensibly left
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Alameda for a fishing trip to Wildwood on the Thursday Stephanie was
abducted, spent the weekend at the cabin, and returned to his studies at
the University of California at Berkeley by Monday. His return route
had been along the section of road where the French book was found.
Abbott claimed to be as puzzled as anyone about the discoveries, and he
maintained his innocence. Meanwhile, FBI agents drove to Wildwood
and intensively searched the area around the cabin, the scene of a grisly
murder years earlier in which the victim was dismembered and buried.
Hounds owned by a local rancher had located the earlier grave site not
far from the cabin. The search, concentrated right around the cabin and
mostly on flat ground, uncovered no evidence that might link the scene
to the disappearance of Stephanie Bryan.
With the discovery of Stephanie’s belongings, all of the region’s newspapers had one or more reporters working full-time on the story: the
San Francisco Chronicle, San Francisco Examiner, and San Francisco
News, and the East Bay’s Oakland Tribune. One Examiner reporter
was skeptical of the limited FBI search around the Wildwood cabin and
flew to Hayfork with a photographer to search the area himself. After
a fruitless search the first day, the two men refused to give up and
decided that hounds would be helpful to locate the source of some
unusual smells that had briefly wafted across their path that day. They
found the same local rancher, Harold “Bud” Jackson, who had located
the earlier murder victim, and he agreed to bring his two hounds, which
were crosses between blue ticks and bloodhounds, to the area late the
next day, accompanied by a couple of other men. As dusk settled on
Chanchelulla Gulch, the hounds suddenly picked up a scent and disappeared up the manzanita-covered slope on the west side of Hayfork
Creek. The rancher followed the hounds past the site of the earlier
murder victim’s grave and up the hill to a small clearing near a large
ponderosa pine tree, where he stopped abruptly. The younger hound
stood next to a depression in the ground that appeared to have been disturbed by a bear. Protruding from the dark, disturbed ground was part
of a pleated skirt, and beneath that, Stephanie Bryan’s body.
The discovery of the body prompted the immediate arrest of Burton
Abbott for the murder of Stephanie Bryan. He was charged with firstdegree murder, although the evidence was entirely circumstantial. The
trial began in November 1955, one month before catastrophic December
floods inundated Yuba City and Marysville and wreaked havoc on the
landscapes of the North Coast. While the trial was in full swing, a
warm, tropical storm entered Northern California just before Christmas
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and dumped 5 to 10 inches of warm rain over the snow-covered mountains. The rain-on-snow event triggered a level of flooding not seen for
almost a century in the North Coast region. The Trinity River, still wild
and undammed in 1955, rampaged for a week, tearing out roads,
bridges, and any other thing designed for more tranquil times. My
favorite restaurant, which spanned the Stuart Fork at Trinity Alps
Resort, was washed completely away during the storm and was never
rebuilt. Burton Abbott’s cabin on the edge of Hayfork Creek survived
the deluge, although it surely would have had water lapping at the
floorboards.
The Abbott trial and the flood vied for top headlines as I delivered
the Oakland Tribune during that wet winter. The assistant district attorney described Trinity County as “just mountains. . . . Mountains, trees,
and creeks, a virtual wilderness, a place as completely isolated as can be
found in this state. . . . A place of refuge for Abbott, a place where he
can run away and hide without creating any suspicion” (Walker 1995,
535). I thought that his words were a good description of the place I
spent my summers, but was the solitude I found so enchanting equally
inviting to criminals? Were the dark forests and wild woods that
stretched to the horizon havens for the dark side of man? I didn’t really
know, but I thought about this possibility as I delivered my daily papers
that winter, distracted by the need to toss the next paper on a dry spot
on the porch and avoid the neighborhood dogs, which considered me a
close second to the postman in entertainment value. As winter in the
Bay Area continued and repairs of the storm began, the trial came to an
end. On January 25, 1956, at 5 p.m., Burton Abbott was convicted of
murder and sentenced to death.
The night he was convicted, the Oakland Tribune issued a special
edition, rare in those days, and I made six dollars hawking papers on
foot in the dark, shouting “Abbott Convicted! Read All About It!” I felt
like a kid character in a film noir, excited by my cameo role in a gritty
urban-crime movie. My stash of sixty papers was gone in less than an
hour, and any doubts I had about the ethics of making money on a
tragedy were erased by a week’s worth of profit in a brief hour of work.
I slept well that night, confident that justice had been served and that
summer and Trinity were not far away.
Abbott’s mother and friends steadfastly maintained his innocence
and pursued any lead that might help overturn the conviction, which
had been based on entirely circumstantial, if fairly convincing, evidence.
At the center of each alternative explanation was the assumption that
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Abbott had been framed, with the real killer setting up the evidence so
cleverly that it led police to Abbott like “a trail of corn,” the title of Keith
Walker’s 1995 book about the case. One scenario had the killer first
burying the body in Marin County and later exhuming it and reburying
it near the Wildwood cabin. Although no one ever found such a grave in
Marin County, the Abbott family pursued the lead anyway, at which
point a small plant, the western hound’s tongue, became important.
Shortly after Abbott’s conviction, inebriated locals burned down his
cabin. Friends of Abbott visiting Trinity County found flowering
hound’s tongue at the Wildwood grave site near the charred cabin.
Named for its leaves, which look like the tongues of hounds, the plant
in flower has clear blue petals with an interior rim of white, and these
flowers attracted the attention of the visitors because they saw it on
the grave diggings but nowhere else. Their visit occurred during the
second growing season since the grave had been discovered. When the
group brought the plant to the botany department at the University of
California, the botanists told them that the Latin name, Cynoglossum
grande, means “large dog’s tongue” and that the plant was common in
Marin County. In so doing, they literally sowed the seeds of an alternative theory: the Marin County plants, with small nutlike seeds, had been
transported north with the exhumed body when it was reburied in
Trinity County! The seeds had germinated directly on the grave site
where they had fallen from the body, which explained why the plants
were found nowhere else in the area.
Unfortunately, this theory had one large hole: western hound’s
tongue grows in an area that extends from the Santa Lucia Mountains
far south of Marin County to Siskiyou County, substantially north of
Wildwood. It is native to the Wildwood area as well as to Marin
County, and its common habitat is similar to that at the grave’s locality:
dry wooded slopes and canyons, according to Jepson’s classic botanical
guide, Munz and Keck’s later updated flora of California, and the sinceupdated Jepson Manual. Members of the Abbott family apparently
never recognized the wide range of western hound’s tongue, and they
viewed the presence of hound’s tongue at the grave site as firm evidence
that the body had been moved there from another location. Even if the
body had been moved, this fact would have neither helped nor hurt
the case for Burton Abbott.
Burton Abbott’s appeals were denied, and he was executed in the gas
chamber at San Quentin in March 1957, unrepentant to the end. I won
the seventh-grade spelling bee that month and received a certificate from
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Modern Myths and Monsters
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the San Francisco News, a newspaper that would survive only two more
years before merging with the Call-Bulletin and later the Examiner. Various accounts in the News and elsewhere suggested that Abbott had
confessed to the murder of Stephanie Bryan, but each version required
interpretation of his remarks. The full truth will never be known, contributing to the mystery of the north woods where Bryan’s body was
found. No sign leads one to the property where Abbott’s cabin stood
and the body was buried, which is how it should be.
A second book on the Stephanie Bryan case was published in 1997
by Harry Farrell. That two books on the case would be published forty
years after Abbott’s conviction seemed odd to me, and when I read
them, the strong feelings I had at the time of the event came back. I
decided to find the site of Abbott’s cabin and see for myself what was
left of the scene. I had a few clues. I knew that the cabin was somewhere
near the point that Chanchelulla Gulch enters Hayfork Creek, and I had
two pictures from Farrell’s book: a courtroom mockup of the landscape showing the location of the cabin and the hillslope leading to the
grave site and a photograph of the grave site showing three large ponderosa pine trees. Local Forest Service maps showed no private land
where Chanchelulla Gulch enters Hayfork Creek, so the cabin must
have been an old mining claim that reverted to the government after the
cabin burned down. By getting close to the site, I hoped to finally put
my feelings to rest.
In June 2003, on a beautiful clear day, I left Weaverville on the road
winding toward Hayfork and turned up Hayfork Creek toward
Wildwood a few miles north of town. This area was the site of a Japanese attack on America during World War II, not by troops but by balloon bombs manufactured by schoolgirls in Japan and floated by air
currents of the jet stream over to the West Coast. One of these bombs
got snagged in a tree near here in February 1945. The idea of the bombs
was to create large forest fires that would frighten the public and detract
from the war effort. The design was ingenious: a large 30-foot-diameter
balloon, made of several layers of thin paper, was filled with hydrogen
and carried beneath it a bomb pack with ballast and barometers. The
barometers stabilized the balloon on its long journey from Japan. If the
pressure rose, indicating the balloon was falling, a plug would be
released to cause a sandbag to drop so that the balloon would rise.
When approaching the coast, with most of the ballast gone and barometric pressure rising, the balloon would release its load of high explosives and incendiary bombs and trigger a fuse that would destroy the
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balloon, leaving no evidence of the carrier. The 1945 Hayfork incident
showed that the bombs didn’t always work, and a bomb in February
wasn’t likely to get much of a fire going. But the Hayfork folks were
lucky. Not knowing what the contraption was, they were standing
around the base of the tree when the gas bag exploded and dropped the
bombs to the ground. The bombs didn’t explode, leaving the locals
intact and providing a complete bomb package for the military to analyze. Other such bombs fell along the coast but never created much of a
problem during the war. Witnesses were sworn to secrecy, and press
censorship prevented news about the bombs from reaching either the
public or the Japanese. Unfortunately, after the war, an Oregon family
discovered another unexploded bomb package near Lakeview, Oregon,
and this one did explode, killing several people.
In 1955, Burton Abbott had approached his cabin from the opposite
direction than I did, via Red Bluff and Highway 36. He turned onto the
Wildwood Road and drove north, stopping at the Wildwood Inn for a
drink before heading down to his cabin. I arrived from the south and
decided to drive up and past Wildwood to see if the location of the
cabin was obvious. The Wildwood Inn was still there, but the cabin site
was not obvious to me. I circled around and headed north, still looking
for the cabin site. Only one stretch looked as if it might be right. The
road turned from the north to the west, as did the one in the landscape
mockup. I saw more trees and less brush than the trial accounts suggested, and I saw no large pines, but I decided to stop and look around.
As I parked my car and started up the hill, I figured the large pines had
probably been cut down in the years since the trial.
The area I walked through had been logged of most of its larger trees,
and a rather dense young Douglas-fir forest had regenerated after the
selective logging. The grave was supposed to be about 330 feet up from
the road, so I did not have a long walk. Halfway up, I saw nothing that
rang any bells, although a scattering of dead ceanothus and manzanita
under the young Douglas-firs suggested that the site had been more
open in the past, because these species require a lot of sun to survive. As
I continued up the hill, wondering where I should go next, I was startled
by a large form in the distance: the column of a massive old ponderosa
pine trunk, a classic old “yellow-belly.” As I approached, I suddenly
hesitated, stunned that I might have actually found the grave site. As I
looked down to catch my breath, I spotted a western hound’s tongue at
my feet. I had to be at the right place. At the large ponderosa pine, I
glanced to the north, where I saw the other large ponderosa pines that
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Modern Myths and Monsters
197
were in the photograph. The grave site had to be directly behind me to
the south, and I slowly turned around to face the old forest opening,
only to find no opening. Young trees grew around a small depression in
the forest floor, covered in pine needles. Here was the grave site, still
starkly visible after fifty years.
I gently removed the pine needles and saw clods of red clay, as distinct as if they had been turned over yesterday. The depression was
about 6 feet long and 4 feet wide, and although it had been filled in, it
appeared to have been about 2 feet deep. These dimensions were close
to those of the excavation site, although the original grave was smaller
and shallower. One small Douglas-fir had taken root at the edge of the
excavation, clearly having germinated after the site had been disturbed.
Its annual rings showed a pith date of 1960 at a height of 8 inches, and
allowing for several years to grow to that height, the germination date
was likely 1956 or 1957. These trees were now about 8 inches in diameter at breast height. The large old pines, at 4 to 5 feet in diameter, had
grown only a couple of inches in diameter since the murder. I sat down,
somewhat stunned that I had walked right to the site, and at the same
time felt uncomfortable that I had disturbed the site at all. I was
depressed by my find, but a burden of my own making finally lifted
from me. I sat still, interrupted only by the chatter of Steller’s jays, and
then quietly walked back down the hill.
At the road, I wondered what had become of the old cabin. About
seven years after the cabin was burned down, the 1964 flood, even
larger than the 1955 flood, came through the Klamaths and would likely
have taken the Abbott cabin anyway. Today, the site has a rusted water
heater, chunks of old dishes and cups, and more recent trash on the
Hayfork Creek floodplain. Most people traveling along this road, or
fishing the stream, have no idea that a cabin once stood here or that two
terrible murders occurred at this place. Looking back up the hill, I
thought the Forest Service must have known of this site, because the
old timber sale had completely skirted the area of the grave site and left
all three of the old yellow-bellies. This trinity of large pines still stands
guard over the grave site, and the hound’s tongue still blooms there in
the spring.
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chapter 13
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Principles of Future
Sustainability
To ensure a sustainable future for the Klamath region, we need some
broad, overarching principles to guide shorter-term, more site-specific
actions. These principles are necessarily strategic, as opposed to the
more tactical, “how to get there” actions. People who are concerned
about the region tend to agree more on overarching principles than they
do on the specifics of action. For example, everyone would, I think,
agree that sustaining anadromous fish runs is important, yet the farmers, tribes, commercial fishermen, and others disagree about what
actions are necessary to assure continuity in fish runs. The dialogue
needs to begin with some principles of sustainability.
The central axiom, or point at which to begin the discussion, is that
in the Klamath Mountains, as in every other natural region, the only
constant is change. We must manage a changing landscape: it changes
with active management, and it changes without active management.
Thus, we must essentially manage natural processes rather than attempt
to reach a stable end point at which continued stability is guaranteed.
Such a time and state will never arrive. So the search for sustainability
is essentially the management of processes, and through improved management that is updated and changed to meet the circumstances of the
time, we can improve the health of the land.
Ecosystem health is a difficult concept to define. For humans, health
is often defined as the absence of disease. A number of indicators help
us determine whether a person is sickly or in good health, such as body
198
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Principles of Future Sustainability
199
temperature, blood pressure, and the ability to walk and exercise free of
pain. We can derive similar indicators for ecosystems, but ecosystems
are not organisms. They exist at a variety of temporal and spatial scales
that make comparisons to human health quite tenuous. To the extent
that organisms are present, we can evaluate the “health” of either individuals or populations, but for many animals (anadromous fish and
spotted owls, for example), the scale of evaluation has to be much larger
than that for other organisms.
We know that a forest full of sick and dying trees is not healthy, but
a forest totally free of sick and dying trees is not healthy either. Many
birds, small mammals, and amphibians utilize dead wood, so some measure of “disease” is essential for wildland biodiversity. “Healthy” creeks
contain dead wood. Trees that fall into creeks provide habitat diversity,
creating pools and dissipating erosive energy. Scientists have developed
indices that define stream integrity by comparing existing conditions to
pristine conditions; this approach appears to hold promise for nonaquatic systems as well. But seeing ecosystem health as analogous to
human health, as seductive as this approach may be for its communication value, has too many limitations to adopt as an overarching guiding
principle for ecosystem management.
Aldo Leopold developed his concept of a land ethic more than half
a century ago. In A Sand County Almanac, he broadly defined “land”
to include the physical and biotic elements of the ecosystem (animals,
plants, water, soils and the like). He defined an “ethic” as a limitation
on one’s freedom of action, “a differentiation of social from anti-social
conduct” (224–25). A thing is right, Leopold suggested, “when it tends
to preserve the integrity, stability, and beauty of the biotic community.
It is wrong when it tends otherwise.” Today, we consider this broadly
quoted statement somewhat naïve, unless we define stability more
broadly as sustainability rather than stasis. Beauty is in the eye of the
beholder, and few standards will please everyone. But Leopold was
right, which is why his essay on the land ethic has persevered so long.
He understood that alteration and use of natural resources are
inevitable but believed that humans have an ethical responsibility to
treat the land with respect. Land is more than property, and a land
ethic is imperative. Much of the development of land legislation and
regulation since Leopold’s time has sought to implement a land ethic.
If Leopold were here today, I think he would be proud of how far society has come but would exhort us to continue the fight. Leopold’s use
of the word integrity can lead us to a finer-scale definition that can
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Principles of Future Sustainability
guide future land use. Integrity means “wholeness,” “completeness,”
“soundness.”
One of the best interpretations of ecosystem integrity came from
forest ecologist Jerry Franklin in 1993. He defined sustainability as containing two principles: maintain the genetic potential of the land, and
maintain its productivity. Actions compatible with these two principles
would, in his view, be sustainable, and, as I interpret this view, maintain
the integrity of the ecosystem. Preserving genetic potential simply calls
for making sure species don’t go extinct as a result of land-management
actions. Leopold’s metaphor in Round River was similar: “To keep
every cog and wheel is the first precaution of intelligent tinkering”
(146). This rule doesn’t mean that we need to maximize natural populations of all species, but we have an ethical responsibility to prevent
our actions from forcing extinctions. This ethic is embodied in the
Endangered Species Act, for example. To the extent that we manage
lands to avoid jeopardizing species’ existence, our options for land management expand. Franklin’s second principle is to maintain productivity
of the land: its ability to produce goods and services (timber, wildlife,
and the like). We should be able to pass on the land to future generations in as good or better shape than we found it. We’ve not done such
a great job in the past, because we have focused too much on what we
took out of the land and not enough on the condition in which we left it.
Some mining spoils look much as they did fifty years ago, and clear-cuts
on land of very low productivity may take centuries to recover. But we
are making strides in the right direction, even as opinions vary about
how far we have come.
Sustainability is a trinity: ecological, social, and economic. To receive
the support of society, long-term plans must ensure all three types of
sustainability. But how do we start? In the late 1990s, the secretary of
agriculture appointed the Committee of Scientists to advise him on planning regulations for national forests, and I was one of the scientists. We
committee members argued that though human and ecological needs
are inseparable, ecological sustainability is the foundation of social and
economic sustainability. This idea does not mean that we should maximize biological diversity at the expense of social and economic issues,
although some people on both extremes of the pendulum of values try
to define the issue that way. It simply means that resource use is
acceptable within certain bounds that compromise neither genetic
potential nor productivity. We suggested that national forest planning
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Principles of Future Sustainability
201
should acknowledge and incorporate the following features of ecological systems:
. The significance of natural processes
. The dynamic nature of ecological systems
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. The uncertainty and variability of these systems
. The importance of cumulative effects.
The first two features require definition of the major processes that
operate on the landscape during and after a natural disturbance and
recognition of the historical ecological roles of disturbances. These natural events are not generic; they are part of the ecology of place. They
include, at times and in places, disruptive and destructive events such as
floods and fires, but trying to prevent or dilute the power of such disturbances ignores the fact that extreme events have been historically
important to ecological integrity. Now that Trinity Dam has been in
place for almost half a century, the Trinity River’s highs and lows have
been replaced with a much more uniform flow, which has devastated
fish runs. Re-creating the historic variability of fish runs is one of the
major goals of river restoration. Conversely, excluding frequent, light
fires from Klamath forests has encouraged larger, more destructive fires
in some places. We have made some significant strides in improving our
understanding of these natural processes, but we have not done an adequate job of incorporating those implications in land management.
We have crippled our ability to manage ecosystems sustainably by
setting up complex schemes to manage individual elements of those
systems. We have substantial legislation and regulation to protect individual species, if they are at risk, and often even if we don’t know
whether they are at risk or not. We have placed similar constraints on
water resources, air pollution, logging, and so on. But each set of regulations, and sometimes the people who apply the rules, acts in ignorance
of the other parts of the system. The micromanagement of each element,
individually and exclusive of other elements, prevents successful ecosystem management.
In the world of biological conservation, we call plans that recognize
and incorporate ecosystem processes “coarse-filter” approaches. “Finefilter” approaches are more species or resource specific. In reality, the
two must be linked in successful ecosystem management. A coarse-filter
approach attempts to manage ecosystem processes in a way that creates
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a semblance of natural conditions. These natural conditions are largely
based on historical conditions, recognizing that any past point in time is
just a snapshot of the ecological condition. A range of natural variability is inherent to such definition. We are foolish to expect that future
ranges of target conditions will be the same as the ranges under historic
conditions, but the historic conditions are a good starting target; these
conditions supplied the habitat diversity that sustained the native biota.
We know that most ecosystems in the Klamath Mountains have deviated from natural conditions because of the region’s profit-driven land
history, and we know that managing for natural processes now will not
be sufficient to sustain all the plants and animals here. Some will not be
provided for in a coarse-filter approach and will “slip” through the
filter. Dams have permanently altered some habitats. The concept of the
fine filter is important because it offers a more species-specific approach
that “catches” the ecosystem elements that fall through the coarse filter.
So the two filters work in tandem. Our current management approaches
in altered ecosystems often overemphasize the fine filter to the point
that the coarse filter cannot operate. A local example from the 1990s
illustrates this dilemma: the interaction between fire, wood rats, and the
northern spotted owl in the Klamath region.
Prescribed fire was proposed in the Klamath National Forest to underburn old-growth forests to prevent more severe wildfires from entering
the stands later. A local federal wildlife biologist opposed the plan,
because the prescribed fires would consume small sticks that wood rats
use to build nests. Because wood rats constitute about 70 percent of the
diet of spotted owls in this region, the biologist concluded that prescribed
fire would hurt the owl population by reducing wood-rat numbers. This
logic might work in a static system but is bound to fail in a dynamic
ecosystem. The prescribed fire would consume sticks but also create
sticks by top-killing smaller trees and shrubs; little sticks for wood-rat
nests will always be around in a fire-managed ecosystem. Prescribed fire
would also help sustain the older forest by preventing high-severity wildfires from killing all the old trees. In this way, it would assist the owls,
which depend on the older forest structure for nesting. After intense fires,
conditions are great for wood rats, because they love brushy habitat, but
habitat for spotted owls is gone. Thus, the fine-filter approach to the prescribed fire made only one tenuous link, between sticks and wood rats,
and one that was likely wrong. In a longer-term context, a plan to sustain owl habitat in fire-prone environments must recognize and incorporate the fact that fire is going to occur: a coarse-filter conservation plan
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Principles of Future Sustainability
203
for Klamath forests must deal with fire. To the extent that a coarse-filter
plan fails to provide adequate habitat for some species, land-management
strategies should adopt a fine-filter plan. However, if the planning begins
at the fine-filter level, the fine filter essentially trumps the coarse filter,
and ecosystem management is likely to fail over the long term.
A successful coarse-filter plan is dynamic. Another element of ecological sustainability is uncertainty. Frank Egler, a prominent ecologist
of the twentieth century, reportedly remarked, “Ecosystems are not only
more complex than we think, they are more complex than we can
think.” We are arrogant to think that we can predict the outcome of any
action we propose. Though outcomes certainly are not random, an element of uncertainty always precludes precise prediction. The existence
of such uncertainty points to the importance of monitoring management actions. The resulting information has to be fed back into the
management loop so that planners can change the goals or implementation strategies and tactics as appropriate. This approach to monitoring
and feedback is called adaptive management. It is the most-talked-about
and least-implemented part of ecosystem management. A recent (2003)
National Academy of Sciences report on the upper Klamath basin fishery
concluded that the participating agencies accepted adaptive management as a principle but could provide virtually no working examples.
They pointed to the Trinity River Restoration Program as a useful
model for the rest of the basin.
Future management will also reflect what has come before. Cumulative effects are those that occur from the incremental impacts of past
and current actions. They are often associated with watershed issues
but in fact encompass a much larger sphere of natural-resources actions.
A good example is the case of the sediment in Redwood Creek (end of
chapter 10). Events many decades ago placed a slug of “extra” sediment
in the channel that has slowly been working its way downstream. Future
activities in the basin need to acknowledge this impact and not exacerbate
it. Most cumulative impacts occur at larger scales and affect many
landowners. One landowner may have created most of the cumulative
effects, whereas another landowner contemplating a management action
may have to alter the design of a project to avoid adding to the effects. I’m
reminded of two industrial forest companies in Washington that owned
second-growth timberland around many spotted owl nest sites. Wildlife
agencies required landowners to maintain 40 percent of the land within a
large circle around the nest site in mature forest cover for owls. The more
aggressive company with a shorter timber cutting cycle (rotation) moved
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Principles of Future Sustainability
in and clear-cut as much of its land as it could, whereas the other company, with a much longer rotation, opted to wait for its stands to reach
that longer rotation. Once the more aggressive company had finished its
harvest, the 40 percent threshold of mature forest had been reached,
constraining the less aggressive company from harvesting trees at all in
many of its “owl circles.” We have no trouble determining which company had the better-defined land ethic.
Cumulative effects are difficult to define. They involve accelerations
of natural processes that are themselves quite variable. If each piece of
gravel in a stream deposit were color-coded by source, then one could
easily separate human-induced erosion from natural sources. In forest
practices, a clear-cut followed by a decade of dry to normal winters may
produce little accelerated erosion from the cut or any associated roads,
but one that occurs just before one or more large storms may cause portions of the local landscape to fail. One must assess actions on one land
parcel in relation to other land parcels, and currently we have few institutional processes that can either adequately assess the effects of those
actions or that can schedule the timing and intensity of land use to be
compatible with ecological sustainability.
Anyone who has dealt with natural-resource issues soon comes to
realize the importance of social and economic factors. Sustainable use
within the Klamath region is important for conservation, because the
benefits that people derive from use will provide incentives for them to
conserve these resources. Of course, the debatable issues are how much
use is advisable and whose social and economic benefit it should serve:
that of the national public, because much of the region is federal land;
the corporate or industrial world; or the local people, whose lives are
closely intertwined with the land? I argue that all these stakeholders are
important and serving them all is not incompatible: local decisions can
mesh with national policy goals. Social sustainability and economic sustainability, like ecological sustainability, are very scale dependent.
Collaborative planning at local levels is emerging as a powerful agent
for social consensus. Local collaborations have developed out of frustration that the status quo was not working for anybody. Local people
representing wide ranges of interests have come together with state and
federal representatives to design frameworks for ecologically sound and
economically and socially responsible management. One such group
has formed in the Applegate River basin in the Siskiyou region of southern Oregon. This Applegate Partnership jointly developed a vision
statement: “The Applegate Partnership is a community-based project
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Principles of Future Sustainability
205
involving industry, conservation groups, natural resource agencies, and
residents cooperating to encourage and facilitate the use of natural
resources principles that promote ecosystem health and diversity.”
By breaking down historical communication barriers and acknowledging common goals, the group has been effective in supporting Forest
Service and Bureau of Land Management (BLM) projects, coordinating
activities on private lands, and attracting interest and funding for social
assessments, natural-resource projects, and monitoring efforts. Agency
personnel no longer act primarily as resource technicians and now act
more as facilitators, educators, and partners. Though this approach
may not be possible everywhere, it has promise.
Similar partnerships have developed in the Klamath Mountains. The
Salmon River Restoration Council formed in 1992 to focus on similar
issues on the Salmon River area. Although the Salmon has a smaller
population (about one thousand people) than does Applegate (which is
also closer to large population centers), the council has been very active,
providing more than six thousand volunteer days and two hundred
workshops. Council members have been successful in helping to restore
the Salmon River ecosystem while diversifying the local economic base
and fostering communication among diverse interests.
The Hayfork-based Watershed Research and Training Center is a
community-based effort to provide a foundation for new, diversified
jobs in this area that received a double whammy in the 1990s. The traditional logging-based economy was hit both by the Northwest Forest
Plan, which substantially reduced the timber volume produced from
public lands, and by closure of the Sierra Pacific Industries mill in town.
The center seeks to experiment with new technologies for forest restoration that will increase the ecological sustainability of surrounding lands,
while providing economic and social stability close to home. Led by a
local woman, Lynn Jungwirth, the center has formed local and regional
partnerships and lobbied in Washington, D.C. It has developed lowimpact log yarding machinery that removes small trees, in line with
forest-restoration objectives, without damaging the residual stand. The
center is a catalyst for social and economic recovery in the Hayfork area,
and its vision should be more widely adopted throughout the Klamaths.
Models for ecological sustainability are also being implemented
locally. The final chapters suggest some directions to move us toward a
sustainable future. Not all of them are mine, and not every reader will
agree with all of them, but some are already being implemented and
substantially improving the health of the land.
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chapter 14
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Hard Times for Hardrock
Early miners simply helped themselves to the mineral riches in the rivers
and gravels of the Klamath region. No federal or state laws regulated the
removal process during or immediately after the gold rush, although the
miners were removing minerals from the lands of native peoples, which
were considered to be in the public domain. For twenty years, simple
mining codes provided order in the goldfields. Miners had exclusive rights
to claims they had discovered, including water rights. They had to stake
their claims with notices and names and had to limit the number of claims
they held. Early California law simply deferred to local mining codes.
As the easy gold petered out, a more comprehensive policy for
hardrock minerals became necessary. Mining operations were trespassing on federal land, homesteading was not possible on mineral lands,
and foreign investors were staying away for fear of federal seizure of
assets, as had happened in one California mercury mine during the Civil
War. Thus was born the General Mining Law of 1872, an amalgamation
of several 1860s acts with a few twists. Also known as the Hardrock Act,
the law legitimized miners’ appropriation of federal assets. All federal
lands were “free and open” to prospecting. Individual claims were limited to 20 acres, but groups of individuals could aggregate their claims
on adjacent parcels to accumulate a total of 160 acres. A claim was valid
if the claimant could reasonably determine that the mineral in question
(including gold, silver, gems, and other minerals) was present and worth
extracting. A valid, or unpatented, claim created a major property
206
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Hard Times for Hardrock
207
right, allowing the claimant not only to remove any and all minerals but
also to build a home, graze livestock, cut trees, and divert water on
public land. Active work on the claim equivalent to $100 in annual
improvements was required under the act. With $500 in improvements,
the claimant could patent the claim, or take full title to it, for $2.50 per
acre for a placer claim and $5 per acre for a lode claim. Incredibly, the
fees established in 1872 have not increased at all since then. However,
because of legal and administrative costs, the actual cost to a patent
claimant today is closer to $40,000. The Hardrock Act is still the law of
the land, although it was passed in an era when settlement of the West
required substantial incentives.
Though the Hardrock Act is still in place, it has been partially
replaced by newer legislation. In the 1920s, legislators removed the fuel
minerals (oil shale, coal, and the like, with the exception of uranium)
from the provisions of the act. National parks and wilderness areas
were more recently protected from prospecting, but people can still
mine active claims on these lands (although access to claims that require
road building can be denied). In 1974, the Forest Service enacted regulations requiring operators who would significantly disturb surface
resources to file a plan of operations, which the agency must approve
through an environmental assessment process. The Bureau of Land
Management followed suit in 1981 but requires only a “notice of operations” for areas less than 5 acres and a “plan of operations” for areas
larger than 5 acres. Reclamation is required, and California state law
passed in the 1970s mandates posting of a bond in an amount sufficient
for reclamation if the operator fails to follow the plan for reclamation.
Operators must obtain permits not only from the Forest Service or BLM
but also from the California Department of Fish and Game and from
the county in which the claim is located.
In 1976, the Federal Land Policy and Management Act, essentially a
revised organic act for the BLM, was signed into law and required
claimants to file affidavits proving that they made $100 worth of
improvements. Of course, in the 1870s, $100 was equivalent to a couple
of months of hard work. Since 1992, the $100 has been a fee directly
paid to the government to keep the claim active, unless the claimant
qualifies for the “small miner exemption” that allows proof of labor
equivalent to the $100 to substitute for this fee. Many claims were
abandoned once the claimants had to pay money out of pocket for
frivolous mining claims that were mostly for recreational purposes. The
annual filing fee reduced claims from about 1 million nationwide before
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Hard Times for Hardrock
1992 to about 350,000 in 1993 and 235,000 in 2002. Trinity County
has about 7,000 active claims, and assuming that each claim is for 20
acres, the total area is about 140,000 acres, mostly in riparian areas. So
the potential for significant impact from renewed operations is high,
even with the number of claims in decline. Were the price of gold to skyrocket, many of these claims, plus new ones, might be activated.
Mining is not a renewable-resource activity, so it is inherently unsustainable in the long run. It consists of removing nonrenewable resources,
whether gold, silver, mercury, or other elements. Suggestions for sustainable mining are not tenable, but improvements in the techniques of
mining could help avoid damage to other resources. Though mining can
have significant negative effects on renewable natural resources, such as
water, fish, wildlife, and forests, techniques are available to mitigate
mining impacts and make such operations more compatible with the
conservation of other affected natural resources.
Environmental protection from mining would be strengthened with
reform of the Hardrock Act. What form the reform should take has been
the subject of bitter debate. Charles Wilkinson, a noted scholar of mining
law, has suggested a number of elements in a reformed hardrock law:
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. Remove the right to patent, or to obtain fee title to, areas being
mined.
. Replace the claim with a lease similar to leases for oil and gas
resources.
. Require claimants to pay a royalty to the government for the
minerals they remove.
. Eliminate existing claims to areas that have no mining activity.
. For each application, determine whether the public benefits of
mining outweigh those of not mining.
These provisions would not eliminate mining and would not prevent
small miners from making diligent efforts to remove minerals. Given the
bonding required now even for small miners, the major effect of reform
on the small miner would be the royalty payment. If the payment were
based on net profit rather than gross proceeds, reform would have less
financial effect on the serious small miner. It nevertheless would create
a new cost for both small and large miners: a payment for a resource
that is now given away essentially for free. One possibility would be to
waive royalties up to the amount of the reclamation bond, at which
time the royalty payments would kick in. Mining is not totally free at
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Hard Times for Hardrock
209
present, because applicants must either pay the government for the cost
of environmental analysis of mining on public lands or contract out the
analysis with subsequent federal review.
Among the other reforms that people have proposed are limitations
on the number of claims that a single person or corporation (currently
unlimited) can hold, a requirement that operations commence within a
certain time after the permit is issued, establishment of a sunset date on
legal claims that have been inactive for a time, and creation of a federal
mine-reclamation fund to restore land and water resources damaged
from past mining. One of the problems of unlimited claims was solved
with the assessment of the $100 annual fee per claim. The commencement issue and sunset provisions are complex, given that market conditions may drive activity. Critics of reform claim that if the market
were to drop right after an operator received approval for a lease or
permit, there would be no financial incentive to mine, and the whole
lease/permit process would be in vain. They argue that a sunset provision would be unfair. But most all other resource extractions have spatial and temporal restraints on activity.
Mining reform would be useless if it didn’t control the amount of
mining activity allowable at one time. On both public and private land,
logging is spatially driven and scheduled over time through regulation,
although the timber industry still thinks it is overregulated and environmentalists think it is underregulated. The intensity of mining activity at one time, such as placer mining in stream gravels, needs to be
controlled. One solution would be to give agencies discretion in spreading the impacts of mining and reclamation over time (most restoration
work can cause at least temporary damage). They might set up a firstcome, first-served system in which claimants with the earliest permits
have the first right to activity for a period of time, going to the end of
the queue if they defer. The amount of activity would vary by the condition of the watershed and the type of activity (suction dredging could
be more widespread than placer mining of stream terraces, for example).
In any reform legislation, the agencies need the authority to deny a
permit in a sensitive area.
Current Superfund legislation holds any new operator on an old mine
site responsible for past environmental hazards as well as any new hazards the miner creates. It might be more environmentally efficient to
combine the reclamation bonds with a federal mine-reclamation fund to
allow new operators to open old mines and remediate existing environmental problems there rather than start anew somewhere else.
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Hard Times for Hardrock
Critics will argue that Wilkinson’s proposals, and my embellishments, would create a new maze of red tape and delay, which is true.
The need to tighten environmental regulations is, in a sense, testament
to the absence of a land ethic. Mining has been relatively unregulated
compared to fishery and forestry. Sustainable ecosystems require attention to all aspects of their future; regulation cannot effectively address
mining using a claim-by-claim approach any more than a timber-harvest
plan can focus on one small area of timberland at a time (see chapter 15).
The “right to mine” must become a “privilege to mine,” supported by
regulations appropriate to a real ecosystem-management approach.
The Klamath region still suffers from the unregulated activities of the
past. The worst example is the Iron Mountain Mine complex just northwest of Redding. The vegetation that was devastated from early copper
smelting (figures 23 and 24) has recovered in part, but it is not close to
the levels of plant cover or species composition that existed before
mining began. This area receives 70 to 80 inches of precipitation a year
and should support complex mixed-conifer vegetation. Yet the area,
covering hundreds of square miles, supports a sparse vegetation cover
that is scrub woodland at best, more indicative of droughty sites. Erosion removed productive topsoil, and the smelters poisoned the soils
with heavy metals. Vegetation recovery, if it happens at all, will require
centuries.
The acid mine waters that have continuously seeped from these mines
are so toxic that the Environmental Protection Agency has designated
the site a Superfund site. The subsurface pyrite (iron sulfide), once
exposed to water and oxygen through tunneling operations, begins to
oxidize to superacidic levels (a minus pH!). Because of the heat generated from the chemical process, Iron Mountain is truly a “hot property,”
generating subsurface temperatures over 120oF. Dottie Smith, a Shasta
College historian, visited Iron Mountain in the 1980s. She told me that
she saw “no signs of animals or birds. There wasn’t a blade of grass . . .
nothing. It was dead. When I got home, I took my shoes off and threw
them in the garbage. I never want to go back. I like trees and green
things.” To see if things had changed much since then, I visited the site
in 2005. More precisely, I tried to visit: the front gate is an imposing
barrier, plastered with No Trespassing signs.
Progress is evident at Iron Mountain. The effluent from the mines is
now diverted into an acid-neutralization plant, which began with a
capacity of about 60 gallons per minute and now handles 2,000 gallons
per minute. Clean upstream surface water is diverted around the site,
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Hard Times for Hardrock
211
and the site is also finding use as a repository for other mine wastes. A
large pile of ore, filled with heavy metals, that sat next to Keswick
Reservoir has recently been moved to Iron Mountain, where it has been
buried and capped so that water will not enter or leave. Appreciation of
this progress must be tempered with the realization that remediation is
an experimental technique, not a totally proven technology. No one yet
has a solution that will permanently clean up 90 percent of the problem
without further maintenance, and people debate the efficacy of the suite
of remediation methods, from plugging the mine to expanding water
treatment. Yet flows of cadmium, copper, and zinc into the Sacramento
River have fallen by 80 to 90 percent since the 1980s, and the cost of
present and future cleanup (to 2030 a.d.) will be $1 billion. The bulk of
the cost will be borne by the mining companies who inherited ownership
of the site. Yet the problem will continue through the next 3,000 years
unless we find a more permanent solution. The generation-long mining
history leaves a legacy of damage that will affect at least the next hundred generations of Klamath region citizens.
Although copper is the mineral that has generated the longest-lasting
problems for the region, copper mines are not alone on the list of abandoned and hazardous sites. The Siskon Mine, an abandoned gold and
silver mine that drains into Copper Creek (then Dillon Creek) and then
the Klamath River, is a good example. It was an active mine in the
1950s, taking ore from open pits on the ridge and trucking them downhill to a mill site adjacent to Copper Creek. The ore was milled there,
and gold and silver were concentrated using cyanide slime. The
processed tailings went into a pond near the stream, with a dam separating the pond from the diverted stream channel. The dam apparently
failed regularly in winter storms, “cleaning” the pond for the next year’s
tailings. When the mine closed in 1960, maintenance of roads and the
mill site stopped, and the dam soon failed for the last time, probably in
the 1964 flood (see the top of figure 34). The bunkhouses and mill buildings were removed in the 1970s. Tailings have been eroding into the
stream since.
The buildings at the mill were removed in the 1970s, but each year
during the mill’s operation, about 10 cubic yards of tailings entered
Copper Creek, polluting it with arsenic, cadmium, lead, mercury, molybdenum, selenium, silver, and zinc. Other tailings are in the hundred-year
floodplain and could mobilize in a flood. The heavy metals in the stream
have affected Chinook and federally threatened coho salmon and steelhead in Copper Creek, Dillon Creek, and the Klamath River. A bit of
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Figure 34. Restoration of stable conditions at the Siskon Mine off the
Klamath River. Top: prereclamation landscape. Bottom: stable, restored
conditions. (Source: Polly Haessig, USDA Forest Service, Klamath
National Forest, 1312 Fairlane Road, Yreka, CA 96097.)
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Hard Times for Hardrock
213
good news is that the tailings have a low leaching potential, so preventing movement of the tailings can solve the erosion problem.
The Forest Service has completed a $500,000 reclamation project at
the Siskon Mine, using the Superfund regulatory process with appropriated dollars from the U.S. Department of Agriculture. The federal
government, under the Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation, and Liability Act of 1980 (more commonly known as Superfund), has the legal right and obligation to respond to releases of
hazardous substances on public lands. The tailings around the mill site
were consolidated by contractors and then capped with local soil from
clean fill piles on-site and from borrow sites along the old mill road. A
gabion wall now stands at the stream edge to stop the erosion of the
tailings. The gabion wall differs from the usual retaining wall one might
see along a road or bridge abutment in that the interior of the wire cages
that are filled with rocks has dividers, which offer more stability against
scour. This wall will hold back the tailings, preventing their movement
into the stream and stabilizing their surface so that the cap will not
erode either. A “revet mattress” has been constructed in front of the
gabion wall to protect it from scour during flood flows. The capped tailings at the Siskon Mine were mulched, fertilized, and seeded before
being covered with erosion-control matting; once stabilized, the surface
will be planted with trees. The area will still be permanently scarred by
the open pits on the ridge, but the tailings at the downhill mill site will
no longer erode into the stream, and the rehabilitated area adjacent to
the stream will begin a permanent recovery. Restoration was completed
at the site in November 2004 (see the bottom of figure 34).
Mining proceeds with far more sensitivity now than it did in the
1850s or the 1950s, but we still must ask why mineral production on federal land in the twenty-first century remains largely based on nineteenthcentury rules and fees. Reform of this system would ensure that the
Klamath region does not face the situation that the Cabinet Mountains
of Idaho now face. Federal officials there, under current law and regulation, have generally conceded that individuals and companies have a
“right to mine,” and though government agencies can require various
resource-protection measures, they cannot cancel a proposed project.
While the authority of these agencies continues to be debated in court,
the Revett Silver Company is planning to drill a large copper and silver
mine called the Rock Creek Mine under the Cabinet Mountains, which
would discharge millions of gallons of wastewater per day, placing
pollutants into the Clark Fork River and then to Lake Pend Oreille.
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Hard Times for Hardrock
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New regulations promulgated right at the end of the Clinton administration (January 2001) allowed the BLM to declare the site too sensitive
to mine, but two months later, the Bush administration suspended the
new rules and left the federal administrators with little choice. The first
round in court was a victory for the plaintiffs, with U.S. District Court
Judge Henry Kennedy ruling in early 2004 that the BLM had abdicated
its duty as an environmental steward. However, in October 2006, the
Fish and Wildlife Service cleared the Rock Creek Mine by ruling that
the mining will not adversely affect endangered fish and wildlife.
The most surprising turn of events, though, occurred in March 2004
when famed New York jeweler Tiffany and Company paid for an open
letter in the Washington Post in which it asked the Forest Service to
block the mine and advocated reform of the 1872 mining law. Noted
environmental philosopher Wendell Berry has spoken of our “profound
failure of imagination” (201), not perceiving the wheat beyond the
bread, the farmer beyond the wheat, and the farm beyond the farmer.
Tiffany’s imagination fully recognizes where its precious metals come
from and publicly embraced a land ethic. The company supports the use
of more environmentally sound mining practices to obtain the gems,
silver, and gold it uses in its classic jewelry. My guess is that the “gem”
Tiffany is now fighting for will eventually create a sea change in Congress for reform of the hardrock law. The change may not happen
immediately, and the inertia of 130 years of legislative inaction will be
difficult to overcome. But as surely as the sun rises in the morning, hard
times are coming for hardrock.
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chapter 15
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Forests for the Future
The future forests of the Klamaths, both public and private, need to be
managed much differently than in the past to deal effectively with issues
of site and scale. Some of the needed change has already occurred: site
issues governing timber harvest have been dealt with through three
decades of forest-practices regulations, and the importance of natural
disturbances is better recognized now. Questions of scale are receiving
attention on both public and private land, with some success and some
major challenges. Some 60 percent of the region’s forests are publicly
owned, managed primarily by the Forest Service with a few percent
managed by the Bureau of Land Management. About 30 percent are
owned by industrial forest enterprises, and about 10 percent have nonindustrial owners (generally defined as individuals who own less than
2,500 acres and have no processing capacity).
In the past, the intensity of management was highest for nonindustrial owners, and these lands typically had the highest percentages of
commercial forestland that was cutover and nonstocked (not reforested). Some land was converted to grazing land (see chapter 10). Industrial lands tended to be intensively managed, but much of this area was
replanted with trees after logging. Public lands had the most conservative management, and much of the remaining old-growth forest was on
these lands when intensified cutting levels began in the 1970s and
1980s. Loggers pushed roads into new areas, and funding for road
maintenance did not always follow the funding for timber removal.
215
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Forests for the Future
The 1990s ushered in a new era in forest management on both public
and private lands. Threatened species such as the marbled murrelet and
the northern spotted owl took center stage and affected forest management on all lands. The response on California public lands was implementation of the Northwest Forest Plan, and on private lands, it was
tougher forest-practices regulations in a state where the regulations
were already the most stringent in the nation. With these actions as a
starting point, I offer some suggestions here for increasing the chances
of sustainable forest management on three types of ownerships.
Copyright © 2007. University of California Press. All rights reserved.
publicly owned forests
The publicly owned forests of the Klamath region are primarily within
the Klamath National Forest and the Shasta-Trinity National Forest,
with a bit in the eastern part of the Six Rivers and the northern part of
the Mendocino National Forests. All four forests are within the boundaries of the Northwest Forest Plan. The Northwest Forest Plan is a
bioregional conservation plan for 25 million acres of federal lands
within the range of the northern spotted owl; it focuses on management
of entire ecosystems, not just owls. The range of the owl includes all of
western Washington and Oregon, the eastern Cascades of both states,
and the northwestern California area south to Marin County. The
northern spotted owl, first recognized as a species at risk, became a
standard bearer for anadromous fish, old-growth forest remaining on
public lands, and other species that are seemingly dependent upon
old-growth forest.
The planning began with a strategy for owl conservation based on
the theory of island biogeography. This theory postulates that in oceanic
systems, terrestrial (island) biodiversity relates both to island size and to
distance from an immigration source. Thus, one would expect a small,
remote island to have fewer land-based species than would a large island
near a mainland, because of the hostile nature of the matrix (the ocean)
for the migration of terrestrial species. As adapted to terrestrial ecosystems, this theory means that larger reserves are better than small ones,
reserves should be placed to allow genetic interchange with more than
one nearby reserve (via individuals moving between reserves), corridors
should link reserves, and circular-shaped reserves are preferable to linear
ones (to minimize edge effects). The Interagency Scientific Committee
(ISC), in 1990, provided the first bioregional attempt at owl protection.
In addition to managing a large network of reserves specifically to
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Forests for the Future
217
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maintain older forest habitat for owls, the plan called for using uncut
forests on both sides of streams to provide linkages between reserves
and for maintaining some cover in areas that were not in reserves
(observing the flexible and innovative 50–11–40 rule: 50 percent of the
land between reserves must contain trees averaging 11 inches diameter
with more than 40 percent canopy cover). These two provisions sought
to soften the potentially negative effect of the matrix (the land between
the reserves).
The ISC report was the first to deal with the owl at a scale sufficient
to project with some probability the likelihood that owls would persist
for another century on the landscapes of the Pacific Northwest. Other,
precursor plans to the Northwest Forest Plan, and the Northwest Forest
Plan itself, drew heavily on the groundbreaking work of the ISC. Above
all, the ISC plan sent a signal to managers of public lands that current
targets for timber cutting could not be sustained. After President Clinton
held his Forest Summit in Portland in 1993, the team that assessed the
options for the Northwest Forest Plan considered no strategies that
maintained high timber yields. All seven of the original options, and all
ten of the final options, included reductions of 75 percent or more from
1980s harvest levels.
The Northwest Forest Plan was an altered version of option 9 of the
assessment. It envisioned several types of management on the 25 million
acres of federal lands in the plan, designating more than 75 percent of
the area as reserves of one form or another:
Legislatively and administratively withdrawn areas: 36 percent of the
area, mostly national parks and wilderness areas. Timber harvest is
generally prohibited by law, but naturally occurring fires may be
allowed to burn in some cases.
Late-successional reserves (LSRs): 30 percent of the area, managed to
produce and maintain old-growth conditions. The plan allows operations like thinning that will hasten the development of older conditions by increasing the growth of residual trees, but generally in
stands that are eighty years old or younger. Prescribed fire is allowed
under some conditions.
Managed late-successional reserves: 1 percent, where small areas of old
growth are protected, managed mostly to protect owl pairs outside
of other protected designation areas.
Riparian reserves: 11 percent, adjacent to streams, initially designed as
two tree lengths wide each side on fish-bearing streams and one tree
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length wide on other perennial streams. These standards could be
relaxed after an analysis of each watershed was completed, but have
not been to date, even though most all watershed analyses have been
completed.
Adaptive management areas (AMAs): 6 percent of the land base, where
experiments with creative and innovative practices are permissible,
with the possibility of applying them later to other lands.
Matrix lands: 16 percent of the land base that has not been assigned to
another category and where more intensive timber harvest is allowable but not mandated. These areas are the source of the projected
timber-harvest levels in the plan; retention of some green trees is
required in every cutting.
The Northwest Forest Plan is now more than a decade old, giving us
an opportunity to consider how it has played out during that decade,
particularly in the Klamath region. The buffer widths that the plan
established for riparian reserves, originally intended as a starting point
for site-specific and generally narrower buffer widths on streams, have
become a default standard in all three states. The burden of proof has
shifted away from defining why a wider buffer is necessary to proving
why a narrower buffer would be effective, so not a single watershed
analysis has reduced the default buffer widths.
Adaptive management areas, which the plan envisioned as places to
try innovative practices free of the restrictions in the other designated
areas, are now subject to all the same standards and guidelines applied
to other areas. Managers thought that the research arm of the Forest
Service should fund the AMAs, and scientists thought the opposite, so
AMAs lost support from both sides and are managed now mostly as
matrix lands. The Hayfork AMA, one of the largest, was intended to
experiment with community forestry models, stewardship contracting
(innovative contracting), partnerships, and socioeconomic testing of
value-added markets (high-value products from small timber and hardwoods). Late-successional reserves in the northern, wetter zone are
functioning as they were intended, but in the drier eastern Cascades and
Klamaths, forest fires are nipping away at these areas because of the
preponderance of fire-prone forest structures currently in the LSRs.
A policy of surveying for little-understood flora and fauna (called
“Survey and Manage”) was implemented in 2000 and added significant
costs and delays to projects in the matrix. Survey and Manage has been
costing the agencies over $30 million a year. The Survey and Manage
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Forests for the Future
219
protocols consider all species about which little is known (including
lichens, fungi, and invertebrates) to be “at risk” until proven otherwise
(a policy that is almost the opposite of the Endangered Species Act,
which lists species when evidence suggests a real threat). These finefilter requirements have made any timber harvest or application of prescribed fire costly and difficult to implement. Under Survey and
Manage, if a snail or slug on the list has been discovered midslope in a
proposed prescribed-burn unit, establishment of an unburned buffer
midslope, which could not be reasonably protected against the fire, has
been required, so the prescribed-fire project has typically been cancelled.
Prescribed fire to increase the resistance of mature forest to wildfire has
not, therefore, been applied much, and thinning for similar purposes
has also been constrained. Harvest levels projected in 1995, which were
about 25 percent of 1980s harvest levels, have not materialized, instead
dropping to 10 percent or less of those levels, because the original predictions of timber output did not incorporate precautionary constraints.
Unlimited old growth may not be the best outcome for the northern
spotted owls of the Klamath region. A trade-off apparently exists
between the presence of mature to old-growth forest, which is ideal for
nesting, and the presence of other types of vegetation, which is optimal
for foraging. The dusky-footed wood rat, which is the main prey species
for the owl here, is more abundant in these other types (brush, young
forest). Blocks of older forest with lots of edge (see figure 35) are much
better suited to northern spotted owls (measured by both survival and
reproductive success) than are blocks that are either all “other vegetation types” or all mature to old-growth forest. This pattern of so-called
forest fragmentation appears to closely mimic the historical landscape
patterns caused by fire. Although we do not know exactly what those
patterns were, they appear to look more like the top row of patterns in
figure 35 than the bottom ones and seem to produce better landscapes
for spotted owls.
Spotted owls now face two new threats in their range: stand-replacing
fires in the drier forest types, which used to burn more frequently but
with less intensity than they do now; and the barred owl. The barred
owl is a slightly larger and more aggressive owl than the spotted owl; it
is native to eastern North America but has been able to migrate successfully across the continent through Canada and has moved south
through the range of the northern spotted owl along the Pacific Coast
during the past thirty years. Even in unfragmented habitat, like Olympic
National Park, the barred owl has displaced the spotted owl from the
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Figure 35. Fitness of habitat for reproduction of the northern spotted owl in the Klamath Mountains. Each circle is
roughly a mile in diameter. Black represents mature to oldgrowth conifer forest, and white represents all other vegetation types. Fitness is higher in heterogeneous landscapes
than in areas in which the forest is either all young
conifer/other vegetation or all mature/old-growth conifer.
(From A. B. Franklin, D. R. Anderson, R. J. Gutierrez, and K.
P. Burnham, “Climate, Habitat Quality, and Fitness in
Northern Spotted Owl Populations in Northwestern
California,” Ecological Monographs 70, no. 4 [2000]:
539–90. © 2000 by Ecological Society of America.
Reprinted with permission. Illustrator: Cathy Schwartz.)
best habitat. Wildlife managers have been concerned enough to suggest
a campaign in which government-trained hunters shoot barred owls, at
least in portions of the Klamaths, to save the spotted owl. The future of
the northern spotted owl is uncertain, but the available signs point to
even more risk to a sustainable population.
A sustainable future for the forests of the Klamaths will require more
active management of public forests to move them closer to the types of
structures created by natural disturbances, especially historic forest
fires. Before the reader begins envisioning clear-cuts across the landscape, let me define what I mean by active management. Active management is a continuing program of light-on-the-land management to
mimic natural processes, particularly fire. Fire tends to thin from below,
kill small trees, and consume fuels, and similar actions should be the
focus of management. Very little regeneration harvesting, which seeks to
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Forests for the Future
221
open a stand for seedlings to regenerate, will be necessary. But more
extensive thinning programs, whose focus is to reduce fuels and remove
small trees, will help protect the older trees. We have plenty of recently
regenerated forest in the Klamaths right now, both from public harvest
in the 1980s and from continuing private harvest.
Several years ago, I conducted a study of a portion of the Umpqua
National Forest in southern Oregon that showed that natural disturbances have produced stand-replacement events in about 0.2 percent of
the land annually for the past fifty years, compared to 1.1 percent
caused by clear-cutting. This ratio of 6 to 1 suggested that we do not
need more regeneration harvest now or in coming decades; I suspect a
similar trend applies in the Klamaths. Achieving a more natural balance
of even-aged and multiaged forests will require us to shift our focus
from future clear-cutting (or cuts to retain green trees and encourage
substantial regeneration) toward thinning operations and prescribed
fire to create multiaged stands from single-aged stands. We may not yet
know the ideal mix, but we do know the best direction and intent of
management. Public land management also needs to recognize that private lands will be more intensively managed. Particularly with the preponderance of checkerboard ownership, public-forest management
should work to minimize the combined cumulative effects of active
management of both private and public ownerships. The worst possible
end result would be a checkerboard ownership that is obvious from
space: clear-cuts on the private land and no management at all on
public lands. A wildfire resulting from extreme weather would incinerate young industrial plantations and cause public lands to burn with
higher-than-normal severity, so the checkerboard pattern would be
muted, but the scorecard on ecological services like clean water and
wildlife habitat would read zero. A landscape with softer edges would
be preferable, coming closer to the way that nature once managed these
forests.
Size, shape, and spacing of stands of varying character are important.
Real historic landscapes had spatial gradients of fire severity, linking,
for example, an old-growth patch to a patch killed by fire. Rarely were
the sharp edges we see in recent-decade clear-cuts present on the Klamath
landscape. The issue of natural shaping is addressed in current Forest
Service law (the National Forest Management Act of 1976) but has
been largely ignored. In places that experienced historic stand-replacing
fires, even-aged stands would have resulted. Future regeneration harvests,
either by clear-cutting or low retention of green trees, should blend
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Figure 36. A Douglas-fir stand in the Klamath Mountains that retained high
overstory cover, ten years after being burned by wildfires in 1987.
into surrounding areas, including private lands, rather than be designed
as angular blocks on the land. Given the overrepresentation of young
stands at present, this need will likely not arise much in the next few
decades.
The “average” historic stand in much of the Klamath Mountain
matrix land, dominated by Douglas-fir, was neither young, even-aged
forest nor complex, multilayered old growth. It was an intermediatestage forest that might be called “old growth” (because it contained a lot
of old trees) but often lacked the multiple canopy layers of undisturbed
forest (see figure 36). From above, it appeared to have a continuous
canopy, but fire intervened often enough that the forest was often single
canopied. Stands that began after a stand-replacement event developed
into the several-aged stands in the presence of several fires and “recycled” through the several-aged category with recurring low- to moderate-severity fire, perhaps for centuries. Stands in moist and cool locations
(some riparian, some north aspect) developed the complex, multilayered
structure and persisted, although probably on a small proportion of
the landscape. They were not totally free from fire, but fire occurred
there at the lowest severities. Stands in less-protected areas, if they
developed a more flammable complex structure through absence of fire
or were simply in hotter, drier topography (with steep, south aspects)
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Forests for the Future
223
were usually recycled via a high-severity fire to a single-aged regeneration unit. Fires during unusual weather might have the same effect.
The challenge of creating and maintaining this complex mix of stands
is enormous. No one has yet accomplished this feat. In the short to
midterm, a variety of operations, including the use of prescribed fire
and some timber harvest, will be appropriate: to move single-aged
stands to multiaged stands while helping to produce bigger trees; to
maintain multiaged stands through variable thinning regimes, usually
thinning from below but not always lightly; and to encourage stable
openings more typical of the historic forest. Stands as old as 100 to
150 years appear to respond to thinning, so the opportunity to create
large trees is not limited to very young stands. Given the current large
proportion of young stands, little need will exist for regeneration harvest during the careers of the current generation of land managers.
Fire can’t be used everywhere, but underburning is an important tool
in the kit, one that has not been used in the past as much as it might be
in the future. Fires can be applied under moist weather conditions in
spring and fall to limit flame lengths to 1 to 3 feet, a height sufficient to
kill small trees and consume fuels but likely to do little harm to the
mature-tree overstory. Where smoke constraints or escape possibilities
are high, then harvest to mimic fire may be the most appropriate tool.
And, of course, wildfires will continue to occur in the Klamaths. Historically, they created some high-severity patches and a local concentration of snags on the landscape. On old clear-cuts, snags are almost never
seen, and they can be very limited after timber-salvage operations on
wildfires (especially on private land). In the future when wildfires create
large patches of dead trees, avoidance of total salvage may help replenish this important source of woody debris that was spatially and temporally variable, but nonetheless present, on the historic landscape. This
occurrence implies, conversely, that some salvage of dead trees in fireprone areas may be needed to enable active management of the emergent young stands twenty or thirty years later.
With hundreds of thousands of acres in wilderness, land managers
should expand the use of naturally ignited fires in the Klamaths.
Although some plans exist at present to allow such fires, they need to
allow more operational flexibility so that a higher proportion of the
fires can burn. Fire in wilderness is as much a natural process as wind or
rainstorms, except of course that natural ignitions were for centuries
augmented by Native American ignitions. I like to envision lightningcaused fires burning down from the ridges and Indian fires burning up
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from the valleys. The risk is that an occasional fire will start well inside
a wilderness and burn its way out. Use of prescribed fire around such
potential borders, and even inside wilderness, can reduce the probabilities that such events will occur. A focus on public-land fuel treatment
near the wildland-urban interface (WUI) is already mandated by the
Healthy Forests Restoration Act of 2003, but the commitment of private
landowners will also be necessary to protect developed areas successfully.
We have developed a much better idea of how natural disturbances
affect forest structures in the various forest types of the Klamaths, and
we can use this information to achieve an appropriate mix of stand
structures in the nonwilderness landscape. We also have the opportunity to tailor the mix to take into account the projected stand structures
on surrounding private lands. Visualization software is now available
that can show, at a stand or landscape level, what such structures will
look like in five, ten, or fifty years; this tool offers a powerful way to
show the public the results of such management. Previous forestmanagement plans focused on outputs: how much timber will result,
how many recreation days, and the like. New forest-management plans
need to focus on what we are creating and maintaining on the landscape. The outputs are still important, but they flow from the sustainable landscape.
One concern with active management is how to predict cumulative
effects. If we actively manage forest in a watershed that has been damaged in the past, will the additional impact of these ground-disrupting
activities create unacceptable erosion or stream quality? Analyses of
some watersheds are already in hand and will help guide future activities. Innovative means of removing trees with new flexible equipment
can allow thinning with little impact on the land, and access can allow
rehabilitation of areas known to need help, such as those with old,
poorly maintained roads. Prescribed fire can forestall stand-replacement
burning, so it can forestall the effects of wildfire.
Some change in regional vegetation may be inevitable if global warming continues. In warmer, drier environments, an even more aggressive
fuels strategy will be necessary to maintain large, old conifer forest.
The key to success is to apply “fire-safe” principles in managing Northwest Forest Plan forests, particularly in the drier forest regions like the
Klamath. We know that current fire problems partly stem from past
mismanagement: removal of too many large trees, buildups of surface
fuels and ladder fuels, and to a lesser extent, filling in of the overstory
canopy so that fires can move from tree crown to tree crown. Fire-safe
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225
principles give top priority to reducing surface fuels and ladder fuels
and thinning tree crowns where appropriate, but they also call for keeping the larger trees that are more fire resistant (because of thicker bark
and taller crowns).
These restorative actions would represent a net investment in the
natural resources of the region. The activities will produce some revenue, but much of the rehabilitation and prescribed fire work will cost
money and recover none directly. From a public perspective, however,
this approach may be cost-effective. We now spend tens to hundreds of
millions of dollars to suppress individual wildfires, for example. If we
could begin to treat our forests to fragment continuous fuels, we could
save public dollars now spent on fire suppression. But for a time, we
will probably need to invest in forest restoration and spend suppression
dollars at current levels. We need to be much more cost-efficient in fighting the large wildfires: the $200 million spent on the Biscuit fire of
southern Oregon in 2002 and on a fire in the Pasayten Wilderness of
Washington in 2003 could have funded a remarkable, decades-long
restoration program for the Klamaths. Most likely, however, the agencies will have to start restoration actions slowly and ramp up activity as
people gain trust in the pilot projects.
When the Northwest Forest Plan was adopted, its goals were not
only to assure ecological sustainability but also to sustain the affected
communities. Wood produced as a by-product of restoration can provide social and economic benefits, although never again at the high
levels of the 1980s. Innovative timber yarding techniques, such as
those developed by Hayfork’s Watershed Research and Education
Center to remove small logs from stands with little environmental
impact, will be critical if forest managers are to be able to treat substantial areas. Meanwhile, the Federal Payments to States program,
which expired in 2006, should be continued to recognize the ecological investment local communities make when they implement the
Northwest Forest Plan. Formerly, 25 percent of the revenue from federal lands, primarily from logging, went to the local counties in which
the revenue was generated. With the Northwest Forest Plan, these
amounts declined precipitously, so Congress stepped in with a stable
but temporary funding formula. If the program does not continue past
2006, and the system reverts to the 25 percent revenue level, it will
cost the counties of Trinity and Siskiyou $14 million per year. For
urban counties, this level of funding may seem a drop in the bucket,
but for these counties, it would deliver a tremendous economic blow,
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given that they have already lost the direct economic benefits of the
higher harvest levels from public lands.
These monies also fund forest-restoration projects across the region.
Each county has a resource advisory committee (RAC) appointed by the
secretary of agriculture, whose role is to improve collaborative efforts
and provide recommendations for project funding. Between 2001 and
2005, for example, Trinity County spent close to $5 million on watershed restoration, fuels reduction, and trails improvement. The RAC
process and the work the committees oversee across the Klamaths are
viewed as a major success. It would be a shame to see these programs
disappear.
privately owned forests
Copyright © 2007. University of California Press. All rights reserved.
Industrial Sector
Much of the industrial forestland in the Klamath Mountains is fragmented and on the California side of the border, a legacy of the railroad
checkerboard of the nineteenth century. Sierra Pacific Industries is by
far the largest industrial landowner, so its actions will largely determine
the effects on the industrial land base of the region. SPI, like all other
forest landowners in California, is constrained in its forest management
by the California Forest Practices Act, the Z’berg-Nejedly Forest Practices Act of 1973. Before that time, little regulation of forest practices
took place. Since the early days of the act in 1974, the regulatory
manual has grown from 30 or 40 pages to 205 pages in 2006. California
claims it has the most stringent forest-practices regulation in the nation,
and overall this claim is probably correct (some of Washington’s provisions are currently more restrictive than California’s). Development and
processing of a timber-harvesting plan, which must be done by a professional forester registered to practice in California (the only state with
this requirement), can cost $10,000 to $100,000 or more. But the key
question is whether this costly regulation is effective in protecting public
resources during timber harvest.
Were the Klamaths a more pristine landscape with little history of
timber removal, I would largely agree with the argument that current
regulations are effective. But past practices, much less regulated than
those of the present, have left unhealed scars on lands that must absorb
the effects of current and future activities. Road building, more than
vegetation removal, has caused the most trouble. Plans for future activities have to consider the activities of the past. Planned activities must
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also be specific to place; some areas harvested in the past were either
engineered well or were resistant or resilient to damage, in which case
current forest-practices regulation will do little damage. Other sites
have a worse land-use history or were more sensitive, in which case
future activities could exacerbate cumulative effects.
In the end no set of regulations can govern all forest practices or
account for all land-use histories. Existing regulations do provide exceptions and alternate prescriptions, but sustainable forestry requires a
land ethic. Without it, a thousand pages of regulations will not provide
ecological sustainability. Recent comparisons of SPI to companies like
Collins Pine have been unflattering. Collins Pine is a northern Sierra
Nevada, family-held company that practices uneven-aged management,
using selection harvest, and has won “sustainability” status from the
Forest Stewardship Council, one of the tougher certification councils,
for the land it manages. It costs Collins Pine 5 to 10 percent more, on
average, to produce its certified lumber. But the company has the advantage of operating on relatively flat ground, quite unlike the steep topography of the Klamaths. Like most large forest-industry companies, SPI
has a large technical staff, including wildlife biologists, hydrologists,
geologists, and botanists. It has the potential to become a leader in sustainable forestry if it chooses to do so.
Sustained yield plans (SYPs) are one way that the forest industry
could improve the coordination of its activities on its own lands and in
concert with adjacent checkerboarded lands. The SYP process is outlined in the regulations dictated by the California Forest Practices Act.
It is an optional process for landowners that covers the same issues that
a timber-harvest plan (THP) does, but in a more comprehensive way.
The SYP, if approved by the state, clears all THPs submitted under the
SYP for watershed or fish and wildlife issues for ten years. SYPs must
address cumulative effects. This process, by expanding the spatial and
temporal framework for THP analysis, is a large step in the right direction. However, it doesn’t solve the problem of defining cumulative
effects. Language such as “practicality and reasonableness,” though
understandable, leaves a large gap in standards and does not require the
applicant to relate its activities to other sources of cumulative effects.
Until the state takes responsibility for staffing a group on cumulative
watershed effects, which a scientific committee recommended in 2002,
addressing cumulative effects will remain a slippery endeavor.
The forest industry will likely continue its predominately even-aged
management practices, including clear-cutting, in the Klamath Mountains,
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but clear-cutting is an optional management technique and is not
required for successful regeneration of the tree species native to the
region. The companies also recognize that partial-cut operations do not
face the size limits or waiting periods that clear-cut operations do.
Actually, small openings within thinned forests are sufficient to regenerate species like ponderosa pine, mimicking the ways the species develop
in nature.
Though industry recognizes fire-safety issues, industrial practices will
often decrease fire resilience rather than increase it. To prevent wildfires,
operations need to move away from dense forests dominated by small
trees toward more open forests dominated by large trees. Yet clear-cuts
remove large trees, taking away the most fire-resistant element of the
current forest and leaving the resulting plantation sensitive to fire for
decades. Selective cutting that removes the largest trees has the same
effect. A focus on regeneration leads to more intensive cutting, which is
economically more profitable but seldom improves ecological condition.
A recent study of sediment sources for the upper-middle Trinity River
drainage estimated that landslides produced about half of the sediment
input to streams, with half of that sediment being related to management
activities. Harvest-related surface erosion was 11 percent of the total,
and road-surface erosion was 13 percent. Mining produced 4 percent of
the sediment. Thus, even with much-improved forest practices, the combination of past and current harvest is still detrimental to streams.
I offer two suggestions for forest-practices regulations that would
help reduce these cumulative effects. The first is to limit the amount of
area that can be disturbed in a given period. The current rules imply
that the total area disturbed is important by restricting clear-cut size
and requiring separation of clear-cut areas from one another. But other
types of cutting have no area limitations, although their environmental
effects may approach that of a clear-cut. (A hardwood conversion, for
example, is essentially a clear-cut, but it involves no conifers and has no
acreage limits.) Freshwater Creek, west of the Klamath region, is a good
example. Only about 15 percent of the second-growth redwood watershed was clear-cut in the 1990s, an area equivalent to about a sixtyfive-year cutting rotation that seemingly results in a reasonable amount
of disturbed area in a decade. But other operations also took place during
this period: 5 percent of the land area was harvested with an “alternate”
prescription; 15 percent, with commercial thinning; 6 percent, with
selection harvest; and 7 percent, with other types of cuts. Overall, these
activities would affect some 50 percent of the watershed area in a decade.
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Forests for the Future
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Within every square mile, roughly 2 miles of road were built during this
period, and tractor-skid trails covered about two-thirds of the area harvested. Regulators consider each THP separately, and none of the plans
for these activities suggested cumulative effects; reviewers would have
considered hydrologic function and sediment production differently if
the whole picture had been on the table. Though the whole might have
been more than the sum of its parts, no one was required to sum up the
parts. If such a summation had been available, the effect of disturbing so
much land in so little time would have been evident, enabling a better
estimate of how water would behave in this watershed.
My other suggestion relates to the method of logging. During the first
sweep through the Klamaths after World War II, loggers used tractors
almost exclusively to remove, or “yard,” trees, dragging them downslope and directly down stream channels to a landing where they were
loaded for transport to the mill. Cable technology, although widely used
in Oregon and Washington, was not used in California. Tractor yarding
effectively roads a third of the logged area, and skid trails lead downhill, concentrating runoff to the landing. Cable yarding can create more
surface disturbance than tractor yarding does, but the disturbance is
usually shallow. Logs are usually yarded uphill so that water disperses
in a fan pattern as it moves downhill. Some cable systems can suspend
the logs in the air to reduce ground disturbance. The forest-practice rules
allow both methods but limit tractor clear-cuts to 20 acres and cable
clear-cuts to 30 acres, apparently in acknowledgment of their differential
impact. Tractor yarding is allowed on slopes as steep as 65 percent, or
less on very erodible soils. These grades represent very steep slopes; a
steep, paved county road is generally less than a 10 percent grade. Cumulative effects would be substantially decreased if loggers had to use cables
or helicopters to harvest steep slopes. Tractor yarding is the cheapest
method for the operator, but when one adds in the cost of addressing
cumulative effects, it is likely not the cheapest for society. Cable yarding
should have first priority on slopes steeper than 40 percent.
Of course, like most simple solutions, these suggestions are not
panaceas, and they raise their own questions: How should we define a
watershed to determine what areas are affected by industrial activity?
Should the rules designating the permissible percentage of disturbed
area apply to the watershed as a whole or to each owner? What if the
existing road pattern was designed for downhill tractor yarding? If cable
yarding were required, new ridgeline roads might be needed. Exceptions are inevitable with one-size-fits-all rules, and I would support
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Forests for the Future
exceptions, particularly if new operations invested in rehabilitating old
continuing wounds. But if we are ever to address cumulative effects in
the Klamath region, limits on the amount of disturbed area and a transition to more environmentally sound yarding practices will be needed.
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Nonindustrial Sector
Owners of nonindustrial forests are difficult to characterize as a group,
other than to say they are small operations, have a variety of management objectives, have more of their personal net worth tied up in land
and timber, and as a group are usually fragmented, making any kind of
coordinated approach to watershed management difficult. Some owners
focus primarily on timber production, whereas others have amenity
values or wildlife protection as their major management objective. Most
studies indicate that this forest sector nationwide is continuing to fragment, with more owners and smaller parcels, exacerbating the challenges of coordinated resource management. Two major problems occur
in the nonindustrial sector, given that we want to maintain the societal
benefits of the ecosystem services (such as clean water and wildlife
habitat) that these lands provide. How can we fit these small parcels,
which in the aggregate can be large areas, into a more coordinated
management framework while recognizing the owners’ myriad objectives? What incentives can we offer to keep these lands from fragmenting further over time?
In America’s Private Forests, Connie Best and Laurie Wayburn provide a comprehensive scheme for improving conservation on private
forestlands. They offer a matrix of actions to increase the efficiency of
scale in the conservation market and suggest cultural changes that
would help integrate conservation into forestry. Given the limited
amount of nonindustrial land in the Klamath region, leadership in such
activities is likely to emerge elsewhere, but local landowners can use
emerging opportunities to their advantage, and to the advantage of
society.
Small landowners in California have the option of creating a nonindustrial timber management plan, or NTMP, in lieu of filing an individual
timber-harvest plan for every operation. The NTMP is an opportunity to
promote long-term management planning rather than the piecemeal
THP approach. It gives the state, as well as adjacent landowners, a sense
of long-term direction on each parcel. However, the NTMP is an expensive planning process. The plan must adopt uneven-aged management,
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so it cannot include large-scale clear-cutting, and it must commit to
long-term sustainable management. Though such plans are not a panacea
for cumulative effects, they are an excellent start for coordinated community forest management.
Nonindustrial landowners also qualify for a variety of cost-share
programs that offset management costs. For nonindustrial operators
that submit a long-term forest plan, the California Forest Improvement
Program provides as much as 75 percent reimbursement for the costs of
reforestation, soil and water protection, and wildlife habitat improvement. Up to 90 percent of the costs of rehabilitation work following
natural disasters are reimbursable. Federal cost-share programs are also
available. The first federal cost sharing with states was largely for fire
protection, and this focus shifted to incentives for timber production in
the 1950s. Now, a broader array of programs fund stewardship objectives, through relatively small grants to the states, with a renewed
emphasis on reducing fire hazards. The Forest Legacy Program purchases easements, which it then sells or donates to a third party, to protect significant environmental values on private land. The Forest
Stewardship Program encourages better management by providing
planning and technical assistance to nonindustrial landowners. Its main
cost-sharing provision, the Stewardship Incentives Program, is currently
unfunded by Congress but could be reauthorized.
Tax policy is a critical component of a successful land-conservation
policy. States such as California have recognized the value of wildlands
and the services they provide: ecological services such as clean water
and wildlife as well as production of goods such as timber. Lands zoned
as Timberland Production Zones are taxed at a lower rate than are areas
outside of such zones, and for twenty-five years, the timber tax has been
based on timber cut rather than inventory. The previous system fostered
clear-cutting, because owners of uncut lands had to pay an annual
timber-inventory tax. Clear-cut lands were removed from the timbertax rolls for forty years (although the land itself was taxed at a low
level). Today’s system taxes the owner at the time of revenue generation.
Conservation easements may be a partial solution to fragmentation.
Even when families choose to keep forestland intact, when a generation
shift occurs through death, they may log or subdivide their parcels to
generate funds to pay the immediately due estate taxes. Currently, federal
estate-tax laws are under revision to reduce this tax burden through
2010, at which time the more regressive taxes will possibly reappear.
But a more permanent solution is to designate a conservation easement
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that permits the owners to donate development rights to a third party,
such as a land trust. The donation has immediate and long-term tax
advantages, while allowing families to maintain ownership, live on the
land, and continue sustainable active management.
In a perfect world, we would be able to coordinate the activities of
public and private forest landowners to achieve sustainable outcomes.
Without such coordination, sustainability is still a reachable goal,
although its scale may be limited and its success more problematic.
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chapter 16
Restoring the Rivers
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Ecosystem restoration can take two paths: passive and active. Passive
restoration stops the practices that are creating the need for restoration.
Active restoration takes actions to restore either the structure or function of the ecosystem. For the rivers of the Klamath region, passive
restoration is under way on much of the federal land managed under
the Northwest Forest Plan, by slowing the scale and intensity of harvest
activities. Active restoration is occurring both in the rivers and the
uplands, driven more by endangered fish and tribal rights than by altruism. But it is nevertheless happening, ushering in a new era of ecosystem
restoration across the region.
the rivers
The Trinity
The Trinity River once had a thriving population of anadromous fish.
When it was dammed, the watershed above the dam was no longer
available for the fish. They could migrate only up to Lewiston Dam.
Because 75 percent of the river’s flow, on average, and in some years,
up to 90 percent of the flow, was diverted across to the Sacramento
River, the lack of flow in the Trinity, and absence of any high flows at
all, devastated the spawning beds and rearing areas below the dam.
Although the plans to dam the entire length of the Trinity River never
233
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Restoring the Rivers
materialized, the one completed dam complex destroyed 90 percent of
the fishery. In 1981, the secretary of the interior reduced the average
annual diversion of over a million acre-feet of water by 219,500 acre-feet
until a federal-state study could determine the amount of flow needed to
restore salmon and steelhead runs.
Historic flow not only involved more water but also varied considerably between seasons. Flows of as much as 15,000 cubic feet per second
were common past the site of the dam in winter storms, and sustained
flows above 5,000 cfs were common during spring snowmelt. The
water, sediment, and vegetation of the river corridor were closely linked.
The high water flushed sediments down the river and created and
destroyed river bars. Gravel and cobble bars were common and these
shallow waters were favored locations for salmon and steelhead fry.
The small fish emerging from eggs in the gravel could hide among the
cobble where water velocities were not too high. After dam construction, gravel delivery from upstream ceased, and the gravels downstream
silted in. The channel became more rectangular, with steep banks. The
now-stable river channel created a sediment berm that soon was
armored with riparian vegetation (see figure 37). By 1970, only six years
after completion of the dam, the dynamic nature of the river channel
had been seriously compromised (see figure 38). The turbulent, wild
river, even in summer, that I knew as a child was now no more than a
canal. The effects were most serious from Lewiston Dam down to the
North Fork of the Trinity River, where flows from undammed tributaries mitigated the impact of the upstream dam.
Studies continued on the stream, and the alternatives they suggested
ranged from maximizing the restoration of predam flows to simulating
the effect of the flows on river dynamics solely through mechanical
means. Although the Trinity River Restoration Program (TRRP) was
authorized in the 1984 Fish and Wildlife Improvement Act, a record
decision in 2000 announced a new phase in the program: flows would
be increased from roughly 25 percent of historic levels to 50 percent.
Flows would be managed for the benefit of riparian processes, and the
decision proposed active sediment management to increase coarsesediment input and decrease fine sediment. The decision was challenged
in court by the people at the end of the pipeline, particularly the Westlands Water District in the southerly San Joaquin Valley. Over time,
other litigants began to drop out of the action even though the plan
would affect power generation and water supply in areas south of the
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Figure 37. Pre–Trinity Dam and Post–Trinity Dam channel morphology
along the downstream reaches of the Trinity River. TRD: Trinity River
Dam. (Source: Adapted from the Trinity River Restoration Program.
Illustrator: Jack DeLap.)
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Restoring the Rivers
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Figure 38. Development of berms along riverbanks downstream of Trinity
Dam. (Source: Trinity River Restoration Program.)
Klamath region. In 2004, the U.S. Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled
in favor of the program, allowing all aspects of the program to proceed.
Restored flows and channel rehabilitation are now under way.
One might criticize the plan for restoring only half the flow of the
Trinity River at Lewiston, but that view relies on a glass-half-empty /
glass-half-full argument. The fact is that the Trinity will never be a completely wild river again, but by restoring elements of the natural flow
regime, we can enable the river to produce healthy populations of
salmon and steelhead and help other riparian-dependent wildlife, such
as yellow-legged frogs and western pond turtles, while still serving Central Valley Project obligations.
The interagency TRRP used a “healthy alluvial river” model to assess
the alternatives. It defined ten attributes. These rather complex descriptions essentially define a more natural river-flow regime and a dynamic,
changing channel. Change that comes closest to mimicking the natural
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Restoring the Rivers
237
flow regime is most likely to mimic natural levels of biodiversity. The
management alternatives were scored on their ability to achieve each of
the following attributes:
. Channel geomorphology is spatially complex.
. Flows and water quality are predictably variable.
. Channel-bed surfaces are frequently mobilized.
. Channel-bed surfaces are periodically scoured and refilled.
. Fine- and coarse-sediment budgets are approximately balanced.
. The channel periodically migrates.
. The channel has a functional floodplain.
. The channel is occasionally reset during very large floods.
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. Riparian plant communities are diverse and self-sustaining.
. The groundwater table fluctuates naturally with changing stream
flows.
The chosen proposal scored 66 out of 100, with the perfect score
being a river that functioned as the predam Trinity River did. The current situation, described by the “no action” proposal, scored 8. The
proposal is a promising solution, and if it succeeds, it will be one of the
largest-scale river-restoration projects in the world.
The proposal deals with all four river-building processes: water flow,
vegetation, channel morphology, and sediment. It builds on experimental projects that took place in the Trinity River in the early 1990s. Success in increasing the average flow to 50 percent of annual flow would
double today’s flow. The flow will be allowed to vary by year and by
season. Years will be classified as normal (20 percent of years), wet or
dry (28 percent of years each), or extremely wet or dry (12 percent of
years each). The plan calls for increasing the proportion of total flow
reserved for the river from extremely wet to extremely dry years, even
though total flow decreases along the same gradient. Releasing water
from the dam will produce high spring flows from 6,000 cfs (dry years)
to 11,000 cfs (extremely wet years) to simulate the spring snowmelt
that historically emanated from the Trinity Alps and Mt. Eddy area. A
ramping up of flow in spring will help the outmigration of steelhead
smolts, and summer flows will maintain proper temperature regimes for
the salmon and steelhead smolts. Four downstream bridges have been
rebuilt to accommodate the higher peak flows the plan envisions.
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Restoring the Rivers
The flow regime will also help restore the floodplain dynamics of the
historic river. Channel morphology will become more complex.
Streamside (riparian) vegetation will become more dynamic, being initiated at some places and being washed out at others to prevent the creation of stable berms. Although partially restored flow regimes can do
part of this work, channel rehabilitation is also necessary. The plan
calls for using heavy equipment to remove riparian berms and move
the material out of the floodplain (see figure 39). Portions of these
channels are visible from Highway 299. Restored point bars in a more
natural flow regime will maintain frequently disturbed, ephemeral
riparian vegetation there, with more stable vegetation farther back on
the floodplain.
Sediment management is also an important part of the restoration
effort. Fine sediment originating from land-management activities is
still above natural levels in the South Fork and main-stem Trinity River,
but significant improvements have been achieved, especially in the Grass
Valley Creek watershed. Below the dam, coarse sediment is underrepresented in the Trinity River, as historic deliveries from upstream slowly
fill Trinity Lake behind the dam. Sediment coming from tributaries
downstream of the dam (see figure 40) is currently not transported
downstream because of reduced stream flows, so it settles out at the
confluence of the Trinity and the tributary, creating deltas and backwaters in the channel of the Trinity River. The restored flow regimes will
help transport the fine-textured delta material downstream. Cobble and
gravel will be added to the river reach immediately downstream of
Lewiston Dam to replenish spawning gravels, and to a lesser extent, in
the next 15 miles of the river channel. In normal water years, above
2,000 cubic yards will be added, with ranges from none in extremely
dry years to 67,000 cubic yards in extremely wet years, when peak flow
releases from the dam will be highest.
Needs for active floodplain management will decline over time as
the restored flow regime does much of the work in the channel. Cobble
and gravel additions will continue indefinitely. A formal adaptivemanagement program called Adaptive Environmental Assessment and
Management is moving ahead in parallel with restoration, to enable scientists and planners to learn by doing and to adjust management actions
in the face of scientific uncertainty. Monitoring will track the progress
of the river restoration and, of course, its objective of increasing
salmonid populations. Such feedback will allow the fine-tuning necessary to predict the river’s response to management.
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Figure 39. Restoration of a more natural floodplain. (Source: Adapted
from the Trinity River Restoration Program. Illustrator: Jack DeLap.)
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Restoring the Rivers
Figure 40. The delta built by Rush Creek as it enters the Trinity River and the
resulting backwater of the Trinity River upstream. (Source: Trinity River
Restoration Program.)
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The Klamath
Efforts to restore the Klamath River’s anadromous fish populations are
also ongoing but have been much more contentious and have made
much less progress than the Trinity River Restoration Program. If the
Trinity River program is successful, it will help the lower 43 miles of
the Klamath River below its confluence with the Trinity. But another
150 miles of the Klamath flow between there and the Iron Gate Dam,
and yet another 50 miles are above that point, with many tributaries,
most of which historically supported anadromous fish. The Klamath
problem involves more than anadromous fish. The shortnose sucker
and Lost River sucker, found in the upper basin, are classed as “endangered” under the Endangered Species Act, joining the “threatened”
coho salmon. Efforts in 2001 to provide adequate water levels and flows
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Restoring the Rivers
241
restricted water supplies for irrigation by farmers on 220,000 acres
served by the Bureau of Reclamation’s Klamath Project in the upper
basin. This action generated an immediate outcry from the farmers and
a much publicized “turning on the faucet” visit by Secretary of the
Interior Gail Norton in 2002.
In September 2002, roughly 35,000 of a returning run of 130,000
adult Chinook salmon (compared to perhaps a million returning fish
historically) died in the lower Klamath River. Though all parties agreed
that the fish died from a massive infection by two pathogens, charges
flew back and forth about what and who was responsible. The fish died
in a low-flow period with high stream temperatures, but according to the
2004 National Academy of Sciences report on endangered fishes of the
basin, such conditions were not unprecedented. The report was critical
of the federal lead agency’s approaches to fish conservation, calling them
“disjointed, occasionally dysfunctional, and commonly adversarial”
(331). It noted that the adaptive-management approach on the Trinity
River could serve as a useful model for the rest of the basin.
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the uplands
Restoration actions in the rivers, if they are to be useful, require properly functioning tributary streams. Those tributaries, in turn, require
properly functioning uplands. Upland restoration is occurring across
the Klamath region. Along the Klamath River, watershed restoration is
under way on the Yurok Reservation, at Bluff Creek, at Elk Creek, in
the Scott River, and in the upper basin. The Salmon River Restoration
Council has been a regional leader in empowering local residents to
steward private and public lands. Its activities include land restoration,
monitoring of fish populations, and comprehensive education programs. In places where past or current management has created continuing sources of fine sediment, active restoration can be an important
part of river restoration. Nowhere in the Klamaths is this fact more evident than at Grass Valley Creek.
Grass Valley Creek drains roughly 28,000 acres, from the TrinitySacramento divide at Buckhorn Summit into the Trinity River at the
southern edge of Lewiston. It contains some of the most erosive soils in
the region, formed from the 120 million-year-old Shasta Bally batholith,
a large granitic intrusion. Signs of road failure along Highway 299 east
of Buckhorn Summit illustrate the unstable nature of these soils. The
entire Grass Valley watershed was privately owned–80 percent by the
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Restoring the Rivers
forest industry and 20 percent by small private owners–until the 1990s.
Logging and road building significantly increased after World War II, at
which time no forest-practices regulations existed. Most of the logging
was overstory removal, taking all of the large trees and leaving whatever was left. Erosion rates in the decomposed granite, which were
probably always higher than rates in other watersheds, significantly
increased, and tremendous loads of sand-sized material moved into
Grass Valley Creek and eventually into the Trinity River.
The 1955 flood created high flows on the undammed Trinity River,
allowing it to pick up that material and dissipate it downstream. Ten years
later, the 1964 flood on the dammed Trinity had a quite different effect.
Instead of reaching an expected peak flow substantially higher than the
70,000 cubic feet per second in 1955, the release from Trinity Dam in
1964 created a flow of only 240 cfs. The estimated 1 million cubic yards
of sand pouring out of Grass Valley Creek stopped at its mouth and
were deposited in the Trinity River, clogging the gravels that had historically served the needs of spawning anadromous fish.
By 1980, legislation enabled upland restoration to begin. Construction of Hamilton Ponds at the mouth of the creek aimed to trap and
excavate sediment before it reached the Trinity. Buckhorn Sediment
Dam was constructed well upstream, south of Highway 299, to trap
sediment originating in the steep headwall areas of the watershed. Both
sets of structures aimed to enable dredging of sediment before it reached
the Trinity and continued to clog the spawning gravels for steelhead and
salmon. The shallow Hamilton Ponds have to be dredged periodically,
whereas the Buckhorn Dam, which impounds much more water, can
hold back much more sediment. But these structures did not address the
source of these sediments: failed roads and unvegetated slopes. A more
direct restoration program was needed. In the late 1980s and early
1990s, sediment inventories by the Natural Resources Conservation
Service (formerly the Soil Conservation Service) identified 1,164 problem areas in the watershed, or about 1 problem every 25 acres. Many of
these problems originated before 1960 but were still producing sediment. Hope and help came from many sectors.
Trinity County mandated higher road standards for construction of
new roads in areas of decomposed granite. The Board of Supervisors
restricted off-road vehicles as well. The Trinity River Task Force
received $25 million in federal funds to purchase and restore lands in
the watershed. The task force purchased about 16,000 acres of cutover
Champion International timberlands in 1993 for $9 million, and with
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243
the help of the Trust for Public Land, transferred these purchased acres
to public ownership by the Bureau of Land Management. Roughly
$5.8 million was reserved for watershed restoration.
Participants in the Grass Valley Creek restoration project had to learn
as they went. Uncertainty is a constant in restoration work. Practices
effective in one watershed might not work in another, and the true test
of restoration is how the watershed weathers a big storm. From 1992 to
1996, a multiagency team spent 85 percent of the restoration funds and
learned a great deal. Restoration activities, particularly planting of vegetation, continues at a lower rate today, and monitoring of the success
rate of various treatments also continues. The project team adopted
adaptive management from the start, and participants applied the
lessons they learned to improve their practices and contribute to the
success of the restoration.
One of the startling aspects of watershed restoration is the effectiveness of heavy equipment: tractors, backhoes, and excavators. I was
marginally involved in the strategic planning for the restoration of
Redwood Creek on logged lands that legislation placed in Redwood
National Park in 1978. We envisioned hordes of people scrambling
around with shovels, willow wattles, and tree seedlings. But the team
that actually began the work and continued it into the 1980s soon found
that the erosion problems created by heavy equipment needed to be
solved by heavy equipment. Much of that expertise eventually spun off
into a watershed-restoration consulting business and was applied in the
Grass Valley restoration work.
When the project began, the Champion lands had not yet been purchased, so the focus was on stabilizing actively eroding roads and
stream channels, primarily below the Buckhorn Dam, where any sediment would move downstream to Hamilton Ponds and the Trinity
River. The project team placed small log dams in channels, but the dams
were costly and were difficult to anchor into the unstable slopes on
either side of the streams. In addition, permanent roads were redesigned
with appropriately sized culverts. Roads were graveled and graded (outsloped) so that water would not accumulate along inner ditches. Water
bars were installed to channel any overland flow off the road. Other
roads were “put to bed” by ripping the roadbed and restoring the contours of the original slope. Widespread planting of Douglas-fir and ponderosa pine took place.
One year later, the log dams were replaced by dams made of a mix of
soil and cement; the new dams were cheaper, were easier to form to the
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Restoring the Rivers
channel, and required less maintenance. Nonnative grass mixtures that
had been planted for stabilization were replaced by native mixes, and
wetter areas were planted with willow cuttings. With the purchase of
the Champion lands, broader uplands restoration became possible. The
targets were roads, old skid trails for dragging logs to roads, and old
landings for loading logs onto trucks. In these areas, sediment had not
yet migrated to streams; a particular goal in these areas was to remove
fill dirt where roads crossed stream channels.
The storms of early 1995 showed that skid-trail rehabilitation was
ineffective, and this part of the project was abandoned. Very little sediment was emanating from old skid trails. The use of small sediment
traps and grade-stabilization structures increased in small subwatersheds. Some of the early tree planting failed because of poor soils, lack
of protection for exposed seedlings, and in some cases, poor choices of
species. Tree species mixes were then better tailored to site (incense
cedar, for example, on north-facing slopes, and ponderosa pine on the
drier sites). Grass and shrub mixes were preferred on the harsh sites
where tree planting was unlikely to be immediately successful. A nativeplant nursery produced native shrubs like ceanothus (which changes
atmospheric nitrogen into forms usable by plants, enriching soil fertility)
and plugs of native perennial grasses. Combinations of fertilization,
seeding, and mulching appeared to work well to establish dense stands
of grass and reduce surface erosion.
Excavated crossings in decomposed granite materials posed special
problems. With other bedrock, or a mix of granite and metamorphic
rock, the channels were able to armor themselves with that native rock.
But in the decomposed granite, unacceptable erosion occurred when the
excavated crossings had no protection from imported rock or from
channel-lining material anchored on both sides of the excavated section. The project managers decided to protect all excavated channels in
decomposed granite that had significant surface flow, drained areas
larger than 10 acres, were longer than 50 feet, and had no stable
bedrock along the excavated section. Outsloping roads, and removal of
abandoned roads, appeared to work well in preventing future erosion.
By the mid-1990s, project participants had decommissioned 44 miles
of road, reconstructed 19 miles of road, treated 11,000 acres, and
planted hundreds of thousands of trees, shrubs, and grass plugs. But
success is not measured by these statistics but by sediment yields. We
have no equivalent watershed to use as an untreated baseline, and the
untreated portion of the upper watershed is not comparable either; it is
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Restoring the Rivers
245
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steeper and has a higher proportion of decomposed granite. In the mid1990s, the untreated 25 percent of the area was producing 50 percent of
the sediment, which was being trapped behind the Buckhorn Dam, so
the other 75 percent, the area that was treated, was producing the other
50 percent of the sediment, most of which ends up in Hamilton Ponds.
Not every watershed is going to need the intensive restoration that
continues in Grass Valley Creek. Not every watershed will receive
roughly $200 an acre for restoration either. Other applications of these
treatments will likely be more limited, tailored to the chosen site to
maximize effectiveness in reducing sediment yields. Hope comes less
from the absolute amount of progress than from the turnaround in
approach: from ripping up the land to restoring it. I sat at the inlet of
Hamilton Ponds in the spring of 2004, contemplating a white delta of
granitic sand that would never reach the Trinity River, with my dog
curled up by my side. A large steelhead with a beautiful rainbow slash
on its side jumped twice directly in front of us on its way downstream,
and Zoe alertly cocked her head, as Aussies do. I knew that this sight
was a reward for restoration, a reward earned by many people working
together to achieve a sustainable future.
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chapter 17
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Steward’s Fork
Encouraging trends are emerging in the Klamath region. Sustainable
resource practices and innovative approaches to preserving natural
resources are not only being applied here but are being generated here.
The Trinity River Restoration Project’s efforts to provide a sustainable
future for the river and its fish, reclamation of mining sites, the success
of the local resources advisory committee in its forest-restoration projects,
and the rise of community organizations willing to cooperate in
resource-management activities are all healthy signs that the region has
not only come to the steward’s fork but is progressing along a sustainable path.
California is a remarkable state in its ability to create unrealistic
expectations. Peter Schrag has written about this phenomenon in
Paradise Lost: California’s Experience, America’s Future. Essayist
Richard Rodriguez has echoed this idea, that California has always
held out the expectation of paradise but that disappointment has more
often been its theme: disappointment during the gold rush, among
those hoping to get rich and leaving broke; disappointment with natural disasters—earthquakes, fires, and floods; and disappointment
with people—riots, population growth, and stalled traffic. The Klamaths
are not wholly Californian, but they must share that disappointment.
Yet along with disappointment are glimmers of hope, in a context of
challenges that will require continual adaptation and adjustment in
resources management.
246
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247
Americans, as perhaps only we could do, have created a culturally
bifurcated view of nature: we see pristine nature and despoiled nature,
the latter of which is associated with work. Historian Richard White
discusses this idea in his provocatively titled essay “Are You an Environmentalist, or Do You Work for a Living?” Somewhere along the
line, we began to devalue work in or with nature. We labeled pristine
nature “good,” by default designating managed nature as “bad,”
because it has a human imprint, which we perceived to be associated
with destruction. The destructive potential of work was a recurring
theme during the land-preservation battles that began in the 1960s: In
wildness was the preservation of the world, so lands not preserved
would be, by inference, destroyed. This bifurcation is a fallacy for two
major reasons: First, Native Americans actively managed the landscape
for millennia, and in the Klamaths, they used fire regularly; it was their
most important tool. Humans, for better or worse, have been a part of
Klamath nature for a long time. Managed nature and pristine nature, in
the Klamaths, were inseparable until the gold rush. Second, pristine
nature is not a vignette frozen in time. Change has always been a part
of Klamath ecosystems: change is the only constant. Even for lands designated as preserves, the major challenge is managing change. The biodiversity of natural rivers demands occasional floods, and upland
biodiversity, particularly in the Klamaths, demands fire.
Human involvement in ecosystem change is not inherently evil.
Native Americans created and maintained landscapes that met their
needs in sustainable ways. The emerging modern field of restoration
ecology demands active management to move ecological processes and
states back along more sustainable paths. Restoration is at once work
and nature. Examples of work with nature that, in the long run, are not
destructive show us a path out of this conundrum. Nature and culture
are essentially intertwined, and if we are to manage our natural
resources successfully into the future, we must recognize and value this
partnership. The relationship of nature and culture will not be the same
everywhere: for example, in wilderness, culture will have less interaction, and on private land, it will typically have much more. But rather
than see culture and nature as night and day, black and white, we should
allow for infinite tones of gray, most of which provide for sustainable
practices.
Understanding the appropriate tone for a particular place requires
knowledge of culture, but it also requires knowledge of nature, which
seems to be fading from American culture. I have a recurring dream
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248
Steward’s Fork
about the Stuart Fork that visits me about once a year, and like most
dreams, it takes liberties with reality. The real Stuart Fork road currently ends about 5 miles upstream of Trinity Lake and about 2 miles up
from Trinity Alps Resort. This stretch is a mixture of public and private
land (the old checkerboard sections from the railroad grants) and travels along a gradient from where culture dominates to where nature dominates, into the Trinity Alps Wilderness. In my dream, roads have been
pushed up the streams and ridges into the wilderness, dust is blowing
around, and vacation homes are rising around Emerald, Sapphire, and
Mirror lakes at the head of the glaciated basin. The homes jut out on
the ridges for maximum view, and they are mostly in view as I drive up
the developing valley.
At Deer Creek, 6 miles into the “former” wilderness, I am car camping and surrounded by a glut of people. A creek that doesn’t really exist
is on the west side of the river and has been recently dredged and
hydraulically mined. It appears as a raw, unvegetated scar coursing
down the mountain. A small mill constructed of rough-hewn boards is
behind me, belching smoke and processing either timber or minerals
(a small mill did exist in this vicinity during the La Grange ditch construction). I float to the ridgetop, and beyond to the east has grown a
large city in an area that was once wilderness. There are still wild lands
around the city, but the residents seem oblivious to them. They are well
dressed, and wear headphones while they drive colorful new cars from
one fast-food franchise to the next. I ask them if they know what they
have lost, and they seem not to hear me. The scene is right out of a
zombie movie, except the inhabitants haven’t yet been buried.
I know this dream is neither about the loss of wilderness nor a desire
that everywhere be wilderness. It is about a land ethic, one that applies
equally to wilderness and to intensively managed lands. The real meaning of this dream is that a land ethic is being lost in America, not by
active choice but by apathy. Today’s children, in particular, know less
about nature, and much less about the origin of natural-resources services (wood, wildlife, water, and even wilderness) than their predecessors did. As the public becomes more myopic about nature, it is less able
to make informed judgments about land policy (longer-term directions)
and land management (shorter-term actions) and is more susceptible to
demagogic sloganeers on both ends of the spectrum. If one does not
understand the land, a land ethic has no meaning.
We have reduced the time that children spend with nature and lessened
their ability to understand it. Richard Louv has called this phenomenon
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Steward’s Fork
249
“nature-deficit disorder” and says it has many causes. The ability of kids
to wander around the neighborhood with unstructured playtime is far
less than it was in the 1950s. Neighborhoods are not as safe as they
were then. Children who do have opportunities to interact with nature
face a series of other hazards: getting lost (who can read a map?), falling
into fast water, being attacked by animals (much overemphasized by
television news), and risking bites by mosquitoes that carry West Nile
virus or ticks that carry Lyme disease. Yet the threats to the safety of children in cities are far more dangerous: indoor air pollution, contaminated
soil in playgrounds from past industrial activity, or an out-of-control
car. Will nature become a virtual reality? Many children are more
excited by the visual stimulation of television and video games than by
anything they see in nature.
For about seven dollars a month, you can now sit at your computer
and hook into a Bigfoot search that continues twenty-four hours a day,
seven days a week, fed to you on a broadband Internet stream. You
have a choice of several camera teams walking along trails in Bigfoot
country at any one time and “never have to leave the comfort of your
home.” You can read a few canned stories by Bigfoot experts if you get
bored with the trail mix. Your subscription does not guarantee that you
will “personally witness” a Bigfoot encounter; in fact, can anyone personally witness anything via a webcam? Hunting via computer has been
operational in Texas for several years. If you sign up and pay a fee, you
can travel (via video monitor) to a hunting blind that has a rifle set up
so that you can aim the rifle (via the mouse) at a farm-raised game
animal. One click, and you win a trophy: a mouse that roars. Internet
hunting has created such controversy that a number of states, including
California, are considering legislation to ban the practice of hunting
over the Internet. Both examples show the increasing ability to distance
oneself from real nature, creating a virtual nature that pales in comparison to the real thing.
If we are to make intelligent decisions about natural resources, we
need to involve ourselves both as individuals and as communities. A
wise choice of a steward’s fork requires some knowledge of landscape
history as well as its desired future; we need to understand that ecology
is a science of place, that every choice is a choice for change, and that the
results of even the best management are uncertain. David Montgomery,
in his book on the history of salmon, summarizes the themes of salmon
conservation as the four Hs: habitat, hydropower, harvest, and hatcheries. He begins his book by adding a fifth H, history, and concludes
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Steward’s Fork
with a sixth H, a choice of two options: hubris or humility. The first
four have affected the Klamath region more or less, but the important
ones are the three Montgomery added: history, and hubris or humility.
History informs us of where we have been, and the current state of natural resources is a product of that history. As we choose a steward’s fork
into the future, I can only hope that we approach it with humility.
Perhaps the most humbling obstacle before us is climate change.
Fossil fuel consumption has increased carbon dioxide concentrations in
the atmosphere, which along with other “greenhouse” gases creates a
heat-trapping effect. The globe is warming. At a recent conference, six
former Environmental Protection Agency chiefs, five of whom are
Republicans, agreed that global warming is occurring and that the
United States is not doing enough to mitigate that effect. If not mitigated, global warming could have substantial effects on the earth, and
the Klamath region, even given its remoteness, will not escape these
effects. Current science allows us only to speculate about the changes
ahead. We have a better idea of what temperature changes may occur,
although these effects will vary depending on whether the earth’s people
adopt policies to limit future carbon emissions or do nothing.
Temperature is likely to increase only a few degrees (3–6oF). Though
this rise may seem innocuous, heat-wave days (temperatures above
90oF) in the Sacramento Valley will almost double in the current half
century (to 2050). In winter, rainfall will account for a higher proportion of total precipitation, and the average snow-line elevation will
increase. Summers are likely to be hotter and drier. Projected changes in
precipitation are much more uncertain. Until 2003, projections showed
precipitation generally increasing across California, but projections
published in the following two years show mostly decreases in precipitation, from +6 to −70 percent depending on the carbon scenario and
projection model. Given the lower and upper conservative bounds of
current models, the average change in precipitation for the next halfcentury would be −21 percent (with “aggressive” emission-reduction
policies) to −70 percent (with no control of emissions).
These changes will have cascading effects on the vegetation, wildlife,
and hydrology of the region. Much of the area currently dominated by
conifers will increasingly be dominated by evergreen hardwoods. Some
forested areas will become woodland or shrub dominated, and some
high-elevation species might even disappear in this substantially altered
environment, including many of the rare “relict” species of the region.
Driving this change will be altered disturbance regimes. Fires will become
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Steward’s Fork
251
more frequent and larger, especially inland from the coast. Whether
they will be more or less intense will depend on fuel-management policies, most of which will likely grow out of the need to control global
warming by constraining carbon emissions. For forests, this goal will
call for storing carbon in live trees and in wood products and for using
biofuels (small trees, shrubs, and the like) in place of fossil fuels. Insect
attacks may increase if trees are of lower vigor. Alien biota, such as diseases like sudden oak death, or aggressive herbs or shrubs may invade
the region and spread widely. These trends are not certain, but by recognizing these potentials for change, we may be able to mitigate their
impact.
Will this change be gradual, so that only those who have lived in or
visited the Klamaths for many decades will notice it, or will it occur
very rapidly? We can’t be certain, but two recent examples to the south
suggest that rapid, catastrophic change is possible. In the Southwest,
pinyon-juniper woodlands suffered a major dieback in 2002 and 2003,
due to drought and warmer-than-normal temperatures. Twoneedle
pinyon died at a regional scale (4,500 square miles). Around Lake
Arrowhead in Southern California, a year without precipitation devastated the pine forests of the region. The conditions there were similar to
those projected for the Klamath Mountains under global-warming scenarios. Loss of the more drought-sensitive species in the forest types of
the Klamath Mountains could occur rapidly, increasing the dominance
of drought-resistant, evergreen hardwoods, particularly if fires and
insect attacks increase.
The newly negotiated flow regimes for the Trinity River are based on
a historical record that is likely different from future flow regimes,
under current (and very uncertain) climate projections. The proportion
of “below average” years based on 1906–96 flow records, will increase
from 50 percent to somewhere between 58 to 74 percent. Less water
may be coming down the upper Trinity River into Trinity Lake, and
down the upper Shasta–McCloud–Pit River systems into Shasta Lake,
and a higher proportion will come as rain rather than snow, because of
the warmer environment. Snow-line elevation will rise, and the few
glacierets in the region will vanish. The lakes will lose some of their
buffering capacity to spread water releases over the summer period.
Though construction of new dams is unlikely, one option under consideration is to raise the height of existing dams.
Proposals to raise Shasta Dam to increase its storage capacity have
already emerged. Early options included up to 200-foot raises in dam
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Steward’s Fork
height, but these suggestions seem to have been designed to make the
more attainable, and by comparison conservative, 6.4- to 18.5-foot
options more reasonable. Critics say that raising the dam would
threaten the considerable upstream values (tribal land issues, recreation
sites, scenic values), as well as the downstream values (primarily by
putting riparian and fish-spawning habitat at risk), and provide financial subsidies for users at the end of the pipeline. At this writing, no one
has proposed raising Trinity Dam, but the idea will almost certainly be
up for discussion in the future. If so, it will raise issues similar to those
facing Shasta Dam: Trinity Center would have to be relocated a second
time, and shoreline properties would be flooded. The “bathtub ring” of
bare soil around the lake edge would likely become much deeper. The
major unknown in all these proposals is how the local climate will
change if a global climate change occurs. Precise estimates of flow are
difficult to make, because none of the global-change models estimate
the effects on precipitation as well as they predict the effects on temperature. But regardless of climate scenarios, the demands for water in
California, and its allocation between nature and culture, will continue
to prompt heated debates.
We can approach these changes and our responses to them with optimism or pessimism, viewing the glass as half full or half empty. Why not
adopt optimism, as long as we do not succumb to a Pollyanna approach
to the world? We may choose disappointment as our theme, as Peter
Schrag and Richard Rodriguez have done, or we can approach these
challenges as we have in recent decades, pragmatically, without the
dreamy promise of an isolated island paradise. The Klamath region is
not an island any more than anywhere else on earth is. In the past century, its nature and culture have been affected by external trends: world
war, recession, depression, national housing trends, agricultural and
urban demands for water, regional concerns about wildlife protection,
and many more. The region has adjusted and adapted to newer policies
and management actions that have evolved from previously unsustainable practices. In the process of adjustment, we’ve created new sustainable pathways, but as we have done so, we have identified new
barriers that we will need to address strategically over time. To the
extent that we can foresee these barriers, we’ll be able to create management strategies to adapt to changing conditions.
Riding the rivers of change reminds me of my days as a kid riding the
Stuart Fork in an inner tube with my friends. We didn’t always take the
best fork of the channel, and sometimes we got dunked or flipped over
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Steward’s Fork
253
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a rock. But we retrieved our tubes and hit the rapids once again. We
chose our forks of the Stuart on our little tubes with limited knowledge
of what was downstream, but we adjusted our course along the way by
paddling or by stopping to seek a through channel. All of us now face
much the same challenge in choosing a steward’s fork for the Klamath
region. Let’s hope that history and humility guide us along the way.
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appendix
Biota Mentioned in the Text
Copyright © 2007. University of California Press. All rights reserved.
trees
Alaska cedar
Baker cypress
bald cypress
basswood
bay
bigcone spruce
bigleaf maple
black cottonwood
blue oak
Brewer (or weeping) spruce
California black oak
California buckeye
California laurel
canyon live oak
cascara
coast live oak
dawn redwood
Douglas-fir
Engelmann spruce
eucalyptus
fig
foxtail pine
giant chinquapin
giant sequoia
gray pine (ghost pine)
hazelnut
Cupressus nootkatensis
Cupressus bakeri
Taxodium spp.
Tilia spp.
Persea spp.
Pseudotsuga macrocarpa
Acer macrophyllum
Populus balsamifera spp. trichocarpa
Quercus douglasn
Picea breweriana
Quercus kelloggii
Aesculus californica
Umbellularia californica
Quercus chrysolepis
Rhamnus purshiana
Quercus agrifolia
Metasequoia spp.
Pseudotsuga menziesii
Picea engelmannii
Eucalyptus spp.
Ficus sp.
Pinus balfouriana
Chrysolepis chrysophylla
Sequoiadendron giganteum
Pinus sabiniana
Corylus cornuta
255
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256
holly
incense cedar
Jeffrey pine
knobcone pine
lodgepole pine
mountain hemlock
noble fir
Oregon ash
Oregon myrtle
Oregon white oak
Pacific madrone
Pacific silver fir
Pacific yew
ponderosa pine
Port Orford cedar
red alder
redwood
Shasta red fir
Sitka spruce
subalpine fir
sugar pine
tanoak
tree of heaven
tupelo
twoneedle pinyon
Utah juniper
walnut
western hemlock
western juniper
western red cedar
western white pine
white alder
whitebark pine
white fir
Biota Mentioned in Text
Ilex spp.
Calocedrus decurrens
Pinus jeffreyi
Pinus attenuata
Pinus contorta
Tsuga mertensiana
Abies procera
Fraxinus latifolia
Umbellularia californica
Quercus garryana
Arbutus menziesii
Abies amabilis
Taxus brevifolia
Pinus ponderosa
Cupressus lawsoniana
Alnus rubra
Sequoia sempervirens
Abies magnifica var. shastensis
Picea sitchensis
Abies lasiocarpa
Pinus lambertiana
Lithocarpus densiflorus
Ailanthus altissima
Nyssa sp.
Pinus edulis
Juniperus osteosperma
Juglans spp.
Tsuga heterophylla
Juniperus occidentalis
Thuja plicata
Pinus monticola
Alnus rhombifolia
Pinus albicaulis
Abies concolor
shrubs
alpine laurel
buckbrush
buckwheat
California coffeeberry
California hazel
California huckleberry
California wild grape
chamise
creeping snowberry
deerbrush
deer oak
Kalmia polifolia
Ceanothus cuneatus
Eriogonum spp.
Rhamnus californica
Corylus cornuta
Vaccinium ovatum
Vitis californica
Adenostoma fasciculatum
Symphoricarpos mollis
Ceanothus integerrimus
Quercus sadleriana
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Biota Mentioned in Text
dwarf mistletoe
French broom
gooseberry
huckleberry oak
mahala mat
manzanitas
mistletoe
mock orange
mountain heather
ninebark
Oregon grape
poison oak
rabbitbrush
rhododendron
salal
salmonberry
service-berry
Shasta snow-wreath
Sierra laurel
snowbrush (or tobacco brush)
thimbleberry
toyon
vine bark
western Labrador tea
white heather
257
Arceuthobium spp.
Cytisus spp.
Ribes spp.
Quercus vaccinifolia
Ceanothus prostratus
Arctostaphylos spp.
Phoradendron spp.
Philadelphus lewisii
Phyllodoce empetriformis
Physocarpus capitatus
Berberis nervosa
Toxicodendron diversilobum
Chrysothamnus spp.
Rhododendron spp.
Gaultheria shallon
Rubus spectabilis
Amelanchier alnifolia
Neviusia cliftonii
Leucothoe davisiae
Ceanothus velutinus
Rubus parviflorus
Heteromeles arbutifolia
Neillia opufolia
Ledum glandulosum var. californicum
Cassiope mertensiana
Copyright © 2007. University of California Press. All rights reserved.
herbs
American vetch
arnica
aster
bear-grass
California pitcher plant
cheatgrass
columbine
common horsetail
corn silk
Dalmatian toadflax
elk clover
five-finger fern
Indian tobacco
jewel flower
leopard lily
Lewis’ monkeyflower
lupine
Pacific trillium
penstemon
phacelia
Vicia americana
Arnica spp.
Aster spp.
Xerophyllum tenax
Darlingtonia californica
Bromus tectorum
Aquilegia formosa
Equisetum arvense
Veratrum californicum
Linaria genistifolia ssp. dalmatica
Aralia californica
Adiantum aleuticum
Nicotiana quadrivalvis
Streptanthus spp.
Lilium pardalinum
Mimulus lewisii
Lupinus spp.
Trillium ovatum
Penstemon spp.
Phacelia spp.
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258
prince’s pine
redwood sorrel
scarlet monkeyflower
sedge
soap plant
spring beauty
timothy
western hound’s tongue
white-veined wintergreen
wild-ginger
wild oat
wild onion
yellow star-thistle
Biota Mentioned in Text
Chimaphila umbellata
Oxalis oregana
Mimulus cardinalis
Carex spp.
Chlorogalum spp.
Claytonia lanceolata
Phleum pratense
Cynoglossum grande
Pyrola picta
Asarum caudatum
Avena fatua
Allium spp.
Centaurea solstitialis
mammals
Copyright © 2007. University of California Press. All rights reserved.
American fisher
black bear
blacktail deer
Douglas squirrel
dusky-footed wood rat
gray wolf
grizzly bear
mink
mountain lion
mule deer
myotis bats
northern flying squirrel
opossum
pine marten
raccoon
wolverine
Martes pennati
Ursus americanus
Odocoileus hemionus columbianus
Tamiasciurus douglasii
Neotoma fuscipes
Canis lupus
Ursus arctos
Mustela vison
Felis concolor
Odocoileus hemionus hemionus
Myotis spp.
Glaucomys sabrinus
Didelphis marsupialis
Martes americana
Procyon lotor
Gulo gulo
reptiles and amphibians
Arizona coral snake
black salamander
bullfrog
California mountain kingsnake
clouded salamander
Cope’s giant salamander
Del Norte salamander
ensatina
foothill yellow-legged frog
northwestern salamander
Pacific giant salamander
red-legged frog
rough-skinned newt
Micruroides euryxanthus
Aneides flavipunctatus
Rana catesbeiana
Lampropeltis zonata
Aneides ferreus
Dicamptodon copei
Plethodon elongatus
Ensatina eschscholtzii
Rana boylii
Ambystoma gracile
Dicamptodon tenebrosus
Rana aurora
Taricha granulosa
Agee, James K.. Steward's Fork : A Sustainable Future for the Klamath Mountains, University of California
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Biota Mentioned in Text
rubber boa
Scott Bar salamander
Siskiyou Mountain salamander
southern torrent salamander
tailed frog
western aquatic garter snake
western fence lizard
western pond turtle
western rattlesnake
259
Charina bottae
Plethodon asupak
Plethodon stormi
Rhyacotriton variegatus
Ascaphus truei
Thamnophis spp.
Sceloporus occidentalis
Clemmys marmorata
Crotalus viridus
birds
American crow
American raven
barred owl
chestnut-backed chickadee
dark-eyed junco
golden eagle
great blue heron
marbled murrelet
northern spotted owl
osprey
red-breasted nuthatch
Steller’s jay
Corvus brachyrhynchos
Corvus corax
Strix varia
Parus rufescens
Junco hyemalis
Aquila chrysaetos
Ardea herodias
Brachyramphus marmoratus
Strix caurina occidentalis
Pandion haliaetus
Sitta canadensis
Cyanocitta stelleri
Copyright © 2007. University of California Press. All rights reserved.
fish
brown trout
candlefish
Chinook salmon
coho salmon
eastern brook trout
kokanee salmon
Lost River sucker
Pacific lamprey
rainbow trout
shortnose sucker
steelhead
Salmo trutta
Thaleichthys pacificus
Oncorhynchus tshawytscha
Oncorhynchus kisutch
Salvelinus fontinalis
Oncorhynchus nerka
Deltistes luxatus
Lampetra tridentata
Oncorhynchus mykiss
Chasmistes brevirostris
Oncorhynchus mykiss
insects and pathogens
annosus root rot
armillaria root rot
black stain root rot
Douglas-fir beetle
fir engraver
flatheaded borers
laminated root rot
mountain pine beetle
Heterobasidion annosum
Armillaria ostoyae
Leptographium wageneri
Dendroctonus pseudotsugae
Scolytus ventralis
Melanophila spp.
Phellinus weirii
Dendroctonus ponderosae
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260
Ips pini
Phytophthora lateralis
Phellinus pini
Dendroctonus valens
Phaeolus schweinitzii
Phytophthora ramorum
Dendroctonus brevicomis
Cronartium ribicola
Paravespula vulgaris
Copyright © 2007. University of California Press. All rights reserved.
pine engraver
Port Orford cedar root disease
velvet top fungus
red turpentine beetle
red ring rot
sudden oak death
western pine beetle
white pine blister rust
yellow jacket
Biota Mentioned in Text
Agee, James K.. Steward's Fork : A Sustainable Future for the Klamath Mountains, University of California
Press, 2007. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/humboldt/detail.action?docID=470926.
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References and
Further Reading
Copyright © 2007. University of California Press. All rights reserved.
general sources
Bennion, B., and J. Rohde, eds. 2000. Traveling the Trinity Highway. McKinleyville,
CA: Mountain Home Books.
Cox, I. 1940. The Annals of Trinity County. With annotations by J. W. Bartlett.
Eugene, OR: Printed for Harold C. Holmes by John Henry Nash of the University of Oregon.
Cross, S., ed. 2000. Intricate Homeland: Collected Writings from the KlamathSiskiyou. Ashland, OR: Headwaters Press.
Jones, A. E., ed. 1981. Trinity County Historic Sites. Weaverville, CA: Trinity
County Historical Society.
Sawyer, J. O. 2006. Northwest California. Berkeley: University of California
Press.
The Siskiyou Pioneer. 1960–2005. Yearbooks. Yreka, CA: Siskiyou County
Museum.
Trinity. 1955–2005. Yearbooks. Weaverville, CA: Trinity County Historical
Society. Weaverville, CA.
Wallace, D. R. 1978. The Dark Range: A Naturalist’s Night Notebook. San
Francisco: Sierra Club Books.
———. 1983. The Klamath Knot. San Francisco: Sierra Club Books.
http://www.krisweb.com. Klamath and Trinity information system. A detailed
and informative site on the natural resources of the region.
1. introduction
Barbour, M., and J. Major. 1988. Terrestrial Vegetation of California. California
Native Plant Society Publication 9. Sacramento: California Native Plant
Society.
261
Agee, James K.. Steward's Fork : A Sustainable Future for the Klamath Mountains, University of California
Press, 2007. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/humboldt/detail.action?docID=470926.
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262
References and Selected Reading
Bennion, B., and J. Rohde, eds. 2000. Traveling the Trinity Highway.
McKinleyville, CA: Mountain Home Books.
Parvin, R. 1997. The Loneliest Road in America. San Francisco: Chronicle
Books.
———. 2000. In the Snow Forest. New York: W. W. Norton and Company.
Pierce, C. 1999. For the Rest of Your Life: Trinity Alps Resort, the First 75
Years. Trinity Center, CA: Trinity Alps Resort.
Pyle, R. M. 1995. Where Bigfoot Walks: Crossing the Dark Divide. New York:
Houghton Mifflin.
Tisdale, S. 1991. Stepping Westward: The Long Search for Home in the Pacific
Northwest. New York: Henry Holt.
Trinity. 1955–2005. Yearbook. Weaverville, CA: Trinity County Historical
Society.
http://www.trinitycounty.org. Trinity County website.
Copyright © 2007. University of California Press. All rights reserved.
2. the physical world
Alt, D., and D. W. Hyndman. 2000. Roadside Geology of Northern and Central California. Missoula, MT: Mountain Press Publishing Company.
Bailey, E. H., ed. 1966. Bulletin 190, Geology of Northern California. California
Division of Mines and Geology Bulletin 190. San Francisco.
California Department of Conservation, California Geological Survey. 2002.
Generalized Geologic Map of California, note 17. Sacramento.
Diller, J. S. 1914. Auriferous Gravels in the Weaverville Quadrangle, California.
U.S. Department of the Interior (hereafter USDI) Geological Survey Bulletin
470. Washington, DC: Government Printing Office.
McPhee, J. 1993. Assembling California. New York: The Noonday Press.
Trewartha, G. T. 1968. An Introduction to Climate. New York: McGraw-Hill.
http://130.166.124.2/ca_panorama_atlas/page15.html. California landform
maps by William Bower.
http://www/siskiyous.edu/shasta/geo/his.htm. Geologic history of Mount
Shasta.
http://www.wrcc.dri.edu/pcpn/ca_north.gif. Climate data for Northern California
from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration Western Region
Climate Center.
3. forest mélange
Adam, D. P., and G. J. West. 1983. “Temperature and Precipitation Estimates
through the Last Glacial Cycle from Clear Lake, California, Pollen Data.”
Science 219: 168–70.
Agee, J. K. 1993. Fire Ecology of Pacific Northwest Forests. Washington, DC:
Island Press.
Cooper, W. S. 1926. “The Nature of Vegetation Change.” Ecology 7: 391–413.
Detling, L. E. 1961. “The Chaparral Formation of Southwestern Oregon.”
Ecology 42: 348–57.
Griffin, J. R., and W. B. Critchfield. 1972. “The Distribution of Forest Trees in
California.” U.S. Department of Agriculture (hereafter USDA) Forest Service
Research Paper PSW-82.
Agee, James K.. Steward's Fork : A Sustainable Future for the Klamath Mountains, University of California
Press, 2007. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/humboldt/detail.action?docID=470926.
Created from humboldt on 2022-06-23 23:05:37.
Copyright © 2007. University of California Press. All rights reserved.
References and Selected Reading
263
MacGinitie, H. D. 1937. “The Flora of the Weaverville Beds of Trinity County,
California.” Contribution 465. In Eocene Flora of Western America, edited
by E. I. Sanborn, S. S. Potbury, and H. D. MacGinitie, 83–151. Washington,
DC: Carnegie Institute of Washington.
Merriam, C. H. 1899. Results of a Biological Survey of Mount Shasta,
California. USDA Division of Biological Survey, North American Fauna
Report no. 16. Washington, DC: Government Printing Office.
Merriam, C. H., and L. Steineger. 1890. Results of a Biological Survey of the
San Francisco Mountain Region and the Desert of the Little Colorado,
Arizona. USDA Division of Ornithology and Mammalia, North American
Fauna Report No. 3. Washington, DC: Government Printing Office.
Mohr, J. A., C. Whitlock, and C. N. Skinner. 2000. “Postglacial Vegetation and
Fire History, Eastern Klamath Mountains, California.” The Holocene 10,
no. 4: 587–601.
Noss, R. F. 2000. The Redwood Forest: History, Ecology, and Conservation of
the Coast Redwoods. Washington, DC: Island Press.
Sawyer, J. O., Jr. 1996. “Northern California.” In The Enduring Forests: Northern California, Oregon, Washington, British Columbia, and Southeast
Alaska, edited by R. Kirk, R. M. Pyle, and C. Mauzy, 20–41. Seattle: Mountaineers Books.
Sawyer, J. O., and D. A. Thornburgh. 1977. “Montane and Subalpine Vegetation of the Klamath Mountains.” In The Vegetation of California, edited by
M. Barbour and J. Major, 699–732. New York: John Wiley and Sons.
West, G. J. 1993. “The Late Pleistocene-Holocene Pollen Record and Prehistory
of California’s North Coast Ranges.” In There Grows a Green Tree: Papers
in Honor of David A. Fredrickson (Publication 11), edited by G. White, P.
Mikkelsen, W. R. Hildebrandt, and M. E. Basgall, 219–36. Davis, CA:
Center for Archaeological Research at Davis.
Whittaker, R. H. 1960. “Vegetation of the Siskiyou Mountains, Oregon and
California.” Ecological Monographs 30: 279–338.
———. 1961. “Vegetation History of the Pacific Coast States and the ‘Central’
Significance of the Klamath Region.” Madrono 16, no. 1: 5–23.
http://www.fs.fed.us/r5/projects/ecoregions.htm. Descriptions of California
ecoregions, Klamath Mountain section and subsections. Derived from C. B.
Goudey and D. W. Smith. 1994. “Ecological Units of California: Subsections
(map, scale 1:1,000,000, color). San Francisco: USDA Forest Service.
4. a rose by any name
Graube, M. 2002. “What’s in a Name? Perhaps Something Fishy.” Northwest
Science and Technology, Spring 2002, 50–51.
Hickman, J. C., ed. 1993. The Jepson Manual: Higher Plants of California.
Berkeley: University of California Press.
Hitchcock, C. L., and A. Cronquist. 1973. Flora of the Pacific Northwest.
Seattle: University of Washington Press.
Jones, A. E. 2000. Flowers and Trees of the Trinity Alps. Rev. ed. Weaverville,
CA: Trinity County Historical Society.
Agee, James K.. Steward's Fork : A Sustainable Future for the Klamath Mountains, University of California
Press, 2007. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/humboldt/detail.action?docID=470926.
Created from humboldt on 2022-06-23 23:05:37.
264
References and Selected Reading
Kruckeberg, A. R. 1954. “The Ecology of Serpentine Soils. III. Plant Species in
Relation to Serpentine Soils.” Ecology 35: 267–74.
Pollan, M. 2001. The Botany of Desire. New York: Random House.
Sawyer, J. O. 2006. Northwest California. Berkeley: University of California
Press.
Schemske, D. W., and H. D. Bradshaw. 1999. “Pollinator Preference and the
Evolution of Floral Traits in Monkeyflowers (Mimulus).” Proceedings of the
National Academy of Sciences 96, no. 21: 11910–15.
Stuart, J. D., and J. O. Sawyer. 2001. Trees and Shrubs of California. Berkeley:
University of California Press.
5. my contest with miss alice eastwood
Dakin, S. B. 1954. The Perennial Adventure, a Tribute to Alice Eastwood
1859–1953. San Francisco: California Academy of Sciences.
Eastwood, A. 1902. “From Redding to the Snow-Clad Peaks of Trinity
County.” Sierra Club Bulletin IV, no. 1: 39–52.
Jones, M. E. 1933–35. Contributions to Western Botany. No. 18. Claremont, CA.
U.S. Department of Agriculture, Forest Service. 2003. North Fork Trinity River,
East Fork North Fork Trinity River, and Canyon Creek Watershed Analysis.
Shasta-Trinity National Forest. Redding, CA: USDA Forest Service.
Wilderness Act. 1964. Public Law 88–577, 88th Congress, 4th sess. (September
3, 1964).
Woods, M. C. 1976. “Pleistocene Glaciation in Canyon Creek Area, Trinity
Alps, California.” California Geology, May 1976, 109–13.
Copyright © 2007. University of California Press. All rights reserved.
6. wild creatures of the klamaths
California Department of Water Resources. 1957. The California Water Plan.
Division of Resources Policy Bulletin 3. Sacramento.
Corkran, C. C., and C. Thoms. 1996. Amphibians of Oregon, Washington, and
British Columbia. Vancouver: Lone Pine Publishing.
Cox, I. 1940. The Annals of Trinity County. With annotations by J. W. Bartlett.
Eugene, OR: Printed for Harold C. Holmes by John Henry Nash of the
University of Oregon.
Mead, L. S., D. R. Clayton, R. S. Nauman, D. H. Olsen, and M. E. Pfrender.
2005. “Newly Discovered Populations of Salamanders from Siskiyou
County California Represent a Species Distinct from Plethodon stormi.”
Herpetelogica 61, no. 2: 158–77.
Montgomery, D. R. 2003. King of Fish: The Thousand-year Run of Salmon.
Cambridge, MA: Westview Press.
Peterson, R. T. 1961. A Field Guide to Western Birds. Boston: Houghton Mifflin
Company.
Quinn, T. P. 2005. The Behavior and Ecology of Pacific Salmon and Trout.
Seattle: University of Washington Press.
Stebbins, R. C. 1966. A Field Guide to Western Reptiles and Amphibians.
Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company.
Updike, D., and T. Burton. 2002. “Managing Black Bears in California.” Outdoor California, July–August 2002, 14–21.
Agee, James K.. Steward's Fork : A Sustainable Future for the Klamath Mountains, University of California
Press, 2007. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/humboldt/detail.action?docID=470926.
Created from humboldt on 2022-06-23 23:05:37.
References and Selected Reading
265
http://www.dfg.ca.gov/ocal/index.html. Articles from the California Department
of Fish and Games publication Outdoor California.
http://www.psmfc.org/habitat/. Life-history information on fish.
Copyright © 2007. University of California Press. All rights reserved.
7. change is the only constant
Agee, J. K. 1991. “Fire History along an Elevational Gradient in the Siskiyou
Mountains, Oregon.” Northwest Science 65: 188–99.
———. 1993. Fire Ecology of Pacific Northwest Forests. Washington, DC:
Island Press.
Atwater, B. F., S. Musumi-Rokkaku, S. Satake, Y. Tsuji, K. Ueda, and D. K.
Yamaguchi. 2005. The Orphan Tsunami of 1700. Reston, VA: U.S. Geological Survey / Seattle: University of Washington Press.
Fry, D. L., and S. L. Stephens. 2006. “Influence of Humans and Climate on the
Fire History of a Ponderosa Pine–Mixed Conifer Forest in the Southeastern
Klamath Mountains, California.” Forest Ecology and Management
223: 428–38.
Goheen, E. M., E. Hansen, A. Kanaskie, N. Osterbauer, J. Parke, J. Pscheidt, and G.
Chastagne. 2006. Sudden Oak Death and Phytophthora ramorum. Oregon
State University Extension Service Publication EM 8877. Corvallis, OR.
Harden, D. R. 1995. A Comparison of Flood-Producing Storms and Their
Impacts in Northwestern California. USDI Geological Survey Professional
Paper 1454-D. Washington, DC: Government Printing Office.
Helley, E. J., and V. C. LaMarche Jr. 1973. Historic Flood Information for
Northern California Streams from Geological and Botanical Evidence. USDI
Geological Survey Professional Paper 485-E. Washington, DC: Government
Printing Office.
Jimerson, T. M., and D. W. Jones. 2003. “Megram: Blowdown, Wildfire, and
the Effects of Forest Treatment.” In Proceedings of Fire Conference 2000:
The First National Congress in Fire Ecology, Prevention, and Management
(Miscellaneous Publication 13), edited by K. E. M. Galley, R. C. Klinger, and
N. Sugihara, 55–59. Tallahassee, FL: Tall Timbers Research Station.
Kroeber, A. L. 1976. Yurok Myths. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Linsley, E. G. 1943. “Attraction of Melanophila Beetles by Fire and Smoke.”
Journal of Economic Entomology 36: 341–42.
Morford, L. 1984. 100 Years of Wildland Fire in Siskiyou County (selfpublished, Yreka, CA).
Moritz, M. A., and D. C. Odion. 2005. “Examining the Strength and Possible
Causes of the Relationship between Fire History and Sudden Oak Death.”
Oecologia 144: 106–14.
Odion, D. C., E. J. Frost, J. R. Strittholt, H. Jiang, D. A. Dellasalla, and M. A.
Moritz. 2004. “Patterns of Fire Severity and Forest Conditions in the Western Klamath Mountains, California.” Conservation Biology 18: 927–36.
Oswald, D. D. 1968. “The Timber Resources of Humboldt County, California.” USDA Forest Service Resource Bulletin PNW-26. Portland, OR: Pacific
Northwest Research Station.
Pickett, S. T. A., and P. S. White. 1985. The Ecology of Natural Disturbance
and Patch Dynamics. New York: Academic Press.
Agee, James K.. Steward's Fork : A Sustainable Future for the Klamath Mountains, University of California
Press, 2007. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/humboldt/detail.action?docID=470926.
Created from humboldt on 2022-06-23 23:05:37.
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266
References and Selected Reading
Rizzo, D. M., and M. Garbelotto. 2003. “Sudden Oak Death: Endangering
California and Oregon Forest Ecosystems.” Frontiers in Ecology and Environment 1, no. 5: 197–204.
Skinner, C. N. 1995. “Change in Spatial Characteristics of Forest Openings in
the Klamath Mountains of Northwestern California, USA.” Landscape
Ecology 10: 219–28.
———. 2003. “Fire Regimes of Upper Montane and Subalpine Glacial Basins
in the Klamath Mountains of Northern California.” Proceedings of Fire
Conference 2000: The First National Congress in Fire Ecology, Prevention,
and Management (Miscellaneous Publication 13), edited by K. E. M. Galley,
R. C. Klinger, and N. Sugihara, 145–51. Tallahassee, FL: Tall Timbers
Research Station.
Skinner, C. N., A. H. Taylor, and J. K. Agee. 2006. “Klamath Mountains.” In
Fire Ecology in California’s Ecosystems, edited by N. Sugihara, J. W.
Wagtendonk, K. E. Shaffer, J. A. Fites-Kaufman, and A. E. Thode, 170–94.
Berkeley: University of California Press.
Stewart, J. H., and V. C. LaMarche. 1967. Erosion and Deposition in the Flood
of December 1964 on Coffee Creek, Trinity County, California. USDI Geological Survey Professional Paper 422-K. Washington, DC: Government
Printing Office.
Stuart, J. D., and L. A. Salazar. 2000. “Fire History of White Fir Forests in the
Coastal Mountains of Northwestern California.” Northwest Science 74:
280–85.
Taylor, A. H., and C. N. Skinner. 1998. “Fire History and Landscape Dynamics
in a Late Successional Reserve, Klamath Mountains, California.” Forest
Ecology and Management 111: 285–301.
———. 2003. “Spatial Patterns and Controls on Historical Fire Regimes and Forest
Structure in the Klamath Mountains.” Ecological Applications 13: 704–19.
Thornburgh, D. A. 1995. “The Natural Role of Fire in the Marble Mountain
Wilderness.” In Proceedings: Symposium on Fire in Wilderness and Park
Management (USDA Forest Service General Technical Report INT-GNR320), edited by J. K. Brown, R. W. Mutch, C. W. Spoon, and R. H.
Wakimoto, 273–74. Ogden, UT: Intermountain Research Station.
Whitlock, C., C. N. Skinner, P. J. Bartlein, T. Minckley, and J. A. Mohr. 2004.
“Comparison of Charcoal and Tree-Ring Records of Recent Fires in the
Eastern Klamath Mountains, California, USA.” Canadian Journal of Forest
Research 34: 2110–21.
http://nature.berkeley.edu/comtf. History and ecology of sudden oak death.
http://www.consrv.ca.gov/CGS/rghm/ap/Map_index. Earthquake fault zones in
Northern California.
http://sorrel.humboldt.edu/~geodept/earthquakes. A large earthquake scenario
for the North Coast.
8. first peoples of the rivers
Anderson, K. 2005. Tending the Wild. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Arnold, M. E., and M. Reed. 1957. In the Land of the Grasshopper Song.
Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press.
Agee, James K.. Steward's Fork : A Sustainable Future for the Klamath Mountains, University of California
Press, 2007. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/humboldt/detail.action?docID=470926.
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References and Selected Reading
267
Bancroft, H. H. 1890. History of California. Vol. 7. In vol. 24 of Collected
Works of Hubert Howe Bancroft. San Francisco: The History Company.
Curtis, E. S. 1924. The North American Indian. Vol. 13. Norwood, MA:
Edward S. Curtis and Plimpton Press.
Davis, B. J. N.d. Karuk Ethnobotany. Unpublished manuscript, available on file
at Office of Archeology, Six Rivers National Forest, 1330 Bayshore Way,
Eureka, CA 95501.
Dixon, R. B. 1905. “The Shasta-Achomawi: A New Linguistic Stock, with Four
New Dialects.” American Anthropologist 7, no. 2: 213–17.
———. 1931. “Dr. Merriam’s ‘Tlo-Hom-Tah’-Hoi.’” American Anthropologist
33, no. 2: 264–67.
Dundee, A. 1976. “Folkloristic Commentary.” In Yurok Myths, edited by A. L.
Kroeber, xxxi–xxxviii. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Golla, V., and S. O’Neill, eds. 2001. Northwest California Linguistics. Vol. 14
of The Collected Works of Edward Sapir. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.
Harrington, J. P. 1932a. Tobacco among the Karuk Indians of California.
Bureau of Ethnology Bulletin 94. Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution.
———. 1932b. Karuk Indian Myths. Bureau of American Ethnology Bulletin,
107. Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution.
Heizer, R. F., ed. 1974. The Destruction of the California Indians. Santa
Barbara, CA: Peregrine Smith.
Heizer, R. F., and A. B. Elsasser. 1980. The Natural World of the California Indians.
California Natural History Guide, 46. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Hurtado, A. L. 1988. Indian Survival on the California Frontier. New Haven,
CT: Yale University Press.
Keter, T. S. 1993. “Territorial and Social Relationships of the Inland Southern
Athabascans: Some New Perspectives.” In There Grows a Green Tree:
Papers in Honor of David A. Fredrickson, edited by G. White, P. Mikkelsen,
W. R. Hildebrandt, and M. E. Basgall, 37–51. Center for Archaeological
Research at Davis Publication 11. Davis: University of California.
———. 1999. “Effects of Euro-American Settlement on Native Americans in
the North Fork–Eel River Basin of Trinity County 1854–1864.” In Trinity
1999, 34–52. Weaverville, CA: Trinity County Historical Society.
Knudtson, P. 1992. The Wintun Indians of California and Their Neighbors.
Happy Camp, CA: Naturegraph Publishers.
Kroeber, A. L. 1925. Handbook of the Indians of California. Bureau of American
Ethnology Bulletin, 78. Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution.
———. 1976. Yurok Myths. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Kroeber, T. 1959. The Inland Whale. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.
Lake, Frank. Personal communication, 22 November 2006.
Lewis, H. T. 1973. Patterns of Indian Burning in California: Ecology and
Ethnohistory. Ballena Press Anthropological Papers No. 1. Ramona, CA:
Ballena Press.
Merriam, C. H. 1930. “The New River Indians: Tlo-Hom-Tah’-Hoi.” American
Anthropologist 32, no. 2: 280–93.
———. 1979. Indian Names for Plants and Animals among Californian and
Other Western North American Tribes. Assembled and annotated by R. F.
Heizer. Socorro, NM: Ballena Press.
Agee, James K.. Steward's Fork : A Sustainable Future for the Klamath Mountains, University of California
Press, 2007. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/humboldt/detail.action?docID=470926.
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268
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Moratto, M. J. 1984. California Archaeology. Orlando, FL: Academic Press.
Rohde, J., and G. Rohde. 1992. Humboldt Redwoods State Park. Eureka, CA:
Miles and Miles.
Silver, S. 2004a. “Shastan Peoples.” In Handbook of North American Indians,
Vol. 8, edited by W. C. Sturtevant, 211–24. Washington, DC: Smithsonian
Institution.
———. 2004b. “Chimariko.” In Handbook of North American Indians, Vol. 8,
edited by W. C. Sturtevant, 205–10. Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution.
Spott, R., and A. L. Kroeber. 1942. Yurok Narratives. University of California
Publications in American Archeology and Ethnology 35, no. 9: 143–256.
Strobridge, W. F. 1994. Regulars in the Redwoods: The U.S. Army in Northern
California 1852–1861. Spokane, WA: Arthur N. Clark Co.
Vale, T. R., ed. 2002. Fire, Native Peoples, and the Natural Landscape.
Washington, DC: Island Press.
Wallace, W. J. 1948. “Hupa Narrative Tales.” Journal of American Folklore 61:
345–55.
———. 2004. “Hupa, Chilula, and Whilkut.” In Handbook of North American
Indians, Vol. 8, edited by W. C. Sturtevant, 164–79. Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution.
White, R. 1991. It’s Your Misfortune and None of My Own. Norman: University
of Oklahoma Press.
http://www.trinidad-rancheria.org. Trinidad Rancheria history.
http://content.wsulibs.wsu.edu/cgi-bin/advsearch.exe. Washington State University
digital-map collection showing Oregon Indian tribes.
http://www.covelo.net/tribes/pages/tribes_rvcongress.shtml. Round Valley Indian
Reservation congressional history.
http://www.dcn.davis.ca.us/~ammon/tsnungwe/narrative.html. Narrative of
Tsnungwe Council.
http://www.mip.berkeley.edu/cilc_images/bibs/maps/tribemap.gif. University of
California digital-map collection showing California Indian tribes.
Copyright © 2007. University of California Press. All rights reserved.
9. gold is where you find it
Alpers, C. N., and M. P. Humerlach. 2000. Mercury Contamination from Historic
Gold Mining in California. USDI Geological Survey Fact Sheet FS-061–00.
Washington, DC: Government Printing Office.
Ashley, R. P., J. J. Rytuba, R. Rogers, B. B. Kotlyar, and D. Lawler. 2002. Preliminary Report on Mercury Geochemistry of Placer Gold Dredge Tailings,
Sediments, Bedrock, and Waters in the Clear Creek Restoration Area, Shasta
County, California. USDI Geological Survey Open File Report 02–401.
Washington, DC: Government Printing Office.
Aubury, L. E., ed. 1910. Gold Dredging in California. California State Mining
Bureau Bulletin 57. Sacramento.
Beauchamp, M. 2005. “King Copper.” Redding Record Searchlight, August 8,
2005.
Cox, I. 1940. The Annals of Trinity County. With annotations by J. W. Bartlett.
Eugene, OR: Printed for Harold C. Holmes by John Henry Nash of the
University of Oregon.
Agee, James K.. Steward's Fork : A Sustainable Future for the Klamath Mountains, University of California
Press, 2007. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/humboldt/detail.action?docID=470926.
Created from humboldt on 2022-06-23 23:05:37.
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References and Selected Reading
269
de La Grange, Clementine. 2000. From the Known to the Unknown: The Memoirs of Baroness de La Grange 1892–1894. Weaverville, CA: Trinity County
Historical Society.
Diller, J. S. 1911. Auriferous Gravels in the Trinity River Basin, California. USDI
Geological Survey Bulletin 540. Washington, DC: Government Printing Office.
———. 1914. Auriferous Gravels in the Weaverville Quadrangle, California.
USDI Geological Survey Bulletin 470. Washington, DC: Government
Printing Office.
Doolittle, E. M. 1905. Gold Dredging in California. California State Mining
Bureau Bulletin 36. Sacramento.
Eastwood, A. 1902. “From Redding to the Snow-Clad Peaks of Trinity
County.” Sierra Club Bulletin IV, no. 1:39–52.
Elder, D., and S. M. Cashman. 1992. “Tectonic Control and Fluid Evolution in
the Quartz Hill, California, Lode Gold Deposits.” Economic Geology 87:
1795–1812.
Haifley, K. 2001. “The Obscure East Fork.” In Trinity 2001, 58–61.
Weaverville, CA: Trinity County Historical Society.
Hightower, J. M., and D. Moore. 2003. “Mercury Levels in High-End Consumers of Fish.” Environmental Health Perspectives 111, no. 4: 604–8.
Lydon, P. A. 1962. “History and Mining in the Southeast Quarter of the Minersville Quadrangle, Trinity, California.” In Trinity 1962, 4–19. Weaverville,
CA: Trinity County Historical Society.
May, H. 2001. “Re-floating the Fairview Placers Dredge.” In Trinity 2001,
37–47. Weaverville, CA: Trinity County Historical Society.
May, J. T., R. L. Hothem, W. G. Duffy, C. N. Alpers, and J. J. Rytuba. 2002.
“Mercury Bioaccumulation from Historical Mining in the Trinity River
Watershed, California.” Abstract, Society of Environmental Toxicology and
Chemistry National Meeting, November 16–20, Salt Lake City, UT.
Nordstrom, D. K., and C. N. Alpers. 1999. “Negative pH, Efflorescent Mineralogy, and Consequences for Environmental Restoration at the Iron Mountain Superfund Site, California.” Proceedings of the National Academy of
Sciences 96: 3455–62.
Ryan, R. A., and J. Shuford. 1974. “Bucket Line Dredges.” In Trinity 1974,
8–27. Weaverville, CA: Trinity County Historical Society.
Schuldberg, J. B. 2005. Kennett: The Short, Colorful Life of a California Copper
Town and Its Founding Family. Chico, CA: Stansbury Publishing.
Somer, W. L., and T. J. Hassler. 1992. “Effects of Suction-Dredge Gold Mining
on Benthic Invertebrates in a Northern California Stream.” North American
Journal of Fisheries Management 12: 224–52.
Stellman, L. J. 1934. Mother Lode: The Story of California’s Gold Rush. San
Francisco: Harr Wagner Publishing.
Town of Shasta Interpretive Association. 2005. Image of America: Old Shasta.
San Francisco: Arcadia Publishing.
Warne, W. E. 1973. The Bureau of Reclamation. New York: Praeger.
http://www.csuchico.edu/~rcooke/rastra.html. Types of ore-crushing arrastras.
http://alaskaoutdoorjournal.com/Activities/Goldpanning/kpgold.html. Goldpanning guidelines in Alaska.
Agee, James K.. Steward's Fork : A Sustainable Future for the Klamath Mountains, University of California
Press, 2007. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/humboldt/detail.action?docID=470926.
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270
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http://www.icmjz.com/BegCorner/US65HowToMineForGold.htm. J. M. West,
“How to mine for placer gold.”
www.keeneengineering.com/pamphlets/howdredge.html. The gold dredge.
www.oehha.ca.gov/fish.html. Advisories on consumption of California sport
fish.
http://pubs.usgs.gov/gip/prospect1/goldgip.html. Basic information from the
U.S. Geological Survey about gold.
www.tcbwest.com/htm/perceys.htm. Account of the discovery of Percy’s body
in the Trinity River.
Copyright © 2007. University of California Press. All rights reserved.
10. green grass and green gold
Anonymous. 1881. History of Humboldt County, California, with Illustrations.
San Francisco: W. W. Elliott & Co.
———. 1965. Etna—From Mule Train to ‘Copter.’ Eschscholtzia Parlor 112.
Etna, CA: Native Daughters of the Golden West.
———. 1978. “South of the South Fork.” 1978 Trinity. Weaverville, CA: Trinity
County Historical Society.
———. 1999. “Trinity Center”—Now and Then. Menlo Park, CA: Prodigy
Press (first published in 1950 by the Trinity Center Elementary School Board
of Trustees).
Armstrong, M. H. n.d. History, Law, Legislation, Events, Water, Agriculture,
Ranching, Mining, Property. Yreka, CA: Siskiyou County Farm Bureau.
Belden, G. E. 1998. The Annals of a Forester. Self-published. Weaverville, CA.
Best, D. W. 1995. History of Timber Harvest in the Redwood Creek Basin,
Northwestern California. USDI Geological Survey Professional Paper 1454-C.
Washington, DC: Government Printing Office.
Burke, A. 2005. “The Public Lands’ Big Cash Crop.” High Country News 37,
no. 20: 8–13, 19.
Burton, F. 1965. “The Forest House Story.” 1965 Siskiyou Pioneer. Etna, CA:
Siskiyou County Historical Society.
Carranco, L., and E. Beard. 1981. Genocide and Vendetta: The Round Valley
Wars of Northern California. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press.
Doak, S, and J. Kusel. 1997. Well-Being of Communities in the Klamath Region.
Taylorsville, CA: Forest Community Research. Available at http://inforain.
org/indicators/klamath/ index.htm.
Ficken, R. 1987. The Forested Land: A History of Lumbering in Western
Washington. Seattle: University of Washington Press.
Gordon, D. E. 1907. “In Golden Trinity.” Sunset, December 1907, 157–63.
Hagans, D. K., W. E. Weaver, and M. A. Madej. 1986. “Long Term On-Site and
Off-Site Effects of Logging and Erosion in the Redwood Creek Basin, Northern
California.” In American Geophysical Union Meeting on Cumulative
Effects, National Council for Air and Stream Improvement Technical Bulletin 490, 38–66. Research Triangle Park, NC.
Jones, A. E. 1981. Trinity County Historic Sites. Weaverville, CA: Trinity
County Historical Society.
———. 2001. “The Trinity Alps Story.” In Trinity 2001, 28–32. Weaverville,
CA: Trinity County Historical Society.
Agee, James K.. Steward's Fork : A Sustainable Future for the Klamath Mountains, University of California
Press, 2007. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/humboldt/detail.action?docID=470926.
Created from humboldt on 2022-06-23 23:05:37.
Copyright © 2007. University of California Press. All rights reserved.
References and Selected Reading
271
Mueller, T., and S. Duggan. 2005. Guide to the California Forest Practices Act
and Related Laws. Point Arena, CA: Solano Press.
Poli, A., and H. L. Baker. 1954. Ownership and Use of Land in the
Redwood–Douglas-Fir Subregion of California. Technical Paper 7. Berkeley:
USDA Forest Service California Forest and Range Experiment Station.
Poli, A., and E. V. Roberts. 1958. Economics of the Utilization of Commercial
Timberland of Livestock Ranches in Northwestern California. Miscellaneous Paper 25. Berkeley: USDA Forest Service California Forest and Range
Experiment Station.
State Board of Equalization. State Board of Equalization 1997–2002 Annual
Report. Sacramento.
Steen, H. K. 1976. The U.S. Forest Service: A History. Seattle: University of
Washington Press.
Stone, W. 1963. “Half a Century of Cattle Raising—Half a Century Ago.”
Siskiyou Pioneer, 1963, 20–21.
Tomascheski, J. B. 1991. Sierra Pacific: A Family History. Arcata, CA: Creative
Type.
U.S. Department of Agriculture, Forest Service. 1905. The Use of the National
Forest Reserves: Regulations and Instructions. Washington, DC: Government
Printing Office.
Waddle, K. L., and P. M. Bassett. 1996. Timber Resource Statistics for the
North Coast Resource Area of California, 1994. USDA Forest Service
Resource Bulletin PNW-RB-214. Portland OR: Pacific Northwest Research
Station.
———. 1997. Timber Resource Statistics for the North Interior Resource Area
of California. USDA Forest Service Resource Bulletin PNW-RB-222. Portland,
OR: Pacific Northwest Research Station.
Ward, F. R. 1995. California’s Forest Industry: 1992. USDA Forest Service
Resource Bulletin PNW-RB-206. Portland, OR: Pacific Northwest Research
Station.
Wells, H. L. 1881. History of Siskiyou County, California. Oakland, CA: D. J.
Stewart and Co.
http://www.blm.gov/or/rac/ctypayhistory.php. Bureau of Land Management
history of the Oregon and California railroad grants.
http://www.wilderness.net. List and description of U.S. wilderness areas.
11. dam the world
California Department of Water Resources. 1957. The California Water Plan.
Division of Resources Policy Bulletin 3. Sacramento.
———, The Resources Agency. 1965. Flood! December 1964–January 1965.
Department of Water Resources Bulletin 161. Sacramento.
———, Northern District. 1967. Alternative Plans for the Development of the
Lower Trinity and Klamath Rivers. Sacramento.
———. 1970. Water for California—The California Water Plan Outlook in
1970. Division of Resources Bulletin 160–70. Sacramento.
Agee, James K.. Steward's Fork : A Sustainable Future for the Klamath Mountains, University of California
Press, 2007. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/humboldt/detail.action?docID=470926.
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272
References and Selected Reading
———. 1987. California Water: Looking to the Future. Department of Water
Resources Bulletin 160–87. Sacramento.
Carle, D. 2000. Water and the California Dream. San Francisco: Sierra Club
Books.
McCasland, S. P. 1951. United Western Investigation: Interim Report on
Reconnaissance. Salt Lake City, UT: USDI Bureau of Reclamation.
Reisner, M. 1986. Cadillac Desert. New York: Viking Penguin.
Sharp, R. P. 1960. “Pleistocene Glaciation in the Trinity Alps of Northern
California.” American Journal of Science 258: 305–40.
U.S. Department of the Interior, Bureau of Reclamation. 1981. The Central
Valley Project: Its Historical Background and Economic Impacts. Sacramento: Mid-Pacific Regional Office.
Warne, W. E. 1973. The Bureau of Reclamation. New York: Praeger.
12. modern myths and monsters
Copyright © 2007. University of California Press. All rights reserved.
Coleman, L., and P. Huyghe. 1999. The Field Guide to Bigfoot, Yeti, and Other
Mystery Primates Worldwide. New York: Avon Books.
Daegling, D. J. 2004. Bigfoot Exposed. Walnut Creek, CA: AltaMira Press.
Farrell, H. 1997. Shallow Grave in Trinity County. New York: St. Martin’s Press.
Munz, P. A., and D. D. Keck. 1959. A California Flora. Berkeley: University of
California Press.
Pyle, R. M. 1995. Where Bigfoot Walks: Crossing the Dark Divide. New York:
Houghton Mifflin.
Walker, K. 1995. A Trail of Corn. Santa Rosa, CA: Golden Door Press.
Wallace, D. R. 1985. The Turquoise Dragon. San Francisco: Sierra Club Books.
http://www.bigfootencounters.com/sightings.htm. California Bigfoot encounters.
http://www.oregonbigfoot.com. Stories of Bigfoot and links to audio and video.
http://www.outwestnewspaper.com/rjs4.html. Lemurians of Mount Shasta.
http://www.siskiyous.edu/shasta/bib/B17.htm. Annotated bibliography of
Ascended Masters.
http://www.strangemag.com/landischambers.html. Information linking the
Patterson-Gimlin film to a Hollywood costume designer.
13. principles of future sustainability
Aplet, G. H., N. Johnson, J. T. Olson, and V. A. Sample. 1993. Defining
Sustainable Forestry. Washington, DC: Island Press.
Berry, Wendell. 1992. Sex, Economy, Freedom and Community. New York:
Pantheon Books.
———. 1999. “1998 Speech to Organic Growers.” In Our Land, Ourselves,
edited by P. Forbes, A. A. Forbes, and H. Whybrow, 200–202. San Francisco:
Trust for Public Land.
Constanza, R., B. G. Norton, and B. D. Haskell. 1992. Ecosystem Health: New
Goals for Environmental Management. Washington, DC: Island Press.
Dale, V. H., J. K. Agee, J. Long, and B. Noon. 1999. “Ecological Sustainability
Is Fundamental to Managing the National Forests and Grasslands.” Bulletin
of the Ecological Society of America 80: 207–9.
Agee, James K.. Steward's Fork : A Sustainable Future for the Klamath Mountains, University of California
Press, 2007. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/humboldt/detail.action?docID=470926.
Created from humboldt on 2022-06-23 23:05:37.
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273
Forbes, P., A. Armbrecht Forbes, and H. Whybrow. 1999. Our Land, Ourselves. San Francisco: The Trust for Public Land.
Franklin, J. F. 1993. “The Fundamentals of Ecosystem Management with Applications in the Pacific Northwest.” In Defining Sustainable Forestry, edited by
G. H. Aplet, N. Johnson, J. T. Olson, and V. A. Sample, 127–44. Washington,
DC: Island Press.
Hobbs, R. J., M. A. Davis, L. B. Slobodkin, R. T. Lackey, W. Halvorson, and
W. Throop. 2004. “Restoration Ecology: The Challenge of Social Values and
Expectations.” Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment 1, no. 2: 43–48.
Leopold, A. 1949. A Sand County Almanac and Sketches Here and There. New
York: Oxford University Press.
———. 1993. Round River. New York: Oxford University Press.
National Academy of Sciences. 2003. Endangered and Threatened Fishes in the
Klamath River Basin: Causes of Decline and Strategies for Recovery.
Washington, DC: National Academies Press.
Oglethorpe, J., ed. 2002. Adaptive Management: From Theory to Practice.
Gland, Switzerland, and Cambridge, England: World Conservation Union.
U.S. Department of Agriculture, Committee of Scientists. 1999. Sustaining the
People’s Lands. Recommendations for Stewardship of the National Forests
and Grasslands into the Next Century. Washington, DC: Government Printing Office.
http://www.arwc.org/news/. Applegate Partnership website.
Copyright © 2007. University of California Press. All rights reserved.
14. hard times for hardrock
Nordstrom, D. K., and C. N. Alpers. 1999. “Negative pH, Efflorescent Mineralogy, and Consequences for Environmental Restoration at the Iron Mountain
Superfund Site, California.” Proceedings of the National Academy of
Sciences 96: 3455–62.
Thompson, H. M. 1957. “King Solomon Mine.” In The Siskiyou Pioneer in
Folklore, Fact, and Fiction, edited by B. J. Fairchild, vol. 2, no. 10, 14–17.
Yreka, CA: Siskiyou County Historical Society.
Wilkinson, C. F. 1992. Crossing the Next Meridian: Land, Water and the Future
of the West. Washington, DC: Island Press.
http://www.akmining.com/mine/1999epa.htm. Impact of suction dredging on
water quality and benthic habitat.
http://ca.water.usgs.gov/mercury/trinity/. U.S. Geological Survey report on an
interagency project focusing on Trinity River watersheds with abandoned
mine lands.
http://www.consrv.ca.gov/omr/smara/financial_assurance_guideline.htm. Surface
mining reclamation assurances for California.
http://www.perc.org/publications/policyseries/mininglaw_full.php. Pros and
cons of the Mining Law of 1872.
15. forests for the future
Agee, J. K., and R. L. Edmonds. 1992. “Forest Protection Guidelines for the
Northern Spotted Owl.” In Recovery Plan for the Northern Spotted Owl.
Agee, James K.. Steward's Fork : A Sustainable Future for the Klamath Mountains, University of California
Press, 2007. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/humboldt/detail.action?docID=470926.
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USDI Fish and Wildlife Service, Appendix F. Washington, DC: Government
Printing Office.
Best, C., and L. A. Wayburn. 2001. America’s Private Forests: Status and Stewardship. Washington, DC: Island Press.
Courtney, S. P., J. A. Blakesley, R. E. Bigley, M. L. Cody, J. P. Dumbacher, R. C.
Fleisher, A. B. Franklin, J. F. Franklin, R. J. Gutierrez, J. M. Marzluff, and
L. Sztukowski. 2004. Scientific Evaluation of the Status of the Northern
Spotted Owl. Portland, OR: Sustainable Ecosystems Institute.
Dombeck, M. P., C. A. Wood, and J. E. Williams. 2003. From Conquest to Conservation: Our Public Lands Legacy. Washington, DC: Island Press.
Dunne, T., J. Agee, S. Beissinger, W. Dietrich, D. Gray, M. Power, V. Resh, and
K. Rodrigues. 2001. A Scientific Basis for the Prediction of Cumulative
Watershed Effects. University of California Wildland Resources Center
Report, 46. Berkeley.
Franklin, A. B., D. R. Anderson, R. J. Gutierrez, and K. P. Burnham. 2000.
“Climate, Habitat Quality, and Fitness in Northern Spotted Owl Populations in Northwestern California.” Ecological Monographs 70: 539–90.
Graham Mathews and Associates. 2001. Sediment Source Analysis for the
Mainstem Trinity River, Trinity County, California. Fairfax, VA: Tetra
Tech, Inc.
Stokstad, E. 2005. “Learning to Adapt.” Science 309: 688–90.
Copyright © 2007. University of California Press. All rights reserved.
16. restoring the rivers
Barinaga, M. 1996. “A Recipe for River Recovery?” Science 273: 1648–50.
California Department of Fish and Game. 2003. Recovery Strategy for California
Coho Salmon (Oncorhynchus kisutch). Report to California Fish and Game
Commission. Sacramento.
Lind, A. J., H. H. Welch Jr., and R. A. Wilson. 1996. “The Effects of a Dam on
Breeding Habitat and Egg Survival of the Foothill Yellow-Legged Frog (Rana
boylii) in Northwestern California.” Herpetological Review 27, no. 2:
62–67.
National Academy of Sciences. 2004. Endangered and Threatened Fishes in the
Klamath River Basin: Causes of Decline and Strategies for Recovery.
Washington, DC: National Academies Press.
Poff, N. L., J. D. Allan, M. B. Bain, J. R. Karr, K. L. Prestegaard, B. D. Richter,
R. E. Sparks, and J. C. Stromberg. 1997. “The Natural Flow Regime.”
Bioscience 47, no.11: 769–84.
Reese, D. A., and H. H. Welch Jr. 1998. “Habitat Use by Western Pond Turtles
in the Trinity River, California.” Journal of Wildlife Management 62, no. 3:
842–53.
Trinity County Resources Conservation District. 1999. Grass Valley Creek
Watershed Restoration Project: Restoration in Decomposed Granite Soils.
Weaverville, CA: Trinity County Resources Conservation District and USDA
Natural Resources Conservation Service in cooperation with Trinity River
Restoration Project.
U.S. Department of the Interior, Bureau of Reclamation. 2001. Trinity River
Restoration Program. TRRP. Weaverville, CA.
Agee, James K.. Steward's Fork : A Sustainable Future for the Klamath Mountains, University of California
Press, 2007. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/humboldt/detail.action?docID=470926.
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References and Selected Reading
275
U.S. Department of the Interior, Fish and Wildlife Service. 1999. Executive
Summary, Draft Environmental Impact Statement / Environmental Impact
Report, Trinity River Mainstem Fishery Restoration. U.S. Fish and Wildlife
Service, U.S. Bureau of Reclamation, Hoopa Valley Tribe, and Trinity
County. Washington, DC.
http://www.srrc.org. Home page of the Salmon River Restoration Council.
Copyright © 2007. University of California Press. All rights reserved.
17. steward’s fork
Breshears, D. D., N. S. Cobb, P. M. Rich, K. P. Price, C. D. Allen, R. G. Balice,
W. H. Romme, et al. 2005. “Regional Vegetation Die-Off in Response to
Global-Change-Type Drought.” Proceedings of the National Academy of
Sciences 102, no. 42: 15144–48.
Field, C. B., G. C. Daily, F. W. Davis, S. Gaines, P. A. Matson, J. Melack, and
N. L. Miller. 1999. Confronting Climate Change in California. Union of
Concerned Scientists and Ecological Society of America. Cambridge, MA:
UCS Publications.
Hayhoe, K., D. Cayan, C. B. Field, P. C. Frumhoff, E. P. Maurer, N. L. Miller,
S. C. Moser, et al. 2004. “Emissions Pathways, Climate Change, and Impacts
on California.” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 101, no.
34: 12422–27.
Lenihan, J. M., R. Drapek, D. Bachelet, and R. P. Neilson. 2003. “Climate
Change Effects on Vegetation Distribution, Carbon, and Fire in California.”
Ecological Applications 13, no. 6: 1667–81.
Louv, R. 2005. Last Child in the Woods: Saving Our Children From NatureDeficit Disorder. Chapel Hill, NC: Algonquin Books.
McKenzie, D., Z. Gedalof, D. L. Peterson, and P. Mote. 2004. “Climatic
Change, Wildfire, and Conservation.” Conservation Biology 18: 890–902.
Montgomery, D. R. 2003. King of Fish: The Thousand-year Run of Salmon.
Cambridge, MA: Westview Press.
Quinn, T. P. 2005. The Behavior and Ecology of Pacific Salmon and Trout.
Bethesda, MD: American Fisheries Society / Seattle: University of Washington
Press.
Rodriguez, R. 2006. “Disappointment.” California, January–February 2006,
14–19.
Schrag, P. 2004. Paradise Lost: California’s Experience, America’s Future.
Berkeley: University of California Press.
White, R. 1996. “Are You an Environmentalist, or Do You Work for a Living?”
In Uncommon Ground, edited by W. Cronon, 171–85. New York: Norton.
http://www.findingbigfoot.com. Bigfoot remote search via webcam. At the time
of publication, the website was inactive.
Agee, James K.. Steward's Fork : A Sustainable Future for the Klamath Mountains, University of California
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Index
Copyright © 2007. University of California Press. All rights reserved.
Page numbers in italics indicate illustrations.
Abbott, Burton, 191–94, 196
Abies, 27
Abies amabilis (Pacific silver fir), 31
Abies concolor. See white fir
Abies lasiocarpa (subalpine fir), 28, 31
Abies magnifica var. shastensis (Shasta
red fir), 21, 22, 29, 44, 52, 84
Abies procera (noble fir), 31
Acer macrophyllum (bigleaf maple), 99
acorns, 100, 110, 112
active management, 220–24, 247
adaptive management, 203, 238,
241, 243
adaptive management areas (AMAs), 218
Adenostoma fasciculatum (chamise), 82
Adiantum aleuticum (five-finger fern),
113, 114
Aesculus californica (California buckeye),
99, 112
agriculture, 145–52, 179; mining impacts
and Sawyer decision, 124, 128–29,
137; Native American, 113, 115,
145
Ah Pah dam, 169, 175
Ailanthus altissima (tree of heaven), 39
Alaska cedar, 27, 31
alders, 29, 72; red alder, 89; white alder,
26, 113
Aliciella, 54
alien species, 38–39, 53, 251
Allium (wild onion), 114
Allotment Act of 1887, 121
alluvial deposits. See gravels, gold-bearing;
sediment movement/deposition
Alnus rhombifolia (white alder), 26, 113
Alnus rubra (red alder), 89
Alpen Cellars, 151
alpine laurel, 45, 52
Alt, David, 17–18
Altoona Mine, 130–31, 140
AMAs (adaptive management areas), 218
Ambystoma gracile (northwestern
salamander), 64
Amelanchier alnifolia (service-berry), 114
American crow, 110
American fisher, 60
American raven, 71
American vetch, 24
America’s Private Forests (Best and
Wayburn), 230
amphibians, 63–66. See also frogs;
salamanders
anadromous fish. See fish and fisheries;
salmonids; individual species
Anderson, John, 118
Andrus, Cecil, 178
Aneides ferreus (clouded salamander), 65
Aneides flavipunctatus (black salamander),
65
annosus root rot, 97
Anti-Débris Association, 129
Applegate Partnership, 204–5
277
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278
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Applegate River, 10
Aquila chrysaetos (golden eagle), 56–57
Aquilegia formosa (columbine), 45
Aralia californica (elk clover), 49
Arbutus menziesii (Pacific madrone), 25,
77, 99
Arceuthobium (dwarf mistletoe), 98
Arctostaphylos (manzanita), 99
Ardea herodias (great blue heron), 58
“Are You an Environmentalist, or
Do You Work for a Living?”
(White), 247
Arizona coral snake, 62
Arkansas Dam, 128, 165
armillaria root rot (Armillaria ostoyae), 97
arnica (Arnica), 45
Arnold, Mary, 121
arrastras, 131
Arrowhead, Lake, 102, 251
Asarum caudatum (wild-ginger), 114
Ascaphus truei (tailed frog), 64
Ascended Masters, 181, 182
Astara, 181
aster (Aster), 45
Australian grasslands, 38
avalanches, 103–4
Avena fatua (wild oat), 38
Baker cypress, 31
bald cypress, 13, 26
Ballard, Edna, 181
Ballard, Guy Warren, 181–82
balloon bomb attack, 195–97
Bancroft, H. H., 117
Bannion, Ben, 6
bark beetles, 96–97, 103
bark characteristics, fire and, 72–73, 77,
79, 84
barred owl, 58, 219–20
Bartlett, James, 147
basalt, 15
basketry, Native American, 113, 114
bass, 141
basswood, 26
bats, 58–60; myotis bats, 59; spotted
bat, 59
bay, 26
bear-grass, 113, 114
bears, 69; black bear, 45, 50–51, 60, 112;
grizzly bear, 56, 60, 112
beaver, 146
Beaver Reservoir, 176–77
bees, 35, 36
Berberis nervosa (Oregon grape), 24, 34
Berry, S. L., 50
Berry, Wendell, 214
Berry Summit, 18
Best, Connie, 230
Index
Big Backbone Creek, 143
Big Bar, 90
bigcone spruce, 32
Big Flat, 7, 170
Bigfoot, 185–90, 249
Bigfoot Scenic Byway, 188
bigleaf maple, 99
biodiversity, 13, 14, 18, 105, 216; change
and, 31, 247
birds, 56–58, 97, 100; in Yurok myth, 110.
See also individual genera and species
Black Basin, 146
black bear, 45, 50–51, 60, 112
black oak, 28, 32, 77, 80, 99
black salamander, 65
black stain root rot, 97
BLM (Bureau of Land Management),
154, 207, 215
Blommer Slide, 166–67
Blue Mountains, 17
blue oak, 82, 99
Bluff Creek Bigfoot sightings, 186–87
Boas, Franz, 122
bobcat, 98
Bodega, Juan Francisco de la, 113
The Botany of Desire (Pollan), 37
Bowerman, John, 146
Bowerman Meadows, 146
Brachyramphus marmoratus (marbled
murrelet), 216
Bradshaw, Toby, 36
Brewer (weeping) spruce, 31, 44, 52
Bridge Creek, 89
Bridge Gulch massacre, 118–19
Bromus tectorum (cheatgrass), 38
Brotherhood of Mount Shasta, 181
Brown, Edmund G., 173
brown trout, 66
Bryan (Stephanie) murder case, 191–97
buckbrush, 34, 82
Buckeye Ridge gold mining, 129
Buckhorn Summit, 14, 241
buckwheat, 50, 53
bullfrog, 62, 64
bull pine. See gray (ghost) pine
Bureau of Land Management (BLM),
154, 207, 215
Bureau of Reclamation, 168, 173, 178,
241. See also California Water Plan
Burns-Porter Act, 173
Butter’s Dam, 143
Cabinet Mountains, Rock Creek Mine
proposal, 213–14
cable yarding, 161, 229
Cadillac Desert (Reisner), 169
California Academy of Sciences,
Eastwood at, 41, 42, 54
Agee, James K.. Steward's Fork : A Sustainable Future for the Klamath Mountains, University of California
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Index
California and Oregon Railroad Company,
154
California bay. See California laurel
California black oak, 28, 32, 77, 80, 99
California buckeye, 99, 112
California coffeeberry, 99
California Department of Fish and
Game, 139
California Department of Water
Resources (DWR), 167, 173, 176.
See also California Water Plan
California Environmental Protection
Agency, 141
California Forest Improvement Program,
231
California hazel, 99, 113, 114
California huckleberry, 55, 99
California laurel, 34, 78, 80, 99, 114
California law: Burns-Porter Act, 173;
1924 Klamath dam prohibition initiative, 175; State Water Resources
Act, 168; Surface Mining and Reclamation Act, 139, 207; timber harvest
regulation, 161–62, 226, 227,
230–31; Wilderness Bill, 157
California mountain kingsnake, 62
California pitcher plant, 36–37
California Water Plan, 70, 169–70,
173–78; maps, 174, 177
California wild grape, 114
Callahan, 137–38
Calocedrus decurrens (incense cedar), 27,
28, 33, 73, 82, 98
Canadian zone, 21, 22
candlefish, 33
Canis lupus (gray wolf), 60
Canoe fire, 79
Canyon Creek: author’s plant survey,
46–53; Eastwood plant survey,
21–22, 41, 42–46, 48–49, 53; farms
along, 146; frogs in, 64; glaciation,
13, 44–45; gold mining, 47, 131–32,
139, 144
Canyon Creek Falls, 43, 44
Canyon Creek Lakes (Twin Lakes),
43, 44, 47, 52
Canyon Creek pluton, 17, 44
Canyon Creek Wilderness/trailhead,
47, 48
canyon live oak, 77, 80, 99
Carex (sedge), 170
Carrville, 137, 164
Carrville Pond, 141
Carson, Rachel, 141
Cascade Mountains, 18, 25, 76
cascara, 114
Cassiope mertensiana (white heather),
45, 52
279
Castanopsis chrysophylla. See Chrysolepis
chrysophylla
Castle Crags Wilderness, 157
catfish, 141
cattle, 147–48. See also ranching
Ceanothus cuneatus (buckbrush), 34, 82
Ceanothus integerriumus (deerbrush), 34
Ceanothus prostratus (mahala mat), 24
Ceanothus velutinus (snowbrush or
tobacco brush), 34, 43
Cecil Lake, 183, 184–85
cedars: Alaska cedar, 27, 31; incense
cedar, 27, 28, 33, 73, 82, 98; Port
Orford cedar, 31, 32–33, 73, 97;
western red cedar, 104
Centaurea solstitialis (yellow star-thistle),
38
Central Metamorphic Belt, 15, 16, 17,
124–25
Central Pacific Railroad Company, 154
Central Valley Project, 167–68, 236
Chabot, “Frenchy,” 128
chain fern, 113
Chamaecyparis lawsoniana. See Cupressus
lawsoniana
Chambers, John, 187
chamise, 82
Champion International, 242
Chanchelulla Gulch, 195
Chanchelulla Wilderness, 157
Chaney, Earlyne, 181
change, 53, 71–73, 247; diversity and,
31, 247; ecosystem management
and, 4–5, 198, 252; forest succession/
potential vegetation, 22–24, 71. See
also climate change; ecosystem
dynamics; natural disturbances
chaparral, 80, 82
Charina bottae (rubber boa), 63
Chasmistes brevirostris (shortnose sucker),
240
Chaumont Quitry ditch, 172
cheatgrass, 38
Cherry Flat, 7, 48
chestnut-backed chickadee, 97
Chilcutt, Jimmy, 189
children, experience with nature, 248–49
Chilula people, 108, 121
Chimaphila umbellata (prince’s pine), 24
Chimariko people, 108, 115, 120, 121
China Slide, 166
Chinese immigrants, 126
Chinook people, 121
Chinook salmon, 5, 67, 68, 211, 241
chinquapin, giant, 25, 80
Chlorogalum (soap plant), 114
Chrysolepis chrysophylla (giant
chinquapin), 25, 80
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280
Chrysothamnus (rabbitbrush), 114
Church Universal and Triumphant, 181
cinnabar (mercury) mining, 130–31,
140–41, 206
Cinnabar Sam, 131
Civil War, 117, 120
Clair Engle Lake, 164. See also Trinity Lake
Clark Fork river, 213
Clayton, Dave, 65
Claytonia lanceolate (spring beauty), 114
Clear Creek, 10, 125, 129
Clear Creek tunnel, 175, 178–79
clear-cutting, 149, 155, 158, 161,
227–28; current regulation, 228,
229, 230–31; impacts, 200, 204,
221, 223; tax policy and, 231
Clemmys marmorata (western pond
turtle), 63
Clifton, Glen, 32
climate, 10–14; fire and, 13, 73; vegetation
patterns and, 20, 24–25, 87
climate change, 13–14, 26–29, 103,
250–52; forest management and, 29,
224
Clinton Forest Summit, 217
clouded salamander, 65
coarse-filter management approaches,
201–3
coast live oak, 99
cobra lily. See California pitcher plant
Cody, “Buffalo” Bill, 119
Coffee Creek, 93, 94–95, 141; gold
dredging, 134; stream pirating, 170,
171
Coffee Creek Ranch, 146
coho salmon, 67, 68, 69, 70, 211
collaborative planning, 204–5, 226
Collins Pine, 227
Colorado River, 169
Columbia River diversion proposals, 169
columbine, 45
common horsetail, 114
conifer forest: climate change and, 250;
copper-mining impacts, 142, 143, 144
conifers, 31–32; fire adaptations, 72–73,
77–78; insects and pathogens,
96–100, 102. See also individual
genera and species
conservation easements, 231–32
conservation planning. See ecosystem
management; ecosystem restoration;
forest management
continental drift. See plate tectonics
Conway, Fred, 146
Conway Lake, 146
Cooper, William, 25
Cope’s giant salamander, 66
Copper Creek, 211
Index
copper mining, 132, 141–44; Iron
Mountain Mine, 142, 144,
210–11
corn silk, 170
Corvus brachyrhynchos (American crow),
110
Corvus corax (American raven), 71
Corylus cornuta (hazelnut, California
hazel), 114
Costa, John, 146
cottonwoods, 72, 73
cougar. See mountain lion
Covelo, 178
cover types, 22
Cox, Isaac, 3, 62
creeping snowberry, 34
crime: Bryan murder case, 191–97;
marijuana growing, 151; at wilderness trailheads, 48. See also violence
Cronartium ribicola (white pine blister
rust), 98–99
Crotalus viridus (western rattlesnake),
61–62
Crowell, John, Jr., 158
Crystal Creek, 10
Cuenca, Sam, 65
cumulative effects, 201, 203–4, 221, 224;
logging, 227, 229
Cupressaceae, 27
Cupressus bakeri (Baker cypress), 31
Cupressus lawsoniana (Port Orford
cedar), 31, 32–33, 73, 97
Cupressus nootkatensis (Alaska cedar),
27, 31
currant, 98
Curtis, Edward, 112, 116
CVP (Central Valley Project), 167–68,
236
CWP. See California Water Plan
Cyanocitta stelleri (Steller’s jay), 71
Cynoglossum grande (western hound’s
tongue), 194
cypresses, 27; Baker cypress, 31; bald
cypress, 26
Cytisus (French broom), 39
Dalmatian toadflax, 38
dams, 5, 10, 164–79, 202; Central Valley
Project, 167–68; Feather River Project, 173; fisheries impacts, 67, 96,
201; flood-control justifications, 167,
176, 178; gold mining and, 128,
134, 165, 211; landslide-caused,
165–67; proposals to raise, 251–52;
for restoration purposes, 243–44.
See also California Water Plan; water
diversions; specific dams
dark-eyed junco, 34, 71
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Index
Darlingtonia californica (California pitcher
plant), 36–37
dawn redwood, 26
Deadwood, 131, 159
decomposed granite, 14, 241–42, 244
Dedrick, 13, 43, 47–48, 132
deer, 34, 60, 98, 100, 112
deerbrush, 34
Deer Creek, 159, 248
deer fern, 55
deer oak, 99
Del Norte salamander, 65
Deltistes luxatus (Lost River sucker), 240
dendrochronology, 90, 102–3, 104
Dendroctonus, 96–97
Dendroctonus brevicomis (western pine
beetle), 96
Dendroctonus ponderosae (mountain
pine beetle), 96
Dendroctonus pseudotsugae (Douglas-fir
beetle), 80, 97
Dendroctonus valens (red turpentine
beetle), 97
Department of Water Resources (DWR),
167, 173, 176. See also California
Water Plan
Dicamptodon copei (Cope’s giant salamander), 66
Dicamptodon tenebrosus (Pacific giant
salamander), 66
Didelphis marsupialis (opossum), 56–57
digger pine. See gray (ghost) pine
Diller, J.S., 15, 45, 128
Diller Canyon, 45
Dillon Creek, 211
disease. See pathogens
Dixon, Roland, 122–23
Dodge, Wilber, 62
dominant vegetation, 22–24; gradient
analysis, 30. See also forest structure
doodlebugs, 134
Dos Rios Dam, 178
Douglas City, 117, 126
Douglas-fir, 6, 22–23, 26, 28, 32, 44; fire
and, 6, 72, 77, 78–79, 80, 81–82,
222–23; flood intolerance, 90; insects and pathogens, 97, 98; for lumber, 159, 160; names, 32, 34; as
SOD host, 99; wind and, 102
Douglas-fir beetle, 80, 97
Douglas-fir/hardwood forests, 25
Douglas squirrel, 49
dragline dredges, 134
Drake, Sir Francis, 113
dredging, for gold, 132–35, 136,
137–40
drought, 102–3, 251
Dundes, Alan, 187
281
dunite, 37
dusky-footed wood rat, 57, 219
Dutton, C. E., 55
dwarf mistletoe, 98
DWR. See California Water Plan; Department of Water Resources
Eagle Creek, 91, 92, 93
eagles, 69, 141; golden eagle, 56–57
earthquake faults, 17, 18, 105
earthquakes, 18, 87, 104–5
eastern brook trout, 67
Eastern Klamath Belt, 15, 16
East Fork Coffee Creek, 134
East Fork Scott River, 147
East Fork Stuart Fork, 129
East Fork Trinity River, 130–31, 141, 151
Eastwood, Alice, 41–42, 53–54, 55, 132;
author’s contest with, 41, 46–53;
Canyon Creek plant survey, 21–22,
41, 42–46, 48–49, 53; Prairie Creek
Redwoods memorial grove, 54–55
Eastwoodia, 54
ecology, 6
economic sustainability, 200, 204, 205,
225–26
ecosystem dynamics, 4–5, 8, 202–3;
cumulative effects, 203–4; ecosystem
management and, 198, 201–2, 220.
See also change; natural disturbances; specific disturbance types
ecosystem health/integrity, 198–200
ecosystem management: active management, 220–24, 247; adaptive
management, 203, 218, 238, 241,
243; challenges, 4–5, 203, 232, 243,
249; change and, 4–5, 198, 252;
coarse-filter vs. fine-filter approaches,
201–3; collaborative planning,
204–5; cumulative effects in, 201,
203–4, 221, 224, 227; island biogeography theory and, 216; micromanagement, 201; natural processes
and, 198, 201–2, 220; social/economic
sustainability goals, 200, 204,
205, 225–26; sustainability principles, 198–201; views of, 247. See
also ecosystem restoration; forest
management; resource management
ecosystem restoration, 205, 231, 233, 243,
247; mining reclamation, 139–40,
209–13; NWP forest-restoration
component, 226. See also watershed
restoration
ecotypes, 37–38
Eddy, Mount, 9, 146
Eddy, Nelson, 146
Eel River, 88, 105, 177–78
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Egler, Frank, 203
1872 Mining Law, 139, 144, 206–7,
208–9
Eleanor Lake, 146
elevation, vegetation and, 29
elk clover, 49
El Niño, 13–14
Emerald Lake, 172
Emmerson, “Red,” 155
endangered species. See threatened/
endangered species
endemics, 21, 37, 38, 65
Engelmann spruce, 31
ensatina (Ensatina eschscholtzii), 65
environmental ethics, 3–4, 199, 200,
248–49; Native American, 111,
112–13. See also stewardship
EPA Superfund regulation. See Superfund
regulation/sites
Equisetum arvense (common horsetail),
114
Eriogonum (buckwheat), 50, 53
erosion, 162–63, 228–29, 241–45. See
also sediment movement/deposition
eucalyptus (Eucalyptus), 38
exotic species. See alien species
extinctions, 200
Fairview Reservoir, 164. See also
Trinity Lake
farming and ranching, 146–50, 152
faults, 17, 18, 105
Fawn fire, 101
Feather River Project, 173
Federal Land Policy and Management
Act, 207
Felis concolor (mountain lion), 56, 60–61
Felter Ranch, 146
fig (Ficus), 26
fine-filter management approaches, 201,
202–3
fire, 6, 73–87, 104, 228; climate and, 13,
73, 102, 250–51; firefighting costs,
225; forest impacts, 76–77, 78–85,
101, 104, 202, 220, 222–23; ignition
sources, 13, 74, 75; in-town fires,
126–27; Native Americans and, 74,
82, 83, 112, 113, 224–25, 247;
Northwest Forest Plan and, 218,
219; season/timing, 72, 73; SOD
distribution and, 100; wildlife
impacts, 57–58
fire adaptations: chaparral shrubs, 82;
trees, 55, 72–73, 77–78
fire beetles. See flatheaded borers
fire frequency, 76, 78, 80, 81–82, 251
fire intensity, 76, 80, 82
Index
fire management, 220–25; fire suppression, 5, 82, 87, 105, 224–25; prescribed fire, 87, 202, 219, 223,
224; under Northwest Forest
Plan, 219
fir engraver, 97
fire regimes/patterns, 76, 78–87; meadows and openings, 85–87; mixedevergreen forest, 80–82; redwood
forest, 78–79; Shasta red fir forest,
84; subalpine forest, 84–85; white fir
forest, 83; woodland and chaparral,
82–83
fire severity, 76, 80–81, 221, 251; fire
suppression and, 105; wind damage
and, 83, 101
fire suppression. See fire management
firs, 26, 27, 28–29, 97; grand fir, 28; noble fir, 31; Pacific silver fir, 31; Shasta
red fir, 21, 22, 29, 44, 52, 84; subalpine fir, 29, 31. See also Douglasfir; white fir
fish and fisheries, 5, 66–70; dam impacts,
67, 70, 96, 179, 201, 233–34, 240–41,
242; mining impacts, 141, 144;
Native American fishing, 111, 112.
See also watershed restoration; specific fish and streams
fisher, 60
five-finger fern, 113, 114
flatheaded borers, 97
flood control, 167, 176, 178
floodplain management, 238, 239
floods, 5, 6, 64, 73, 87–96, 147; forest
impacts, 72; historic analysis, 88,
90–95; landslide-caused dams,
165–67; Native American legend,
104; 1955 flood, 64, 66, 88–89, 90,
91, 93, 177, 192–93, 242; 1964
flood, 66, 88, 90–91, 93–95,
166–67, 177, 197; power of,
88–89, 93
Flora of the Pacific Northwest (Hitchcock
and Cronquist), 33
Flowers and Trees of the Trinity Alps
(Jones), 49
fog, fog drip, 11, 25
foothill pine. See gray (ghost) pine
foothill yellow-legged frog, 63–64
forest disturbance: drought, 102–3, 251;
insects and pathogens, 72, 96–100,
102, 103, 199, 251; wind, 100–102.
See also fire entries; floods
forest health, 199
Forest House, 147
forest land ownership, 153–55, 157,
215
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Index
forest management, 29, 154, 200–201,
215–32; Northwest Forest Plan, 57,
154, 158, 161, 216–19, 225–26; private lands, 215, 216, 221, 226–32;
public lands, 154, 156, 157–58, 215,
216–26. See also logging; resource
management; sustainability
forest openings, fire in, 85–87
Forest Practices Act (California), 161–62,
226, 227
forest regeneration: after fires, 79, 82, 83,
91 (see also fire adaptations); after
floods, 90, 91; mined areas, 137, 138
Forest Reserve Act, 155–56
forest restoration, 226, 244
Forest Service, 154, 156, 157–58, 207.
See also national forest lands
Forest Stewardship Council certification,
227
forest structure, 19–30; active stand management, 221–24; avalanches and,
103; climate and, 24–25, 26–29,
250; dominant/potential vegetation,
22–24, 71; gradient analysis, 29–30;
historic change, 25–29; insect/disease
susceptibility and, 96; zonal classification systems, 19–22. See also forest disturbance
Forest Summit, 217
fossil flora, 25–26
Foster, William, 146
Foster Lake, 146
foxtail pine, 29, 31
Franciscan mélange, 17–18
Franklin, Jerry, 200
Fraxinus latifolia (Oregon ash), 34
French broom, 39
French Gulch fire, 127
frogs, 63–64; bullfrog, 62, 64; foothill
yellow-legged frog, 63–64; redlegged frog, 64; tailed frog, 64
fungal pathogens, 96, 97, 98–99
Gannett, Henry, 42
Garry oak. See Oregon white oak
garter snake, western aquatic, 62–63
Gaultheria shallon (salal), 55, 114
General Mining Law of 1872, 139, 144,
206–7; calls for reform, 208–9, 214
genetic potential, 200
geology, 14–18; Canyon Creek basin,
43–44, 44–45, 51, 52; dam sites,
175; fossil flora, 25–26; gold deposits, 17, 25, 124–25, 127; life-zone
classifications and, 21; map, 16;
stream pirating and, 170
ghost (gray) pine, 22, 31, 33
283
giant chinquapin, 25, 80
giant sequoia, 39–40
Gila Wilderness, 156
Gimlin, Bob, 186
glaciers, glaciation, 9, 13, 26, 94, 170,
171, 251; Canyon Creek, 13,
44–45, 52
Glaucomys sabrinus (northern flying
squirrel), 57
global warming, 13–14, 29, 103, 224,
250. See also climate change
Globe Mine, 131–32
gneiss, 17
gold, gold mining, 43, 90, 117, 124–44;
agricultural development and,
145–46; Canyon Creek, 47, 131–32,
139, 144; Chinese miners, 126;
dredging, 132–35, 136, 137–40; early mining methods, 125, 127; environmental impacts, 125, 128–29,
131, 136–41; gold deposits, 17, 25,
124–25, 127–28; hydraulic mining,
10, 127, 128–30, 134, 137, 172; La
Grange mine, 17, 43, 130, 134, 135,
172; lode mining, 131–32, 134, 140,
159; mercury use, 130–31; mining
towns, 126–27, 129; Native Americans and, 14, 116–18, 119, 125;
reclamation, 139–40; regulation,
139; Sawyer decision, 124, 129, 137;
Siskon Mine, 211–13; timber needs,
159; Weaverville-Redding stage
robbery, 142; yields and prices, 125,
134–35, 139. See also mining entries
Golden City, 129
golden eagle, 56–57
Gold Is Where You Find It (film), 124
Goodall, Jane, 189
gooseberry, 98, 114
gradient analysis, 29–30
grand fir, 28
granite, granitic soils, 14, 17, 44, 45,
241–42, 244
grapes, 151–52. See also California wild
grape; Oregon grape
grasses, 38, 87
Grass Valley Creek restoration project,
241–45
gravels, gold-bearing, 17, 25, 125,
127–28. See also sediment movement/deposition
Gray, Asa, 41
Gray Eagle Mine, 132
gray (ghost) pine, 22, 31, 33
gray wolf, 60
grazing, 85, 87, 149. See also ranching
great blue heron, 58
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grizzly bear, 56, 60, 112
Gulo gulo (wolverine), 60
Hall City Cave, 14
Hamilton Ponds, 242, 245
Handbook of North American Indians,
106
Hardrock Act (1872 Mining Law), 139,
144, 206–7, 208–9
hardrock mining. See gold, gold mining;
mining entries
hardwoods, 78, 79, 80, 90; fire and, 73,
77–78; SOD hosts, 99. See also individual genera and species
Harrington, John, 113
Harrison, Benjamin, 155–56
Hayfork, Hayfork Valley, 9, 116, 149,
150; balloon bomb attack, 195–97;
Bryan murder case, 191–97; mill
closure, 155, 205
Hayfork Adaptive Management Area,
218
Hayfork Creek, 118, 195, 197
Hayfork fires, 75
Hayfork Watershed Research and
Training Center, 205, 225
hazelnut. See California hazel
Healthy Forests Restoration Act, 224
heart rots, 97
Heizer, Robert, 107, 108, 118, 122
Helley, Ed, 88, 90–91
Hetch Hetchy Dam, 156
Heterobasidion annosum (annosus root
rot), 97
Heteromeles arbutifolia (toyon), 99
Hightower, Jane, 141
Hilton, James, 180
holly, 26
Homestead Act, 153
Honeydew, 11
Hoopa Valley, 9, 120, 175, 176
Hoopa Valley Indian Reservation, 121,
175, 176
Horse Mountain, 144
Hound’s-Head Fall, 43, 44, 50
huckleberry oak, 28, 29
Hudsonian zone, 21
hummingbirds, 35, 36
hunting, 60–61, 112
Hupa people, 108, 115, 121, 187
Hyampom Valley, 151, 175
hydraulic mining, 10, 127, 128–30, 134,
137, 172
I AM movement, 181
ice ages, 26. See also glaciers, glaciation
Idaho, Rock Creek Mine proposal,
213–14
Index
Ilex (holly), 26
incense cedar, 27, 28, 33, 73, 82, 98
Indian Names for Plants and Animals
(Merriam), 122
Indian Recognition Act (IRA), 121
Indians. See Native Americans; specific
tribes
Indian tobacco, 113, 114, 115
industrial forestlands, 226–30
insects, 72, 96–100, 102, 103, 251; bat
feeding, 58–59
Integral Mine, 130–31, 140
Interagency Scientific Committee (ISC),
216–17
International Bigfoot Symposium, 188–90
Ips pini (pine engraver), 97
IRA (Indian Recognition Act), 121
Iron Gate Dam, 67, 70, 240
Iron Mountain Mine, 142, 144, 210–11
ISC (Interagency Scientific Committee),
216–17
island biogeography, 216
Island Mountain, 144
Jackson, Harold, 192
Jackson, Henry “Scoop,” 169
Jeffrey pine, 28, 30, 37, 80, 84, 113; fire
and, 72
Jepson, Willis Linn, 41
Jepson Manual, 33, 41, 194
jewel flower, 37–38
Johnson, Lyndon, 157
Jones, Alice, 49, 157
Jones, Marcus, 54
Josephine ophiolite, 17
Juglans (walnut), 26
Junco hyemalis (dark-eyed junco),
34, 71
Junction City, 137
Junction fire, 127
Jungwirth, Lynn, 205
junipers, 27, 83; Utah juniper, 20;
western juniper, 28
Juniperus occidentalis (western juniper),
28
Juniperus osteosperma (Utah juniper), 20
juniper woodland, 30, 82–83
Kalmia polifolia (alpine laurel), 45, 52
Karuk people, 108, 113, 116, 118,
121; legends, 110; plants used
by, 114
Keswick Reservoir, 211
King, Godfré Ray, 181, 182
king salmon. See Chinook salmon
kingsnake, 62
King Solomon Mine, 132
Kise Brothers, 133
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Index
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Klamath Mountains, 3; books about,
6–7, 182–83; climate, 10–14;
geology, 14–18; map, 4; population
density, 106; topography, 9–10
Klamath River, 10, 109, 178, 211; dam
and diversion proposals, 168–70,
174, 175, 176–77 (see also California
Water Plan); dam impacts, 67, 70,
179, 240; fisheries, 67–70, 240–41;
gold mining, 129, 133, 137, 139;
restoration efforts, 233, 240–41;
salmon die-off, 179, 241. See also
Iron Gate Dam
Klamath River Fish and Game District
initiative, 175
Klamath River Reserve, 121
Knight, Goodwin, 173
knobcone pine, 31, 33, 81, 84; fire adaptations, 73, 77
kokanee salmon, 7
Kroeber, Alfred, 104, 107, 116, 120, 122
La Grange, Baron de, 61, 130, 172
La Grange, Baroness de, 130, 172
La Grange ditch, 130, 172
La Grange Mine, 17, 43, 130, 134, 135, 172
Lake, Frank, 112
LaMarche, Val, Jr., 88, 90–91, 93, 94–95
laminated root rot, 97
Lamoine Lumber and Trading Company,
159–60
lamprey, Pacific (Lampetra tridentata), 67
Lampropeltis zonata (California mountain kingsnake), 62
land ethic. See environmental ethics;
stewardship
land management. See ecosystem management; forest management; resource
management
land ownership: forest lands, 215, 221;
Native American land allotments,
121, 176; by railroads, 153–55, 157
landslides, dams formed by, 165–67
land trusts, 232
land use, 8, 124; national forest lands,
156–58; Native American, 108,
110–11. See also specific uses
Lassen, Mount, 18
Lassik people, 121
late-successional reserves (LSRs), 158,
217, 218
Ledum glandulosum var. californicum
(western Labrador tea), 52, 114
legends. See lore and legend; Native
American legends
Lemurians, 182
leopard lily, 114
Leopold, Aldo, 3, 156, 199–200
285
Leptographium wageneri (black stain
root rot), 97
Leucothoe davisiae (Sierra laurel), 146
Lewis and Clark expedition, 34, 112, 121
Lewis’ monkeyflower, 34, 35, 36
Lewiston, 127, 151
Lewiston Dam, 138, 164, 233–34
Libocedrus decurrens. See Calocedrus
decurrens
lichens, 55
life zones, 20–22, 42; evolution and
change, 27–29
lightning, 13, 74, 75, 84, 85
Lilium pardalinum (leopard lily), 114
limestone, 14
Linaria genistifolia ssp. dalmatica
(Dalmatian toadflax), 38
Linsley, E.G., 97
Lithocarpus densiflorus. See tanoak
litigation: Idaho Rock Creek Mine proposal, 214; Trinity River Restoration
Plan, 234, 236
live oaks, 32; canyon live oak, 77, 80, 99;
coast live oak, 99
livestock. See ranching
lodgepole pine, 27, 84
logging, 155, 157–63, 228, 242; as active
management component, 220–21,
223; Bigfoot sightings and, 188; environmental impacts, 161–63, 226,
228–29, 242, 243–44; Forest Stewardship Council certification, 227;
methods, 159–60, 161, 229; under
Northwest Forest Plan, 217, 218,
225–26; private forestland management, 226–30; regulation, 158,
161–62, 209, 226, 227, 230–31; regulatory reform proposals, 228–30;
sustained yield plans (SYPs), 227;
THPs, 162, 226, 227, 229; timberland conversions, 149–50
logjams, 94, 167
Long, Floyd, 166–67
Long Ridge, 148
lore and legend, 180; Bigfoot, 185–90,
249; giant salamander stories,
183–84; Mount Shasta, 181–82
Lost Horizon (Hilton), 180
Lost River sucker, 240
Louisiana-Pacific Corporation, 158
Louv, Richard, 248–49
Lowden Ranch fire, 127
low-elevation forests, 25, 28
Lower Canyon Creek Falls (Hound’sHead Fall), 43, 44, 50
LSRs (late-successional reserves), 217, 218
lungwort, 55
lupine (Lupinus), 114
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286
Mad River, 174, 175
magnolias, 13
mahala mat, 24
Maidu people, 121
Manual of the Flowering Plants of
California. See Jepson Manual
manzanitas, 99, 196
maple, bigleaf, 99
maps, 4, 12, 16, 23; California Water
Plan proposals, 174, 177; Native
American groups, 107
marble, 17
marbled murrelet, 216
Marble Mountains, 14
Marble Mountain Wilderness, 157
marijuana, 151
marine rocks, 15, 17
Marshall, John, 116
Martes americana (pine marten), 60
Martes pennati (American fisher), 60
Master Petroleum, Inc., 144
matrix lands, 218, 222–23
McDonald, Tom, 60
McKay, Thomas, 146–47
meadows, 85–87, 137
Megram fire, 74, 83, 101
Melanophila (flatheaded borers), 97
Meldrum, Jeff, 189–90
mercury, mercury mining, 130–31,
140–41, 206
Merriam, C. Hart, 19–22, 42, 73–74,
122–23
Merriam, Frank Finley, 55
Metasequoia (dawn redwood), 26
methylmercury, 141
mice, 69
Micruroides euryxanthus (Arizona coral
snake), 62
Milestone, Jim, 10
Mimulus, 34, 37, 45
Mimulus cardinalis (scarlet monkeyflower), 34, 35, 36
Mimulus lewisii (Lewis’ monkeyflower),
34, 35, 36
Mineral King, 103–4
miner’s inches, 127
Minersville, 164
mining, 10; calls for reform, 208–10,
213, 214; cinnabar/mercury, 130–31,
140–41, 206; copper, 132, 141–44,
210–11; environmental impacts,
125, 128–29, 131, 136–44, 208–13,
228; Forest Service and BLM regulations, 207; reclamation, 208,
209–13; regulatory law, 139, 144,
206–8, 213; water diversions for,
127, 128, 129, 130, 137, 172. See
also gold, gold mining
Index
mining claims, 206–7, 207–8; legal
reform proposals, 208–9
Mining Law of 1872, 139, 144, 206–7,
208–9
mining technologies: dredging, 132–35,
137–40; hydraulic mining, 10, 127,
128–30, 134, 137, 172; lode mining,
131–32, 134, 140, 159; panning,
125, 127, 137, 138; sluice boxes and
rockers, 127, 137, 140; small-stream
methods, 134
mining towns, 126–27, 129; logging near,
159. See also specific towns
mink, 60
mistletoes, 98
mixed-evergreen forest, 80–82
mock orange, 114
Modern Gold Mine, 136, 139–40
moisture, vegetation patterns and, 24
monkeyflowers, 34, 37, 45; Lewis’ monkeyflower, 34, 35, 36; scarlet monkeyflower, 34, 35, 36
montane forests, 25
Montgomery, David, 249–50
moraines, 44
Morris, Florence, 157
Morris, James, 146
Morris, Leonard, 157
Morris Meadows, 61, 85–87, 146
mountain heather, 52
mountain hemlock, 29, 44, 52, 84
mountain lion, 56, 60–61
mountain pine. See western white pine
mountain pine beetle, 96
Muir, John, 156
Multiple Use Sustained Yield Act, 157
Mustela vison (mink), 60
myotis bats (Myotis), 59
mythology. See lore and legend; Native
American legends
names: Latin names, 255–60; place
names, 7–8, 10, 146; plant names,
32–34
national forest lands, 155–56, 215; grazing permits, 149; land use/management, 154, 156, 157–58; logging on,
158, 160–61; marijuana on, 151;
wilderness designations, 156–57
National Forest Management Act, 158,
221
national parks, mining claims in, 207
National Park Service, 156
Native American legends, 104, 108–10,
187–88
Native Americans, 8, 106–23; Bigfoot
and, 187; CWP dam proposals and,
175–76, 178; fire use/ignition, 74,
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Index
82, 83, 112, 113, 224–25, 247; fishing and hunting, 111–12; land allotments/sales, 121, 176; land use/
resource management, 74, 108,
110–11, 145, 247; language/tribal
groups, 106–8, 122–23; map, 107;
plant/timber use, 112–13, 114, 152;
population and cultural declines,
120–22; relations with whites, 14,
116–20, 125, 146; reservations, 120,
121; strife and war, 115–16; tobacco
cultivation, 113, 115, 145; village/
community structure, 108, 115,
121–22
native plants, place sense and, 38–40
Natural Bridge, 118
natural disturbances, 5–6, 71–105;
avalanches, 103–4; climate change
and, 250–51; drought, 102–3, 251;
earthquakes and tsunamis, 18, 87,
104–5; fire, 73–87; floods, 87–96;
forest succession and, 24; insects and
pathogens, 96–100, 102, 103, 199,
251; management and, 198, 201–2,
220–21, 223, 236–37; Native American pacification ceremony, 111; synergistic effects, 72, 101, 102, 103;
types and effects, 72–73; wind, 100–
102. See also ecosystem dynamics;
specific disturbance types
naturalized plant species, 38
natural selection, 37. See also speciation
nature, culture and, 247–49
nature-deficit disorder, 248–49
Neillia opufolia (vine bark), 50, 53
neoteny, 66
Neotoma fuscipes (dusky-footed wood
rat), 57, 219
Neviusia cliftonii (Shasta snow-wreath),
32
New River, 131
New River Indians, 122–23
newt, rough-skinned, 64
Nicotiana quadrivalvis (Indian tobacco),
113, 114, 115
ninebark, 32, 34, 50, 53, 114
noble fir, 31
nomenclature. See names
nonindustrial private forestlands,
230–32
nonindustrial timber management plans
(NTMPs), 230–31
northern flying squirrel, 57
northern spotted owl, 57–58, 158, 202,
203, 216, 219–20. See also Northwest Forest Plan
North Fork Trinity River, 234
North Fork Wilderness, 157
287
Northwest California (Sawyer), 33
northwestern salamander, 64
Northwest Forest Plan (NWP), 57, 154,
158, 216–19, 233; logging under,
161, 217, 218, 225–26; social/economic sustainability goals, 225–26
Norwegian Ranch, 146
Nowlin, Bill, 148–49
NTMPs (nonindustrial timber management plans), 230–31
nuthatches, 71; red-breasted nuthatch,
97
Nyssa (tupelo), 26
oaks, 28, 32, 80, 98; acorns, 100, 110,
112; blue oak, 82, 99; California
black oak, 28, 32, 77, 80, 99;
canyon live oak, 77, 80, 99; coast
live oak, 99; deer oak, 99; huckleberry oak, 28, 29; Oregon white oak,
28, 82, 99, 114; sudden oak death,
99–100
oak woodland, 30, 82
Olympic Mountains, Olympic Peninsula,
6, 81–82, 85, 98–99, 104
Olympic National Park, 58, 219–20
Oncorhynchus kisutch (coho salmon), 67,
68, 69, 70, 211
Oncorhynchus mykiss (steelhead), 7, 67,
111, 112, 211, 245
Oncorhynchus mykiss (rainbow trout),
66–67
Oncorhynchus nerka (kokanee salmon), 7
Oncorhynchus tshawytscha (Chinook
salmon), 5, 67, 68, 211, 241
open lands, fire in, 85–87
ophiolites, 15, 17
opossum, 56–57
Oregon, names with, 33–34
Oregon and California Railroad land
grant, 153–55
Oregon ash, 34
Oregon grape, 24, 34
Oregon Gulch, 130
Oregon junco. See dark-eyed junco
Oregon Mountain, 17, 47, 105, 130,
172
Oregon Mountain fire, 74, 127
Oregon myrtle. See California laurel
Oregon white oak, 28, 82, 99, 114
Oroville Dam, 173
osprey, 58, 141
owls: barred owl, 58, 219–20; northern
spotted owl, 57–58, 158, 202, 203,
216, 219–20 (see also Northwest
Forest Plan)
Oxalis oregana (redwood sorrel),
54, 55
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Pacific Decadal Oscillation (PDO), 14
Pacific giant salamander, 66
Pacific lamprey, 67
Pacific madrone, 25, 77, 99
Pacific silver fir, 31
Pacific trillium, 24, 54, 114
Pacific yew, 114
palynology, 27
Pandion haliaetus (osprey), 58, 141
panther. See mountain lion
Papoose Lake, 45
Paradise Lost: California’s Experience,
America’s Future (Schrag), 246
Paravespula vulgaris (yellow jacket),
2, 36
Parus rufescens (chestnut-backed chickadee), 97
pathogens, 96, 97–100, 199
Patterson, Roger, 186–87
Payments to States funding, Northwest
Forest Plan, 225–26
PDO (Pacific Decadal Oscillation), 14
Pend Oreille, Lake, 213
penstemon (Penstemon), 45
pepperwood. See California laurel
peridotite, 15, 37
Persea (bay), 26
phacelia (Phacelia), 37–38
Phellinus weirii (laminated root rot), 97
Philadelphus lewisii (mock orange), 114
Phleum pratense (timothy), 87
Phoradendron (mistletoe), 98
Phyllodoce empetriformis (mountain
heather), 52
Physocarpus capitatus (ninebark), 32, 34,
50, 53, 114
Phytophthora lateralis (Port Orford cedar
root disease), 97, 99
Phytophthora ramorum (sudden oak
death), 99–100
Picea breweriana (Brewer or weeping
spruce), 31, 44, 52
Picea engelmannii (Engelmann spruce), 31
Picea sitchensis (Sitka spruce), 24–25, 78
Pickett, Stewart, 72
Pierce, Cliff, 167
pillow lavas, 15
Pinchot, Gifford, 156, 157
pine bark beetles, 96–97
pine engraver, 96–97
pine marten, 60
pines, 27, 28, 33, 251; foxtail pine, 29,
31; gray or ghost pine, 22, 31, 33;
insects and pathogens, 96–97, 98,
102; knobcone pine, 31, 33, 73, 77,
81, 84; lodgepole pine, 27, 84; sugar
pine, 22, 73, 80, 82, 98, 114; western
white pine, 22, 29, 44, 84, 98;
Index
whitebark pine, 21, 29, 33, 98. See
also Jeffrey pine; ponderosa pine;
prince’s pine
Pinus albicaulis (whitebark pine), 21, 29,
33, 98
Pinus attenuata (knobcone pine), 31, 33,
73, 77, 81, 84
Pinus balfouriana (foxtail pine), 29, 31
Pinus contorta (lodgepole pine), 27, 84
Pinus edulis (twoneedle pinyon), 20, 251
Pinus jeffreyi. See Jeffrey pine
Pinus lambertiana (sugar pine), 22, 73,
80, 82, 98, 114
Pinus monticola (western white pine), 22,
29, 44, 84, 98
Pinus ponderosa. See ponderosa pine
Pinus sabiniana (gray or ghost pine), 22,
31, 33
pinyon pine, 20, 251
pitcher plant, 36–37
Pit River, 112
Pitt, William, 148
place names, 7–8, 10, 146
place sense/appreciation, 6–8, 38–40
plant communities, alien species impacts,
38–39, 53. See also forest structure;
vegetation types/patterns; specific
plants and community types
plant diversity, 14, 31–32, 96. See also
biodiversity
plant evolution/speciation, 34–38
plant names, 32–34
plant surveys: author’s Canyon Creek survey, 46–53; Eastwood Canyon Creek
survey, 21–22, 41–46, 48–49, 53;
Merriam Mount Shasta survey,
20–21, 42
plant use, Native American, 112–13, 114;
tobacco cultivation, 113, 115
plate tectonics, 14–15, 18
Plethodon asupak (Scott Bar salamander),
65, 182
Plethodon elongatus (Del Norte salamander), 65
Plethodon stormi (Siskiyou Mountain
salamander), 65
plethodontids, 65
Poison Canyon, 146
poison oak, 32, 99, 114
Poli, Adon, 149–50
Pollan, Michael, 37
pollen records, 27–29
pollinators, 35, 36
Pomo people, 121
ponderosa pine, 21, 22, 27, 28, 37, 80;
fire and, 72, 77, 82; Karuk uses, 114;
Lake Arrowhead die-off, 102; logging, 159–60; pathogens, 97, 98
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population density, 106
Port Orford cedar, 31, 32–33, 73, 97
Port Orford cedar root disease, 97, 99
Portuguese Meadows, 146
potential vegetation, 22–24, 71–72
power generation, Feather River Project,
173
Prairie Creek Redwoods State Park,
54–55
precipitation, 11, 14, 24, 74, 87; drought,
102–3, 251; fog drip, 11; map, 12;
potential changes, 250, 251
Preemption Act, 153
prescribed fire, 87, 202, 219, 223, 224
prince’s pine, 24
private forestlands management, 215,
216, 221, 226–32. See also logging
Procyon lotor (raccoon), 69
productivity, sustainability and, 200
Prophet, Elizabeth Clare, 181
Proposition 117, 60–61
Pseudotsuga, 32
Pseudotsuga menziesii. See Douglas-fir
Pseudotsuga macrocarpa (bigcone
spruce), 32
public lands: forest management, 154,
156, 157–58, 215, 216–26; government divestment, 153–54. See also
national forest lands
Pyle, Robert Michael, 188
Pyrola picta (white-veined wintergreen),
114
quail, 112
Quercus agrifolia (coast live oak), 99
Quercus chrysolepis (canyon live oak),
77, 80, 99
Quercus douglasii (blue oak), 82, 99
Quercus garryana (Oregon white oak),
28, 82, 99, 114
Quercus kelloggii (California black oak),
28, 32, 77, 80, 99
Quercus sadleriana (deer oak), 99
Quercus vaccinifolia (huckleberry oak),
28, 29
quicksilver. See mercury, mercury mining
rabbitbrush, 114
rabbits, 112
raccoon, 69
RACs (resource advisory committees),
226
Radiant School, 181–82
radiolarian cherts, 15
Railroad Land Grant Act, 153
railroad land grants, 153–55, 157
railroad logging, 159–60
rail transportation, 148, 160
289
rainbow trout, 66, 67
rainfall, 11–12, 87, 165; El Niño and, 14;
potential changes, 250, 251
Ramshorn Creek, 91, 92
Rana aurora (red-legged frog), 64
Rana boylii (foothill yellow-legged frog),
63–64
Rana catesbeiana (bullfrog), 62, 64
ranching, 146–50
rattlesnake, western, 61–62
Reading, Pierson B., 117, 125
Reagan, Ronald, 60, 157, 158, 161, 176,
178
reclamation, after mining, 139–40,
209–13
reclamation bonds, 139, 207, 208
recreational uses, national forest lands,
156
red alder, 89
red-breasted nuthatch, 97
Red Buttes Wilderness, 157
red fir, 28–29, 84. See also Shasta red fir
red-legged frog, 64
red oaks, 32
red ring rot (Phaeolus schweinitzii), 97
red turpentine beetle, 97
redwood, 25, 26, 30, 54–55, 114; fire
and, 55, 72, 78; flooding and, 72,
73, 90; logging, 160; as SOD host,
99. See also dawn redwood
Redwood Creek, 89, 95, 104, 105, 243;
logging impacts, 162–63, 203
redwood forest, 78–79, 99
Redwood National Park, 89, 162, 178
redwood sorrel, 54, 55
Reed, Mabel, 121
regeneration harvesting, 220–21, 223,
227–28
Reisner, Marc, 169
reproductive isolation, 36
resource advisory committees (RACs),
226
resource management: fish/wildlife and,
60, 70; Native American, 74, 108.
See also ecosystem management;
ecosystem restoration; forest management
restoration. See ecosystem restoration;
watershed restoration
Revett Silver Company, 213–14
Rhamnus californica (California coffeeberry), 99
Rhamnus purshiana (cascara), 114
rhododendron (Rhododendron), 99
Rhyacotriton variegatus (southern torrent
salamander), 65
Ribes (gooseberry or currant), 98, 114
Ridgeville, 129
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riparian vegetation, riparian reserves, 5,
64, 79, 138, 158, 217–18
rivers. See fish and fisheries; watershed
restoration; specific rivers and streams
roads and transportation, 145–46, 148,
150, 152, 153, 159; logging roads,
226, 229, 242, 243
Roberts, E. V., 149–50
Rock Creek Mine proposal, 213–14
Rodoni, Roger, 151
Rodriguez, Richard, 246, 252
Rohde, Jerry, 6
Roosevelt, Franklin, 168
root rots, 97
rots, 97
rough-skinned newt, 64
Round Valley Indian Reservation, 121,
178
rubber boa, 63
Rubus parviflorus (thimbleberry), 114
Rubus spectabilis (salmonberry), 99
Ruggles, Charles, 142
Ruggles, John, 142
Rundell, Lieutenant, 120
Rush Creek, 240
Rush Creek Lakes trail, 102
Russian Peak Wilderness, 157
Russian River, 105
Russian Wilderness, 31, 32
rust. See white pine blister rust
Sacramento River: fish kills, 144; North
Coast river diversions into, 17, 70,
168, 169, 175, 178–79, 233. See also
California Water Plan; Shasta Dam;
Shasta Lake
Sacramento River system, mining debris
in, 128–29
Saint Germain sects, 181–82
salal, 55, 114
salamanders, 64–66, 182; black salamander, 65; clouded salamander, 65,
182; Cope’s giant salamander, 66;
Del Norte salamander, 65; giant salamander stories, 183–84; northwestern salamander, 64; Pacific giant
salamander, 66; Scott Bar salamander, 65, 182; Siskiyou Mountain
salamander, 65; southern torrent
salamander, 65; The Turquoise
Dragon, 65, 182–83
Salmo trutta (brown trout), 66
salmon: Chinook salmon, 5, 67, 68, 211,
241; coho salmon, 67, 68, 69, 70,
211; Klamath die-off, 179, 241. See
also salmonids
salmonberry, 99
Index
salmonids, 66–70, 111, 112; dam impacts,
7, 70, 96, 179, 233–34, 242;
declines, 5, 67; mining impacts, 211
Salmon River, 132, 136, 139, 166–67
Salmon River drainage, fires in, 74, 75
Salmon River Restoration Council, 205,
241
Salvelinus fontinalis (eastern brook
trout), 67
Sammet, Edna, 54
San Andreas Fault, 105
A Sand County Almanac (Leopold), 199
sandstone, 14, 18
San Francisco Bay, 129, 137
San Joaquin Valley water diversions, 167,
168. See also Central Valley Project
Santa Fe Pacific Timber Company, 155
Santa Fe Railroad, 155
Sasquatch, 190
Save-the-Redwoods League, 54
Sawtooth Ridge, 44
Sawyer, John, 24, 32, 33
Sawyer decision, 124, 129, 137
scarlet monkeyflower, 34, 35, 36
Sceloporus occidentalis (western fence
lizard), 71
Schemske, Doug, 36
schist, 14, 17, 18
Schrag, Peter, 246, 252
Scolytus ventralis (fir engraver), 96–97
Scott Bar salamander, 65, 182
Scott River, 90–91, 133, 134–35, 137–38
Scott Valley, 9, 138, 140, 146–47
sedge, 170
sediment management: Grass Valley
Creek restoration, 241–45; Trinity
River Restoration Program, 238
sediment movement/deposition, 88, 90,
91, 94; Redwood Creek sediment
slug, 162–63, 203; Trinity River,
234, 235, 236, 238, 240, 242. See
also erosion
sequoia, giant (Sequoiadendron giganteum), 39–40
Sequoia sempervirens. See redwood
serotiny, 77
serpentine, serpentine soils, 14, 15, 17,
21, 37
serpentinite plant communities, 15, 17,
21, 37–38
service-berry, 114
shade-tolerant tree species, 22, 24
Sharp, Robert F., 170
Shasta, Mount, 18, 26; Eastwood’s climb,
42; legends/spiritual sects, 181–82;
Merriam’s survey and life zones,
20–21, 42
Agee, James K.. Steward's Fork : A Sustainable Future for the Klamath Mountains, University of California
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Index
Shasta Bally, 17, 241
Shasta Dam, 167–68, 251–52
Shasta Lake, 251; copper mining, 141,
144
Shasta red fir, 21, 22, 29, 44, 52, 84
Shasta red fir forest, fire in, 84
Shasta snow-wreath, 32
Shastina, 18, 26
sheep, 146, 148. See also ranching
shooter dams, 134
shortnose sucker, 240
shrubs: fire and, 82, 84; sudden oak
death infection, 99. See also individual genera and species
Sierra laurel, 146
Sierra Nevada, 17, 25, 76; gold and gold
mining, 117, 127, 128–29, 133, 137;
grazing, 85, 87
Sierra Pacific Industries (SPI), 155, 157,
205, 226, 227
Silent Spring (Carson), 141
Siligo, Louis, 146
Siligo Meadows, 146
Silver, Shirley, 106
silver salmon. See coho salmon
Simpson Timber Company, 155
Siskiyou Mountain salamander, 65
Siskiyou Wilderness, 157
Siskon Mine, 211–13
Sitka spruce, 24–25, 78
Sitta canadensis (red-breasted nuthatch),
97
Skinner, Carl, 80–81, 84, 85
smelt, 33
Smith, Dottie, 210
Smith, Jedediah, 116
Smith River, 174; wild and scenic status,
178
snakes, 61–63; Arizona coral snake, 62;
California mountain kingsnake, 62;
western aquatic garter snake, 62–63;
western rattlesnake, 61–62
snow avalanches, 103–4
snowberry, creeping, 34
snowbrush (tobacco brush), 34, 43
snow load: fire and, 83; wind and, 101
snowmelt, flooding and, 87, 95
soap plant, 114
social sustainability, 200, 204, 205,
225–26
SOD (sudden oak death), 99–100
Southern Pacific Railroad Company,
154–55
southern torrent salamander, 65
South Fork Mountain, 17, 178
South Fork Salmon River, 94, 170,
171
291
South Fork Trinity River, 63, 64, 116,
121, 175, 238
speciation: plants, 34–38; salamanders,
65
species-centered management, 201, 202
species distribution: zonal classification
systems, 19–22. See also forest structure; vegetation types/patterns
species diversity. See biodiversity; plant
diversity
SPI (Sierra Pacific Industries), 155, 157,
205, 226, 227
spotted bat, 59
spotted owl, 57–58, 158, 202, 203, 216,
219–20
spring beauty, 114
spruces, 30; bigcone spruce, 32; Brewer
or weeping spruce, 31, 44, 52;
Engelmann spruce, 31; Sitka spruce,
24–25, 78
squirrels, 100; Douglas squirrel, 49;
northern flying squirrel, 57
stamp mills, 131, 140, 159
steelhead, 7, 67, 111, 112, 211, 245.
See also salmonids
Steinmann Trinity, 15
Steller’s jay, 71
Stepping Westward (Tisdale), 183
Steward’s Fork, 3. See Stuart Fork
stewardship, 3–4, 8, 231, 246, 249–50.
See also environmental ethics;
sustainability
Stewart, John, 93, 94–95
Stewart’s Fork, 3. See Stuart Fork
Stoddard, John, 146
Stoddard Lake, Stoddard Meadows, 146
Stone Act, 153
Stonehouse, 51–52
Stonewall Pass, 146
storms. See floods; rainfall; weather
stream pirating, natural, 170, 171. See
also water diversions
streams. See fish and fisheries; watershed
restoration; specific rivers and
streams
Streptanthus (jewel flower), 37–38
Strix caurina occidentalis (northern spotted owl), 57–58, 158, 202, 203, 216,
219–20. See also Northwest Forest
Plan
Strix varia (barred owl), 219–20
Stuart, John, 33
Stuart Fork, 3, 13, 64, 66, 159; floods,
89, 93; gold mining/water diversions,
129, 130, 172
Stuart’s Fork trailhead, 48
subalpine fir, 28, 31
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subalpine forest, 25, 84–85
succession (forests), 22–24, 71
suction dredging, 135, 136, 138–39
sudden oak death (SOD), 99–100
sugar pine, 22, 73, 80, 82, 98, 114
Sunset Peak, 45
Superfund regulation/sites, 213; Iron
Mountain Mine, 142, 144, 210–11;
Siskon Mine, 211–13
Survey and Manage protocols, 218–19
sustainability, 8, 198–205; defining
ecosystem health, 198–200; encouraging signs, 246; social/economic,
200, 204, 205, 225–26; timber harvest sustainability, 227
sustained yield plans (SYPs), 227
Sutter, John, 116, 147
Swift Creek, 13, 95
sword fern, 55
Symphoricarpos mollis (creeping snowberry), 34
SYPs (sustained yield plans), 227
tailed frog, 64
Tamiasciurus douglasii (Douglas squirrel),
49
tanoak, 7, 25, 26, 32, 78, 80; fire and,
77, 82; Native American uses, 112,
114; sudden oak death, 99–100
Taricha granulosa (rough-skinned newt),
64
Taxodium (bald cypress), 26
tax policy, 231
Taxus brevifolia (Pacific yew), 114
Taylor, Alan, 80–81
Taylor, Dean, 32
temperatures, 13. See also climate change
terranes, 14–18
TFCC (Trinity Farm and Cattle Company),
146
Thaleichthys pacificus (candlefish), 33
Thamnophis couchi (western aquatic
garter snake), 62–63
thimbleberry, 114
Thompson Peak, 9, 44, 45
Thornburgh, Dale, 24
THPs (timber-harvest plans), 162, 226,
227, 229
threatened/endangered species, 70, 201,
216, 218–19; coho salmon, 67, 68,
69, 70, 211; mammals, 60; northern
spotted owl, 57–58, 158, 202, 203,
216 (see also Northwest Forest
Plan); shortnose and Lost River
suckers, 240
Thuja plicata (western red cedar), 104
Tiffany and Company, 214
Index
Tilia (basswood), 26
Timber and Stone Act, 153
timber company land purchases,
121, 153
timber-harvest plans (THPs), 162, 226,
227, 229
Timberland Production Zones, 231
timberlands. See forest management;
logging
timothy, 87
Tisdale, Sallie, 183
Tlo-Hom-Tah’-Hoi, 122–23
tobacco brush (snowbrush), 34, 43
tobacco cultivation, Native American,
113, 115, 145
Tolowa people, 116
tonalite, 44, 51, 52
topography, 9–10; fire and, 74, 80–81;
zonal classifications and, 20
toxic mining waste, 141, 144, 211–13
Toxicodendron diversilobum (poison
oak), 32, 99, 114
toyon, 99
tractor yarding, 161, 229
Transition zone, 21, 22
transportation, 145–46, 148, 150, 152,
153, 159
Traveling the Trinity Highway (Bannion
and Rohde), 6
tree of heaven, 39
tree-ring dating, 90, 102–3, 104
trees: alien species, 38–40; drought effects,
102–3, 251; fire adaptations, 55,
72–73, 77–78; flood adaptations,
73; meadow encroachment, 85, 87;
relict species, 31–32; species migrations, 26–27. See also forest entries;
individual genera and species
Trees and Shrubs of California (Stuart
and Sawyer), 33
Trillium ovatum (Pacific trillium), 24, 54,
114
Trinity Alps, 17, 44, 66–67
Trinity Alps Primitive Area, 156, 157
Trinity Alps Recreation Area, 156
Trinity Alps Resort, 1–2, 89, 93, 164
Trinity Alps Wilderness, 157
Trinity Center, 164
Trinity Dam, 138, 139, 164, 165, 242,
252; channel morphology impacts,
234, 235, 236; construction, 39;
fisheries impacts, 63, 64, 67, 70,
233–34, 235; summer releases,
64, 88
Trinity Dredging Company, 138
Trinity Farm and Cattle Company
(TFCC), 146
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Copyright © 2007. University of California Press. All rights reserved.
Trinity Lake, 9, 141, 164, 175, 251
Trinity Lakes viticultural area, 152
Trinity Land and Cattle Company, 149
Trinity River, 10, 125, 178; dam impacts,
63, 64, 179, 233–34, 235, 236; dam
proposals, 174, 233–34 (see also
California Water Plan); diversion
into the Sacramento, 178–79, 233;
fisheries, 7, 67, 69–70, 179, 233–34;
flooding, 88, 90, 91–94, 165–66,
242; gold mining in, 128, 133, 134,
135, 139, 165; Grass Valley Creek
sediments in, 242; historic flows, 201,
234, 251; landslide-caused dams,
165–66; mercury in, 141. See also
Trinity River Restoration Program
Trinity River Restoration Program
(TRRP), 70, 179, 203, 234–39, 240,
246
Trinity River Task Force, 242–43
trout, 66–67; brown trout, 66; eastern
brook trout, 67; rainbow trout, 66, 67
TRRP. See Trinity River Restoration
Program
Trust for Public Land, 243
Tsnungwe people, 108, 121
Tsuga heterophylla (western hemlock),
54–55, 78, 79, 90
Tsuga mertensiana (mountain hemlock),
29, 44, 52, 84
tsunamis, 87–88, 104, 105, 166
tupelo, 26
The Turquoise Dragon (Wallace), 65,
182–83
turtle, western pond, 63
Twain, Mark, 11
Twin Lakes. See Canyon Creek Lakes
twoneedle pinyon, 20, 251
U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, 176
U.S. policy/legislation: forest restoration
funding, 225–26, 231, 242; land
grants, 153–54; mining law, 139,
144, 206–8; Native American policy/relations, 117, 119, 120, 121;
public lands management legislation,
155–56, 157–58, 221, 224; Wild and
Scenic Rivers legislation, 178; wilderness legislation, 47, 157. See also
specific legislation by name
ultramafic soils, 21
Umbellularia californica (California laurel,
Oregon myrtle), 34, 78, 80, 99, 114
Umpqua National Forest, 221
understory species: communities, 24–25;
potential vegetation, 22–24, 71
Upper Sonoran zone, 21, 22
293
Ursus americanus (black bear), 45,
50–51, 60, 112
Ursus arctos (grizzly bear), 56, 60, 112
Utah juniper, 20
Vaccinium ovatum (California
huckleberry), 55, 99
Van Duzen River, 174, 175
Van Matre, Mart, 146
Van Matre Creek, Van Matre Meadows,
146
Van Valer, Nola, 181–82
vegetation types/patterns, 19; community
classifications, 24; dominant vegetation, 22–24; serpentine areas, 37;
zonal classifications, 19–22. See also
forest structure
velvet top fungus (Phellinus pini), 97
Veratrum californicum (corn silk), 170
Vicia americana (American vetch), 24
vine bark, 50, 53
vineyards, 151–52
violence: among early ranchers, 148–49;
Bryan murder case, 191–97;
marijuana-related, 151; white-Indian
violence, 118–20
virtual nature, 249
Vitis californica (California wild grape), 114
volcanoes, 18
Wailaki people, 119, 121
Wallace, Alfred Russell, 42
Wallace, David Rains, 65, 182–83
Wallace, Ray L., 186, 189
walnut, 26
Ward, Whit, 146
Ward Lake, 146
Warne, William, 178
Warren, Earl, 173
water diversions, 167; California Water
Plan, 70, 169–70, 173–78; Central
Valley Project, 167–68, 236; Klamath
diversion proposals, 168–69; by miners, 127, 128, 129, 130, 137, 172;
natural stream pirating, 170, 171;
upper Trinity River, 178–79, 233
water rights, 127
Watershed Research and Training Center,
205, 225
watershed restoration, 179, 201, 233–45;
fish/wildlife benefits, 236; flow
restoration, 236–38, 251; Grass Valley Creek, 241–45; Klamath River,
233, 240–41; sediment management,
238; Trinity River, 70, 179, 203,
233–39, 240, 246; uplands/tributaries, 241
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294
water supply, climate change and,
251–52. See also water diversions
water table, 85
Watt, James, 157
Wayburn, Laurie, 230
weather: drought, 102–3, 251; fire weather,
74–76; floods and, 87; wind, 83,
100–102. See also climate; climate
change; floods; precipitation
Weaver Bally Mountain, 188
Weaverville, 74, 124, 126–27, 131, 149
Weaverville formation, 25
Weaverville-Redding stage robbery, 142
weeds. See alien species
weeping (Brewer) spruce, 31, 44, 52
western aquatic garter snake, 62–63
western fence lizard, 71
western hemlock, 54–55, 78, 79, 90
western hound’s tongue, 194
western juniper, 28
Western Jurassic Belt, 16, 17
western Labrador tea, 52, 114
Western Paleozoic and Triassic Belt, 16,
17, 124–25
western pine beetle, 96
western pond turtle, 63
western rattlesnake, 61–62
western red cedar, 104
western white pine, 22, 29, 44, 84, 98
Westfall, Norman, 182
Westlands Water District, 234
Weston, Bill, 46, 85
West Weaver Creek, 172
Where Bigfoot Walks (Pyle), 188
Whilkut people, 108, 115, 121
Whiskey Creek distillery, 147
White, George, 148
White, Peter, 72
White, Richard, 119, 247
white alder, 26, 113
whitebark pine, 21, 29, 33, 98
white fir, 28–29, 97, 102, 114; distribution, 22, 23, 24, 29, 44, 84; fire and,
82, 83
white heather, 45, 52
white oak (Oregon white oak), 28, 82,
99, 114
white oaks, 32, 99
white pine blister rust, 98–99
white pines, 98. See also individual
species
white-veined wintergreen, 114
wild and scenic status, 178
wilderness, views of, 247
Wilderness Act, 47, 157
wilderness area mining claims, 207
Index
wilderness designations, national forest
lands, 156–57
wilderness trailheads, crime at, 48
wildfire. See fire entries
wild-ginger, 114
wildlife, 56–70; amphibians, 63–66;
birds, 56–58, 97, 100; mammals,
58–61; mistletoe and, 98; snakes,
61–63; SOD and, 99–100. See also
fish and fisheries; threatened/endangered species; individual genera and
species
wildlife management, 60, 70
wild oat, 38
wild onion, 114
Wildwood, 191, 194, 195, 196
Wilkinson, Charles, 208
Willow Creek, 188
willows, 73
Wilson, Richard, 178
wind: wind damage, 100–102; wind
snap, 83, 100; windthrow, 83, 97,
100–102
wine, wine grapes, 147, 151–52
Wintu people, 108, 110, 118–19, 121
Wirzen, G. A., 62
witches’-brooms, 98
Wiyot people, 108, 119
wolf, gray, 60
Wolford, John, II, 138
Wolford, Margaret, 138
Wolford Ranch, 138
wolverine, 60
wood rats, 202; dusky-footed wood rat,
57, 219
World War II, 132, 134, 195–97
Xerophyllum tenax (bear-grass), 113, 114
Yana people, 121
yellow jacket, 2, 36
yellow star-thistle, 38
Yokuts people, 187
Yolla Bolly—Middle Eel Wilderness, 157
Yosemite National Park, 156
Yuba Dredging Company, 137
Yuki people, 107, 119, 121
Yurok Myths (Kroeber), 104
Yurok people, 108, 111, 113, 115, 116,
121; legends, 104, 109, 110, 187
Z’berg-Nejedly Forest Practices Act. See
Forest Practices Act (California)
Zebo, Dave, 188
Zoë (journal), 42
zonal classification systems, 19–22, 42
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