CANYON CREEK TRAIL ON THE NORTH YUBA RIVER

Bedrock mortars at Cut Eye Fosters Bar

[It just dawned on me that I talked about this trail in an earlier post (Indian Valley/September 2018) but, just like I’ve walked this trail many times, what harm is there in writing about it more than once?  Compare the two posts for different renditions].

How to get there:  From Nevada City, California travel north for 30 miles on State Highway 49 to the bridge over the North Yuba River and make an immediate left to the trailhead parking area.  On the way there you will cross the South Yuba and the Middle Yuba Rivers.

The Canyon Creek Trail is a pleasant all-seasons trail that parallels the North Yuba River on a sidehill trail through a lush forest at about 2,300 feet in elevation.  Along the way there are many places to find solitude and/or splendid swimming holes.  The walk to Shenanigan Flat is a bit over a mile, it’s about 2 miles to Cherokee Creek and about 3 ½ miles to Canyon Creek.  The trail begins on a gated road just after crossing the Highway 49 bridge over the North Yuba River.  In the late 1960s this dirt road transported campers to Shenanigan Flat where the Forest Service maintained a campground, but has since closed it.  The road itself was created in the 1860s, probably just after the big flood in the winter of 1862 when all of the bridges on the Yuba River were swept away.

As you hike take notice of the rock retaining walls on the downslope side of the road.  Of course, the real attention getter is the North Yuba – it’s beauty, speed and, in the wetter months, it’s sound.  This whole stretch of the river, from Indian Valley down to the mouth of Canyon Creek is inaccessible by vehicle and idyllic to visit for a swim, an ousel’s song or for pure wanderment.  There are few trails to the river from the main trail but much of it is approachable.  I urge you to respect this, and all rivers, you’re just visiting.

  Near Shenanigan Flat

The river makes a noticeable turn to the northwest at a place called Shenanigan Flat, a wonderful name whose origins are lost to the void of history.  I did find a few basalt flakes left behind by a stone age tool maker but the earliest historical presence I could find was a record of the mining claim of Michael Cortes & Company in 1874.  It’s a relatively flat bench sitting above the river, opposite Indian Creek, and must have made a sweet summer camp site for centuries before gold miners arrived.  There is an active, but low-key, mining claim nearby and there are the remains of concrete fire pits left from its days as a campground.

I have a friend who lived for a summer at the Shenanigan Flat campground in the late 1960s.  He was there with his family trying “to get back to the land.”  In hippie dialect that meant they had “dropped out” and were poor, but proud of it.  Their neighbors in the campground were a family who were trying to make some money by small-scale gold mining – they didn’t dress, act or talk like hippies.  Both families were polite to each other but not real friendly.  Their kids sometimes played together, but it was casual. 

The other neighbor worth noting was a large rattlesnake “seen around camp fairly often.”  My friend and his family were “OK with the snake” because it hadn’t displayed any territoriality.  In fact, they were almost in a state of grace because they lived near danger by being alert and harmonious with nature.  In other words, no one had been threatened or bitten.  Everyone was aware that the snake was there because it was acknowledged in manly conversations consisting of short sentences and grunts.

In time the mining family had gotten used to their natural neighbors and invited then to dinner around the campfire.  This blatant hospitality couldn’t be ignored, and the hippie family was determined to be a good neighbor, even if they were served Spam and canned string beans.  Instead, it was a big surprise when their host started frying a rattlesnake, while offering that it was “the big one.”  When faced with a spiritual conundrum it’s best to accept the hospitality, which the hippie family did.  I’m sure this qualifies as a shenanigan.

As the trail proceeds downstream to the northwest it assumes the width of the earlier wagon road that still extends to Cherokee Creek where there was once a toll bridge across the North Yuba.  The two historical maps that show the bridge location differ – the topography suggests that the bridge was on the east (upstream) side of Cherokee Creek.  On the opposite ridgetop, a few miles north of Camptonville, was a place called Depot Hill which was the highest and easternmost extent of freight wagon navigation in 1850.  Here wagons were downloaded to pack animals for the steep descent to Cherokee Creek and Cut Eye Fosters Bar on the North Yuba where there was another pack trail coming upstream from Fosters Bar (no relation to Cut Eye), which is now under water behind New Bullards Bar Dam.  At this point you’re probably annoyed that I’m not using possessive apostrophes when describing historic mining locations.  That’s because it’s a local convention not to – they were never used on maps, in contemporary newspaper accounts, mining journals or even Post Offices – I’m only perpetuating a local custom.

Near Cut Eye Fosters Bar

While mining at Cut Eye Fosters Bar in the summer of 1849 Philo Haven was approached by an Indian named Lo who offered to trade gold nuggets for some exotic miner’s cuisine.  Farris and Smith’s, 1882 History of Sierra County described the occasion this way: “Mr Haven began frying pancakes. The company began having visions of a famine. Even the great American pie-eater would have hung his head in shame had he beheld the delicate mouthfuls and the quantity of food devoured on this occasion. But even an Indian’s capacity was limited, and the feast was finally finished, greatly to the relief of the gold hunters.”  The next day they headed upstream to a place that would eventually become Downieville only to find that Hedgepath & Company had staked out claims already but there was plenty of good mining ground left.  

Cut Eye Fosters Bar was the most upstream place to obtain provisions on the North Yuba in 1850.  Newton Miller and company used a wing-dam to mine here from January 1851 to July 1852 and called it “a lively place.”  Cut-Eye Foster was described as a professional horse thief who employed Indians and kept a corral of pack animals.  California historian, T. H. Hittell remarked, that Foster had no problems with the local Indians because he had no prejudice against them.  “Judging by his own experience, he did not think there was any danger to be anticipated as long as they were not molested.”  William Downie had dealings with Cut Eye Foster and said he was philanthropic, but dishonest, “… prices were absolutely ruinous to his customers. He charged three dollars per pound for potatoes and butter, two dollars for flour, and so on in proportion, making everybody recognize that, if life was worth living, we certainly had to pay dearly to sustain it.”

The North Yuba Canyon from the Brandy City Trail

Cherokee Creek is a beautiful stream with plenty of riparian vegetation.  It has been heavily mined because it erodes the auriferous gravel deposits near Brandy City, a formerly productive hydraulic mining community.  Cherokee is the most popular Indian name for mining properties in California even though their homelands are in southern Appalachia.  In 1829 placer gold was discovered in their territory, from which they were eventually moved, but not before learning something about gold mining.  They were savvy miners when they arrived and I’m sure they took advantage of their knowledge.

You may or may not spot the trail to Brandy City that takes off from the Canyon Creek Trail below Cherokee Creek because it’s no longer maintained and there was ferocious logging on the upper reaches of this trail in the 1960s.  There’s not much to see there anymore because all the buildings are gone, although there is a small cemetery.  At one time this was an important hydraulic mining center with a sizable French population.  The Sierra Democrat of July 3, 1858 reported on a “Grand Ball at Brandy City – formerly Strychnine City – on the evening of the 27^th given by the Canyon Creek Ditch Company, and others, and you can bet it was a fine affair.  Seven of the ladies were taken to the Ball in a Concord A No 1 four horse coach. The balances were carried on horse and mule flesh and danced all night to broad daylight.”

Brandy City, 1900

Cross the foot bridge across Cherokee Creek and continue downstream to the south, then westerly, through a healthy forest of Douglas fir, yellow pine, incense cedar, black oak, live oak and broad-leaf maple.  This part of the trail is narrow and undulating like the original pack trail.

It was on this part of the trail on a narrow ridge toward the river where, in the late 1960s, you could see a tipi incongruously perched in a dense forest of oaks and conifers.  According to local rumors there was an attractive young woman who lived alone in that tipi.  Mister P., who worked for the Forest Service, heard the rumor and decided that he should investigate.  He told me that he found the tipi alright and as he walked toward it a nude woman stepped out to greet him.  Now Mister P. was a first-generation Italian American and a practicing Catholic who became quite agitated even as he was telling me the story.  He stood up and muttered “Mama Mia, Jesu Santo", and crossed himself several times before, red in the face, he made the universally understood “big boobs” gesture.  Actually, you had to have been there to fully appreciate his kinetic approach to storytelling.  Mister P. never told me what he and the woman talked about, but he was obviously concerned because he went to fetch the Ranger.  When they returned the Ranger verified Mister P.’s description of the situation and they apparently had a long conversation about safety.  It’s reassuring to know how responsive Forest Service management can be when the situation warrants it.

After crossing the small stream in Brummel Ravine, the trail descends to a dramatic confluence where Canyon Creek enters the North Yuba at Kelly Bar.  There’s a great swimming hole and campsite here.

Canyon Creek entering the North Yuba at Kelly Bar

• • •

A REGIONAL HISTORY COURSE / YUBA RIVER COUNTRY

Mt. Lola / North-Central Sierra Nevada

“Exercise, not philosophically and with religious gravity undertaken, but with the wild and romping activities of a spirited girl who runs up and down as if her veins were full of wine.” - Lola Montez

THE MOUNT LOLA TRAIL

It’s mid-September and there’s a light rain in the Deer Creek watershed this morning.  Pluviophiles are ecstatic and the aroma of moist and earthy petrichor is positively swoony – meanwhile it’s snowing on Mt Lola.  A few days ago it was warm and we hiked to the summit from the east side so that’s what this blog will be about.  Mount Lola, at 9,143 feet is located in the extreme northeast of the South Yuba watershed and is its highest peak.  Immediately below and to the west is White Rock Lake.  On the east and north sides of Mount Lola, Independence Creek and Coldstream Creek flow to the Truckee River.

How to get there:

To get there take Highway 89 north from Truckee for 17 miles to the Jackson Meadow Road. Travel west for 2 miles to the well-marked Independence Lake turnoff. Drive 0.7 mile and cross the bridge over the Little Truckee River, then take the first right. This road is a segment of the historic Henness Pass Road. Drive 3.2 miles to the clearly marked trailhead and parking lot at Perrazzo Meadows.

This 5.4 mile long trail (one way) ascends Cold Stream Creek, a tributary of the Little Truckee River.  At the lower segment there is some logging evidence but there are also wildflowers and beautiful Cold Stream Meadow.  Above the meadow the slope becomes steeper climbing through stands of red fir and mountain hemlock.  Right alongside the trail is the largest red fir that I’ve ever seen.

Coldstream Meadow

From the eastside Mount Lola is a 2,500-foot climb, and worth it. As for degree of difficulty, well that depends.  This hike was an epiphany for me – when I last hiked this trail three years-ago I don’t remember it being particularly strenuous but now that I’m older (much older that most people reading this) it was difficult for me.  Men don’t want to admit that their performance is fading, but for me there was no denying it, and I had the realization that I might not do this hike again.  While I was humbled by the mountain and my own mortality, it didn’t diminish my experience, but my knees hurt.  From now on I’ll be factoring my own frailty into planning for future hikes.  All things considered this is valuable information for keeping hiking pleasurable for as long as possible.

Coming up the East Side of Mt Lola

The views from the summit are fabulous. On a clear day you can see Mount Lassen to the northwest and the distinctive Sierra Buttes in the same direction but only 20 miles away on the North Yuba River.  To the west are Grouse Ridge, Fall Creek Mountain and the Black Buttes in the Grouse Ridge Roadless Area.  Looking south you can see Basin Peak and Castle Peaks, and along the summit continuing southward to Donner Pass and Tinker Knob.  To the east is Mount Rose and to the northeast is Sierra Valley.  At the base of Mount Lola is White Rock Lake to the southwest and Independence Lake to the east.

White Rock Lake is the highest body of water in the South Yuba watershed.  Originally it was an aboriginal campsite, then in 1850 it was dammed when the water rights were claimed for gold mining.  The Pacific Crest Trail passes just south of White Rock Lake where there is a 2 ½ mile spur trail that ascends about 1,300’ to the top of Mt. Lola.

 Dusk on Mt Lola. Looking southwest to White Rock Lake

SURVEY HISTORY

On the summit of Mount Lola you’ll see a small rock structure and may wonder what it’s doing here.  In 1878 the newly named Coast and Geodetic Survey was surveying the west by triangulation, using very large constructs known as Davidson's Quadrilaterals with sides ranging from 57 to 142 miles in length. To do this work a station was established on Mount Shasta to measure the side between Mount Shasta and Mount Helena, which at about 192 miles would make it the longest triangulation line ever observed. The line Mount Lola to Mount Helena, one of the sides of Davidson's Quadrilaterals, 133 miles in length, was selected as the base for the triangle.

George Davidson was chosen to make the observations at Mount Lola and Benjamin Colonna was chosen for Mount Shasta. In his journal for August 1, 1878, Colonna described a momentous event:

At sunrise, I turned my telescope in the direction of MT LOLA, and there was the heliotrope, 169 miles off, shining like a star of the first magnitude. I gave a few flashes from my own, and they were at once answered by flashes from LOLA. Then turning my telescope in the direction of MT HELENA, there, too was a heliotrope, shining as prettily as the one at LOLA. My joy was very great; for the successful accomplishment of my mission was now secured.

In the center is the base of the heliotrope used in 1878

This series of flashes, through the wonders of trigonometry, allowed the team of surveyors to accurately calculate that the distance between Mount Shasta and Mount Helena was 192 miles. Colonna was ecstatic about besting the French, and wrote in his journal, “And the glory is ours; for America, and not Europe, can boast of the largest trigonometrical figures ever measured on the globe.”  So, these rock features are the foundation for the heliotrope and a shelter George Davidson used while waiting for optimal conditions in the summer of 1875.  Positions held by Davidson include president of the California Academy of Sciences from 1871 to 1887, Honorary Professor of Geodesy and Astronomy, and Regent of the University of California from 1877 to 1885.  He became the first professor of Geography at the University of California, Berkeley and was one of 182 charter members of the Sierra Club in 1892 and served as a member of its board of directors from 1894 to 1910.  This bit of scientific history may or may not be of interest to you, but surely you want to know who Lola Montez was?

Lola Montez 1850

Photo by Southworth and Hawes

Mount Lola was named for the legendary Lola Montez, who was born in Ireland in 1821 and originally named Elizabeth Rosanna Gilbert.  As part of a military family she spent her childhood in India and married for the first time at age 16, apparently to get back to Europe.  After her first marriage she traveled to Spain and developed a persona as a dancer, named herself Lola Montez and toured northern Europe.  She was, by all accounts, a mediocre dancer but what she lacked in talent she made up for in chutzpah.  Her fiery temperament, audaciousness and ambition landed her in the company of Franz Liszt, Robert Peel (son of the English Prime Minister), the French newspaper editor Alexandre Dujarier, Marius Petipa (the creator of Swan Lake and The Nutcracker), the Earl of Malmesbury, the Count of Schleissen, Lord Brougham, Jung Bahadur (the Nepalese ambassador to London) and other less notable men.

In 1846 she traveled to Munich and became a dancer with the Bavarian Opera.  When King Ludwig I of Bavaria saw her he wrote, “Today I saw Lola Montez dance. I am bewitched. In this Spanish woman alone have I found love and life.”  She thrived on scandal and she created enormous celebrity, even inspiring imitators. Some of her biographers claimed that Lola Montez garnered more press than Queen Victoria herself.  King Ludwig was totally enthralled, while Lola shamelessly manipulated him.  In August of 1847 he made her the Countess of Landsfeld, which assured her a salary, but the citizens of Munich were embarrassed by the foolishness of their King and distrusting of Montez. By 1848, under pressure from a growing revolutionary movement, Ludwig abdicated his throne and Lola fled Bavaria, alone.

From 1851 to 1853 she performed as a dancer and actress in the eastern United States.  One of her biographers said that she received higher fees for her lectures than Charles Dickens who was on tour at the same time.  Her most popular play was a trite, self-promotional story about her affair with King Ludwig.  She then moved to San Francisco in May of 1853. While there she performed her suggestive “Spider Dance” in which she pretended to be attacked by spiders and searched for them in her clothing.  Reviews of her performance were pretty bad, but they generated publicity, nevertheless.  She married Patrick Hull in July and they moved to Grass Valley, California, in August.

Lola Montez 1858

National Portrait Gallery – Smithsonian Institution

Photo by Henry Meade 

Glamorous and boldly unconventional, Lola attracted an enthusiastic following based more on her cultivated persona and her beauty than on her talent – she definitely had her wild side.  In the summer of 1854 one of the most famous camping trips of the era occurred in the vicinity of what would later become Mt Lola and Lola Montez Lakes. She, and some companions, left Grass Valley for a sojourn to Donner Summit and Truckee Meadows (now Reno, NV). The party, which included Alonzo Delano, famous humorist and Grass Valley’s first city treasurer, set off with an animal pack train in mid-July and ran into difficulties after several rough days on the trail.  The horse carrying the provisions bolted and dumped all their food in a stream.  If that wasn’t bad enough, the imperious Lola quarreled with the other campers and antagonized them to the point where many of them left in a huff.

While living in Grass Valley she held salons in which the local intelligentsia gathered to meet artists, actors, writers, entrepreneurs and adventurers.  Her benefactor at this time was John Southwick, manager and part-owner of the Empire Mine.  By the time she arrived in Grass Valley she had been married twice and had many amorous alliances.  She was also fluent in several languages, was abreast of contemporary literary and artistic trends and mixed with Gautier, Alexander Dumas, George Sand, Walt Whitman and others.  The salons at her house included rich feasts with champagne.  Guests included, businessman Sam Brannan; US Supreme Court Justice Steven Field; William M. Stewart, later a U.S. senator from Nevada; the great Norwegian violist, Ole Bull and humorist Alonzo Delano, among many others. Biographer Ralph Freidman (Lola Montez in Grass Valley, 1951) commented, “…she was probably the least provincial person to ever reside in Grass Valley.”  When she left town in 1855, W.B. Ewer, editor of the Grass Valley Telegraph said “Lola is no ordinary person.  She is possessed of an original mind, one decidedly intellectual and highly cultivated.  She delights in change and excitement and is bound to create a sensation wherever she goes.”

In May of 1855 Lola Montez and an actor named Augustus Noel Follin decided to take a theatre company to Australia where gold had recently been discovered.  The foray created more scandal and notoriety but no wealth.  In June of 1860, while living in New York, she suffered a stroke that resulted in partial paralysis.  She then found religion, but contracted pneumonia and died in 1861 at the age of 42.

Lola Montez, despite her infamy, created her own myth and wrote herself into history by the force of her own personality.   The many biographies written about her dwell on her outrageous behavior, but I’m sure she was also charming and interesting to be with.  Unlike many other women in the Victorian era, who may have been notable because of their birth, or marriage, she invented herself.  Lola Montez described herself best when she dedicated her 1858 book, The Art of Beauty, to “those who are not afraid of themselves, who trust so much in their souls that they dare to stand up in the might of their own individuality to meet the tidal currents of the world.”

Dusk on Mt. Lola. Sierra Buttes to the Northwest

• • •

SUGAR PINE

"No traveler, whether a tree lover or not, will ever forget his first walk in a sugar-pine forest. The majestic crowns approaching one another make a glorious canopy, through the feathery arches of which the sunbeams pour, silvering the needles and gilding the stately columns and the ground into a scene of enchantment." – John Muir

“I would feel more optimistic about a bright future for man if he spent less time proving that he can outwit Nature and more time tasting her sweetness and respecting her seniority.” – E.B. White

For 18-year old Dick Hotchkiss it was an exhilarating experience to drive a Robinson & Sons logging truck in the Grass Valley, California July 4th parade in 1956.  On the truck was a single sugar pine log, 11-foot in diameter and 32 feet long, that had for hundreds of years lived in the canyon of the Middle Yuba River.  It was a trophy, a demonstration of the faller's craft and symbolic of a traditional skill that supported families for generations. The big log was also a cultural affirmation and a display of pride for work well done.  The last hard-rock mine in Grass Valley, until now a reliable employer, had just closed and those workers were probably transitioning to logging, or lumbering to use the traditional term.  Logging had become the economy of the western slope of the Sierra Nevada in an era recently described to me by an old-timer as the “timber rush.”  After WW II there were returning veterans who deserved houses and those houses were made of wood.  In the 1950’s and 1960s the foothills were peppered with sawmills, many of which were small operations with the owner and a few employees on site.

When I started working for the Tahoe National Forest in 1975, most employees were in the “timber shop” and the forest-wide concern was “getting out the cut.”  My job as an archaeologist was created by regulations and requirements of the National Environmental Protection Act (NEPA).  The concerns of wildlife biologists, botanists, hydrologists, ecologists, archaeologists and others were initially seen as an impediment to getting the cut out.  It took some time and attrition for foresters and road engineers to get beyond their purely productive patriotic stance.

In the mid-1850s when Bayard Taylor, a 19^thcentury traveler, poet and literary critic, was riding on Washington Ridge, northeast of Nevada City, he noted an unbroken forest of “pillars two hundred feet high and six feet in diameter.”  He likened their splendor to a “grand natural cathedral.”  Taylor was awe struck: “No Doric column could surpass in beauty these stupendous shafts. They are the demigods of the vegetable world”.  The forest that Taylor was describing was a forest probably dominated by sugar pines.  Subsequent lumbering and silvicultural practices have since created a more “productive forest” on that ridge, one that favors faster growing ponderosa pine and Douglas fir.  We take them for granted, but trees, whether we know it or not, provide in addition to “forest products”, habitat for many species and spiritual support for humans.  Sugar pine was once an abundant species in the Yuba and adjacent watersheds but that is no longer the case.

Sugar Pine is the largest pine in the mixed conifer forests of the Sierra Nevada.  In the North-Central Sierra they are found between 2,500’ to 7,500’ where they reach heights of 175’ to 200’ with diameters of 36” to 60” and they can live from 300 to 500 years.  Their cones, typically 10 to 20 inches in length, are the longest of any conifer with a mature cone producing an average of 150 seeds or nuts, with the best nuts found in the cones of the oldest trees.  Intervals between heavy cone crops averaged four years.  Sugar pine, gray pine, and piñon pine are considered the best tasting pine nuts in California.

In the early 1980s some of my friends formed work crews and contracted for forestry-related jobs like tree-planting, thinning, wildlife habitat improvement, trail construction and maintenance and erosion control.  It was hard work but rewarding.  My least favorite job was cone-gathering in order to provide a seed crop for tree nurseries – I’m not happy working high-up in trees.  The cones of sugar pines are way out on the ends of tapering branches – by far the most difficult to collect.  It fascinates me that indigenous people were gathering sugar pine nuts without spikes to climb with, belts, belay rope and pole pruners.

Sugar pine in the North Yuba canyon on Fiddle Creek Ridge

Sugar pine seeds/nuts were a favorite and abundant food for the local Nisenan and Washoe and they knew the location of reliable seed producing trees. Traditional burning practices favored sugar pine regeneration – it is very resistant to low-to moderate-severity fires and has adapted a thick, fire-resistant bark and open canopy that retards aerial fire spread.

It’s difficult to imagine how indigenous people were able to gather cones because branches begin in the upper third of the tree and the cones are located at the end of long, supple branches.  The Nisenan climbed sugar pines by hooking young trimmed sapling over a lower limb and the cones were pulled loose with a stick that had a projecting branch at the end.  Lizzie Enos, a Nisenan traditionalist, said that in the Sugar Pine Hill area, on the south side of the Bear River, men dislodged the cones by jumping up and down on branches.  Another method is for the climber to press down with his foot to get the branch moving in a rotary manner causing the cone to drop by virtue of its own weight.  The Sierra Miwok propped a dead tree against the trunk or used a special climbing pole.

Gray pine grows at a lower elevation usually in a savannah or oak woodland setting.  Edwin Bryant, while traveling the Emigrant Trail, wrote in his 1847-48 diary, “We saw in a number of places, ladders erected by the Indians for climbing the pine trees to gather the nuts, and the poles used for the same purpose.”  He was only a few miles from Johnson’s Ranch so these would have been gray pines

When the Nisenan and Washoe harvested sugar pine seeds they used campsites that had been used for generations.  Ideally the site would have a spring or stream near a knoll or meadow in a transitional zone where there were also berries, grass seeds, vegetable matter, tubers, medicines, plants used in basket-weaving and firewood. 

In the Yuba River watershed there are hundreds, maybe thousands, of bedrock mortars in sugar pine habitat.  Nut hunters would often camp at a favorable elevation then search for the most productive trees.  Archaeologist David Hunt applied GPS data and statistical analysis to the location of Nisenan and Washoe campsites in the watersheds of the Middle and South Forks of the American Rivers and determined that sugar pine nuts were collected at many locations and processed at numerous small bedrock mortar locations.  In his opinion sugar pines probably extended farther westward than they do now.  This is substantiated by the observations of USGS forester, John Lieberg in 1902, ”Old stumps of sugar pine standing among Digger (gray) pine and oak, where not a sapling or seedling of the species is to be found, show a more extensive westward range within recent times.”

Sugar pine cones. Cherry Hill/Middle Yuba

Sugar pine nuts and acorns were very valuable because they could be stored.  In the winter of 1849-1850 a group of vigilantes calling themselves the California Blades destroyed a group of Nisenan settlements and camps on the divide between the Bear River and the North Fork of the American River.  They claimed it was retribution for stealing horses and mules and boasted about destroying extensive caches of acorns and sugar pine nuts.

While sugar pine nuts are small compared to acorns they were valued for their taste and the extra effort required to get them was considered worth it.  Even the intruders enjoyed the flavor of sugar pine nuts.  J. D. Borthwick, an artist visiting the Nevada City area in 1854 remarked, “… they have a taste even sweeter than that of filbert.”

The unique quality of sugar pine lumber caught the attention of miners, lumbermen and builders.  With few lower branches most of the wood is clear, or free from knotholes.  Theodore Judah, who surveyed the Central Pacific Railroad route noted, “It is well known that the sugar pine of these lands often runs 125 feet high without a limb, and often measures eight feet at base – while a tree is seldom found measuring less than three and a one-half feet at base.”

When the transcontinental railroad was completed in 1869 it opened additional markets and greatly accelerated the amount of lumbering.  With the railroad, lumber could easily be transported to the east as well as to valley and coastal cities in California.  Narrow gauge railroads, constructed specifically for lumbering, were used extensively in the upper reaches of Deer Creek, on the Dutch Flat Divide and in the Truckee River basin.  Typically, lumbermen constructed mills in the best timber stands then constructed their narrow-gauge railroads to connect with the standard gauge transcontinental railroad.  According to historian David Beesley, everything marketable was cut, creating a two-and-a-half to three-mile circle of devastation with no seed trees remaining.

By the end of the 19^th century the loss of trees and the resultant erosion was clearly detrimental to forest health and water quality.  John Leiberg, inventoried and reported on federal forest reserves including Yuba River country.  He observed, “… where the cut is exhaustive a great change has taken place.  Of the sugar pine in the region examined, the tree is losing ground at a rapid rate on all the areas logged, … the coming forest will contain only 2 or 3 per cent at the most.  The deficiency of sugar pine in the reforestation is due to one general cause, and that is wasteful and unscientific logging methods – everything capable of yielding immediate profit being cut, without the slightest provision for sparing a sufficient number of seed trees to restock the cut-over areas.”

Shake manufacturing at Clipper Mills/Slate Creek/North Yuba (1907)

Bob Paine, a former Nevada City journalist, spent summers in the early 1920s with his uncle at the Hegarty Ranch, near Graniteville.  He noticed that two Chinese men living on the property were engaged in manufacturing shakes from sugar pine.  The shakes were dried and bundled then floated downstream in the Milton Ditch where they were stored on a landing downstream then transported to market by a wagon.  Shakes were split from a round of sugar pine, or sometimes cedar, by using a froe, which is a wedge-shaped blade with a handle that is hammered with a hardwood mallet.  Dimensions vary, but in the Sierra Nevada roof shakes were typically 32” by 5”.  Shakes shingled the roofs and were often the siding of historic structures. They were also used to make door and window sashes and crates. 

Clear lumber from sugar pine was in great demand.  Lumbermen despised shake makers, calling them “highgraders”.  When the U.S. Forest Service was created in 1906, shakes were the most valuable forest product maintaining a market value well above dimensional lumber.  “Shakes were produced only from the choicest sugar pines, and only from select portions of the bole – no more than 40 percent.” Swift Berry, a member of the U.S. Forest Service timber management staff wrote, “Since most of the shakes are made from the most valuable species, sugar pine, and only the best and straightest trees will rive, the shake-maker constantly lowered the value of the stand by skimming out the best trees.”

Shake structure at French Bar/North Yuba

Abuses of the mineral laws, for logging purposes, was common on the California national forests.  From 1902 to 1918 lumber companies filed mining claims for no other purpose than to gain surface rights to the timberlands.  The Forest Service contested a large number of these so called "sugar pine mining claims" which were particularly rampant in areas adjacent to railroad rights-of-way.

After WW II there was a period of “intensive management” on National Forests that included clear cuts and the cutting of remote old growth “decadent” trees made possible by increased road building followed by plantations and herbicide application.  By 1960 the Multiple Use–Sustained Yield Act and in 1964 the Wilderness Act were the first in a series of environmental laws that sought to recreate a healthy forest ecology.  Sugar pine is no longer logged in the Tahoe National Forest – even the most business-oriented foresters recognize the extent of the damage done.

Meanwhile we are learning that trees and other plants are connected with each other in numerous ways to promote the stability, or equanimity, of the greater community.  Suzanne Simard, professor of forest ecology at the University of British Columbia’s Department of Forest and Conservation Sciences, studies communications between plants through mycorrhizal networks from one plant to another, usually from a sufficient plant to a plant in need.  Simard’s research shows that biological science and indigenous knowledge share some common ground.  “The science of plant communication and behavior is only scratching the surface of how nature works, but what we are seeing is nothing short of amazing.  This scientific understanding, suggestive of sentience in forests, resonates with indigenous wisdom, which calls for respect and learning from the hitherto unseen law of the forest, our teacher”.

Cabin at Loney Meadows/South Yuba with a shake roof and walls made of split-cedar log uprights. The cabin finally collapsed in the winter of 2018 -2019.  

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This is a revised and expanded version of an essay I wrote for Tree Rings/Yuba Watershed Institute a few years ago.

Select Bibliography

Bayard Taylor. Eldorado: or Adventures in the Path of Empire (1850).

Ralph L. Beals. The Ethnology of the Nisenan (1933).

John W. Duncan. Maidu Ethnobotany (1961).

Glen Farris. Quality Food: The Quest for Pine Nuts in Northern California (1993).

Kat Anderson. Tending the Wild: Native American Knowledge and the Management of California’s Natural Resources (2005).

David Hunt. The Power of the Acorn: Late Holocene Settlement and Resource Distribution in the Central Sierra (2000).

John B. Leiberg. Forest Conditions in the Northern Sierra Nevada. (1902).

Myron Angel. History of Placer County (1882).

Theodore Judah. Preliminary Report of the Chief Engineer, Central Pacific Railroad (1862).

David Beesley. Crow’s Range: An Environmental History of the Sierra Nevada (2004).

Kevin S. McKelvey & James D. Johnston. Historical Perspectives on Forests of the Sierra Nevada and the Transverse Ranges of Southern California: Forest Conditions at the Turn of the Century (1992).

Swift Berry. Shake Making and Tray Mills in California’s National Forests.(1913).

Turrentine Jackson. History of Tahoe National Forest: 1840-1940: A Cultural Resources Overview History (1982).

Suzanne Simard. Conversations in the Forest: The Roots of Nature’s Equanimity (2015).

BLUE LAKE TRAIL: SOUTH YUBA RIVER

Blue Lake and Zion Hill

It’s pretty prosaic, as trails go, but the Blue Lake Trail is a pleasant hike and a feeder trail to some of my favorite sub-alpine adventures.  For instance, it connects with the Beyers Lake Trail to Baltimore Lake and Meadow Lake to the east.  The Blue Lake Trail ends at the Grouse Ridge Trail which extends north and upslope from Eagle Lakes, near Fordyce Creek, to the Grouse Ridge lookout then continues north to Sawmill Lake on Canyon Creek, a distance of about eight and a half miles altogether.  Virtually all of the trails in the Grouse Ridge Roadless Area connect to this major north-south oriented trail. 

Old Man Mountain 

The Blue Lake Trail is a relatively easy hike to the glaciated terrain above the mixed conifer-black oak forest, so typical of the west slope of the Sierra Nevada.  I usually hike the Blue Lake Trail three of four times a year.  It’s an excellent introduction to the geography of the South Yuba River above 5,000’ in elevation and to the intensive water management system that is so much a part of the history of the Yuba River.  The Spaulding Dam impounds water from the South Yuba, Fordyce Creek, Canyon Creek and the Middle Yuba and is part of the Yuba-Hydroelectric Project encompassing approximately 400 square miles.  Together with the Drum-Spaulding Project the Yuba-Bear Project is considered by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) to be “the most physically and operationally complex hydroelectric project in the United States.”

How to get there:

The Lake Bowman Road is 24 miles east of Nevada City, CA on State Highway 20, on the east side of Bear Valley.  Drive Lake Bowman Road north for 5 miles to Forest Service Road 18.06.  This is also the turnoff for Camp Liahona.  Slowly drive this rugged road for 1.2 miles to a large flat that once was a log landing and park here.  There are two roads visible from here: the one on the right goes to the campground near the Blue Lake dam and the short trail to Zion Hill, while the Blue Lake trail starts up a rough and rocky road that trends to the northeast. Don’t try to drive it – you’ll reach a locked gate where it’s difficult to turn around.

A Ditch with Rock Retaining Walls and Trail

The Trail:

The road slowly climbs for about a mile and ends at a saddle turned into a landing situated to the northeast of Blue Lake.  In the saddle there’s a pretty good view of Blue Lake, which is indeed blue.

The peak across the lake is erroneously mapped as Zion Hill.  On 19^th century maps Zion Hill is the smaller peak one air mile to the southwest below Fuller Lake and the site of the Zion Hill Tunnel, a water conduit.  I only had access to a few Colfax Quad Maps (USGS) and on them I found that the 1898 and the 1902 maps show Zion Hill in its historic location but on the 1938 map it has moved to its current location near Blue Lake.  For over 80 years now all subsequent maps have consistently shown Zion Hill at its new location – does this make it so?  It makes me wonder how many other cartographic blunders are on modern maps, probably something only a map nerd would care about.

Pick up the trail along the former ditch that brought water to Blue Lake from a small but perennial stream.  It heads northeast from the flat that was carved into the saddle.  Blue Lake, along with nearby Rucker and Fuller Lakes, were originally dammed in the 1860’s to provide reservoirs for the hydraulic mines of Alpha and Omega, located southeast of the town of Washington on the South Yuba.  The three reservoirs were known collectively as the “Omega Lakes” and they’ve been considerably upgraded in the 20^thcentury.

Along the trail you’ll come to a small perennial stream where the ditch segment ends.  Remnants of a former rock dam create a small waterfall where the trail crosses the creek. From here the trail climbs a bit and has some ups and downs but nothing serious.  In about a half mile you’ll reach another small live stream.  After about two miles of hiking in a forest of ponderosa pine, Douglas fir, incense cedar, black oak and canyon live oak you’ll be suddenly treated to a huge view of a body of water in a glacial bowl at the confluence of the South Yuba and Fordyce Creek.  To the east are spectacular views of Old Man Mountain, Red Mountain, Brady Mountain, Emigrant Gap and many other mountains and ridges.  Recent studies of glacial striations on Old Man Mountain by geographer Allan James reveal that a glacier occupied Fordyce canyon about 14,000 years ago.  At that time the tops of Red Mountain and Old Man Mountain were islands that poked through the glacier.

An Erratic, a Boulder Transported by a Glacier

At various places along the trail there is evidence of the indigenous people.  Today there is a set of trails that extends from Bear Valley (4,500’) to Meadow Lake (7,300’) and one of those linked trails is the Blue Lake Trail.  The fact that all along this trail system are archaeological sites reflecting food processing, tool manufacture and retouching, and petroglyph sites suggest that this trial was used thousands of years ago.

A rewarding ramble overland is to head north on the ridge on the west side of Granite Creek in the direction of Loney Lake.  There are gigantic boulders and smooth expanses of bedrock.  When I’m hiking in this landscape I feel like I’m in a huge art gallery/park with sculpture beyond human imagination accented with pockets of variously textured vegetation. Be forewarned that there is very little shade and the rocks reflect a lot of heat.  The best hiking here is off season and before the rains when the deciduous plants near streams and wet spots turn color.

The Drainage Basin of Upper Granite Creek

The hike out and back is less than six miles (continuing to Granite Creek makes it closer to eight) and fairly easy with an elevation gain of only 600’– but there is always the option to make it a longer day.  Pack a hat, a windbreaker, sun protection, enough water and wear sturdy shoes or boots.

On July 20, 2019 we’re planning to walk this trail. We’re based in Nevada City, CA. If you’d like to join us, please contact laura@hiking4good.com.

Zion Hill

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