Archive for June 2002
The Coast Miwok and Their Neighbors
As we move south along the California coast, the fate of its native cultures grows increasingly harsh. While all native cultures suffered from white settlement, some of the northern tribes like the Tolowa and Yurok discussed earlier were able to maintain sufficient population to retain much of their cultural identity. North of the Russian River,…
Read MoreTomales Bay
Tomales Bay exists as a feature of the San Andreas fault. Here two huge plates of the earth’s crust move against each other, the Pacific plate west of the bay and the North American plate to the east. The crack in the earth’s surface between the plates sinks in some locations, forming what geologists call…
Read MoreWhy It’s Called the Kortum Trail
For the past forty years, virtually every time Sonoma County’s environment or public access has been threatened, Bill Kortum has been there fighting for the earth and for your rights. When PG&E started building a nuclear power plant atop the San Andreas fault on Bodega Head in the early 1960s, no environmental movement was fighting…
Read MoreThe Russian River
World class salmon fishery, vacation playground for San Francisco, giant redwoods, Stumptown, and sewer discharge all help describe the beautiful river that flows 110 miles from the hot inland Mendocino County hills before pouring into the ocean near the village of Jenner in Sonoma County. This diverse river flows through chaparral and oak woodlands, fir…
Read MoreThe Russians at Fort Ross
One of the most unusual places in California perches atop a bluff overlooking the wild and scenic Sonoma coast beside a small sheltered cove. Fort Ross State Historic Park takes you back to March 1812 when 25 Russians and 80 native Alaskans dropped anchor in the cove and established what they hoped would be a…
Read MoreThe San Andreas Fault System
The California coast as we know it has been and continues to be created by the collision of two immense tectonic plates, the North American continental plate and the Pacific oceanic plate. The head-on collision of the two plates about 150 million years ago created the Sierra Nevada Range. Approximately 20 million years ago, the…
Read MoreThe CCT Needs a Trail Corridor off Highway 1 Around Rockport
The south end of the Lost Coast doesn’t just begin at Usal. You can already feel the Lost Coast (and see its King Range heart on a clear day) five miles north of Fort Bragg. When you get to Westport, you’re already on the Lost Coast. Magnificent Highway 1 follows the California’s coast for 7…
Read MoreCalifornia’s Lost Coast: Worthy of Wilderness Protection
The rugged and remote Lost Coast offers North America’s largest span of pristine beach and shoreline on the Pacific Coast outside of Alaska and Canada. Public lands here include 60,000-acre King Range National Conservation Area and 7400-acre Sinkyone Wilderness State Park, together stretching 40 miles along the coast. If you study the maps however, you’ll…
Read MoreThe Cape Mendocino Triple Junction and the Amazing Uplift of 1992
At Cape Mendocino, California’s Lost Coast thrusts westward against the driving California Current. The San Andreas Fault Zone trends west from its northernmost onshore extension at Shelter Cove to end as it joins the Mendocino Fracture Zone where the triple-plate junction of the North American, Pacific and Gorda Plates all meet. Directly offshore from the…
Read MoreThe Discovery and Settlement of Humboldt Bay
The Algonkian Wiyot people were the original residents of the Humboldt Bay region, inhabiting Pacific and bay shores from lower Mad River on the north to lower Eel River on the south, thriving on the marine abundance of this rich and gentle coastal strip. Their mythology’s depiction of abalone as the first people confirms the…
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