Standing Redwood Burns Fourteen Months

The Chimney Tree, Big Basin.
Courtesy Jill Ramar

Redwoods are somewhat fire resistant and can survive, and in fact heal, after being burned. "Other trees are consumed, but the redwoods battle with the demon and conquer." In August 1907, the Santa Cruz Sentinel asked: "Stand beside the chimney tree and ask its story. It will relate seige [sic] after seige [sic] with the fire fiend."

In 1911, the Chimney Tree, pictured here, was described in the Sentinel: "Its burnt-off top being 150 feet high, the entire tree being hollow inside like a flue, with green limbs growing from the top. To stand in the trunk of this tree and look up through the charred interior to the patch of blue sky far above, interlaced there with green branches, emphasizes the work of nature when producing the strange and awe-inspiring."

In 1904, a huge fire swept through the Big Basin area. It started near the Middleton mill on Waterman Creek and burned for 20 days, blackening around one third of the 3,900 acres of the park. "The fire was little more than a ground fire in the big timber regions. Fir, and other pitch trees suffered of course, but the big redwoods received little harm."

Below is an account from the Mountain Echo newspaper, November 18, 1905 edition. It tells of an unusual fire inside a redwood that erupted twice, months after the original 1904 blaze:

"Last May we published an account of a fire braking out in the top of a large redwood tree in the [Big Basin Redwoods] State Park, where the big forest fire of the September previous, or in 1904, had swept.

This curious fire must have smoldered in the top of the tree from September 1904 to May 17th of this year, when it broke out about 140 feet from the ground and burned off about 10 feet at the top of the tree, which was already a “stub,” or broken topped tree. The tree then burned in the top for a short time and appeared to die out.

On the 7th of this month, or fourteen months after the original fire and nearly six months subsequent to the May eruption, the flames again burst forth in the top of this tree and there was again a roaring furnace of fire for a time and another section of about ten feet of the stubbed top was burned off and fell crashing to the ground. The fire then died down and has since appeared to be out.

It was fortunate that Park Warden Pilkington and his men happed to be at work on the road near by when the fire broke out on the 7th inst., as the woods roundabout were as dry as tinder and if the burning tree had not been promptly surrounded by a fire trail there would undoubtedly have been another fire-swept tract in the park, as the burning tree stands near the edge of last year’s burned district and near plenty of combustible material."

This article was first published in the Santa Cruz Mountain Bulletin in March 2019.

The Sayant and Achistaca

Before contact in 1769, the Ohlone people lived and managed the land here. Their total population once numbered 10,000 or more with many villages in and around Santa Cruz.

Village populations ranged from 50 to 500. In the smaller seasonal villages, the villagers would take advantage of seasonal sources of food, such as game, fish, fruits, berries, nuts, and acorns.

The Ohlone associated with this area belonged to the Awaswas language group, of which at least three tribelets were associated with the San Lorenzo River and Valley. These were the Sayant living by Zayante Creek and for whom the creek takes its name, the Achistaca living in the vicinity of Boulder Creek, and the Uypi living at the mouth of the San Lorenzo River.

The last speaker of Awaswas died in the nineteenth century, though some words from the language have survived.

In 1769, the Portola Expedition "discovered" and named the San Lorenzo River for Saint Laurence. They gave the name Costanoa, meaning "coast people," to the indigenous people that lived here.

In 1791, Mission Santa Cruz, or Holy Cross, was established. It was the 12th Alta California mission. The first Ohlone to be baptized at Mission Santa Cruz, on October 9, 1791, was an eight year old girl from the Achistaca village. According to the baptismal records her name was Moslon, the she was the daughter of Y-noc and Trocsen.

Between 1791 and 1795, 85 members of the Achistaca village went to Mission Santa Cruz, 75 of them were baptized of which just six were parents. Of the Sayant village, 54 were baptized, of which just 6 were parents.

Records indicate that most neophytes at the mission were forcibly detained, poorly treated, and their way of life obliterated. The Santa Cruz Mission gained the moniker “the Hard Luck Mission” because of its troubled history. Its population was the smallest of the 21 missions and it shrank from a peak of 523 in 1796 through flight, and death from disease and maltreatment. 

After Mexico won independence from Spain in 1821, it could not afford the missions, and in 1834, Mission Santa Cruz was one of the first to be secularized. The Ohlone found it impossible to return to their former way of life. Much of their ancestral land had been awarded as Mexican Land Grants.

Three land grants were awarded in the San Lorenzo Valley - Rancho Zayante to Joaquin Buelna in 1843, Rancho Cañada del Rincon en el Rio de San Lorenzo (meaning valley on the corner on the San Lorenzo River) to Frenchman Pierre Sainsevain in 1843, and Rancho La Carbonera (meaning relating to charcoal) to Guillermo Bocle, aka Englishman William Thompson, in 1838.

William Ware, an Irishman who settled in Santa Cruz County in 1836, resided with his wife Twaneeya on the Zayante Ranch. She has been referred to as the last of the Zayante. When she died, she was buried in Felton Grove. At one time her gravesite had a marker, undoubtably now washed away with one of the Felton Grove floodings.

Photographer Fredda C. Carr - "The most famous person in the valley that nobody knew."

Fredda Carlisle Carr Collection,
San Lorenzo Valley Museum,
 2009-011-1292

Fredda was born on May 28, 1903 in Lynn, Massachusetts to Melville Carr and Nettie Carlisle. The family moved to Tuolumne County, California around 1910.

Fredda relocated to San Francisco in the 1930s where she worked in various occupations, including creating advertising “showcards,” until the mid-1940s. It was here she met James [Jim] Heath. Jim, who also had an artistic flair, worked as a "card writer."  He would become a close friend and companion.

Fredda moved to Boulder Creek around 1949 where she ran a photography studio on South Street. Jim visited often and attended local functions with Fredda, including the Ben Lomond Fire Department's Halloween costume party.

In 1954, she moved to Ben Lomond and opened a portrait studio in the old telephone exchange on the corner of Mill Street in Ben Lomond (now Sew Rose), where she ran her business until 1985. Jim painted the business sign. Fredda recalled the flood of '55, which flooded Mill Street, destroyed her garage, and claimed her Dodge automobile: "It's strange the things you will do. My garbage can was beginning to float away and I went into the yard to save it. A ladder was floating in the water and I remember it nearly took me downstream with it. Come to think of it, I risked my life to save my garbage can." 

Fredda, who had a reputation as an “eccentric,” captured life in the Valley, staged and spontaneous, poised and irreverent, mundane and exceptional, through her photojournalism and portraiture. The San Lorenzo Valley Museum not only has a large collection of her Valley photographs, primarily portraiture, but also many personal photographs of Fredda with Jim, her pets, and her friends.

Fredda was a long time member of the Order of the Amaranth, a social, fraternal, and charitable organization whose membership is open to both men and women with a Masonic affiliation and the Order of the Eastern Star, a Masonic fraternal organization open to both men and women, both organizations having chapters in the Valley.

In her later years she was affected by dementia and in 1990, suffered a debilitating stroke. When she died on November 23, 1992, at the age of 89, she was described as "reclusive and a loner" by those who knew her.  "The most famous person in the valley that nobody knew."  

Ellen Rand Perkins Van Valkenburg

Ellen Rand Perkins Van Valkenburg was the widow of  Henry Van Valkenburg, who established the San Lorenzo Paper Mill in 1860. He was killed by a tree branch during the storms of 1862. Ellen, who was pregnant with their third child, was left to run the business. The mill was sold under foreclosure later that year.

Santa Cruz Weekly Sentinel, September 9, 1871

Ellen went on to be one of the founders of a local temperance movement, “Friends of Universal Suffrage,” and in 1871, tried to register to vote. Albert Brown, the Santa Cruz County clerk and an accomplice, formally refused to register her. 

Albert was among many of the county’s esteemed residents that had signed a petition in 1870 to the California Legislature “to secure to the women of this commonwealth the right of suffrage.”

In the ensuing suit, Ellen argued was that under the 14th Amendment many American women like herself were granted citizenship, and therefore, the rights of citizenship which included voting.

Click Here For Full Document

In August 1871, nationally renowned suffragists Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Emily Pitt Stevens were in Santa Cruz with Ellen when California's Third District Court ruled against her. 

Elizabeth Stanton delivered these words at a lecture at the Unity Church in Santa Cruz: “in the eye of the civil law we are persons, but in representation we are not persons, and have no political rights which men are bound to respect."

Ellen's lawyer, Santa Cruz Judge Albert Hagan, appealed the ruling arguing that women had a right to vote under the Constitution by virtue of their absolute rights as citizens of the United States under the 14th Amendment. Among those rights, as recognized in the 15th Amendment, was the right to vote.  

The case was heard by the State Supreme Court in 1872, which upheld the lower court’s decision. The reasoning was that Ellen had civil rights before the 14th Amendment, since she was already a citizen, and it gave her no political rights. The 15th Amendment specifically applied to males who had been slaves.

To read the full opinion Click Here (Typed). Or Here (Hand written).

Eliza Burhans Farnham (1815 - 1864)

Courtesy of Burhans Genealogy

Eliza Burhans Farnham was an author, feminist, abolitionist, phrenologist, and activist for prison reform. She married Thomas Farnham in 1836 and they had two sons. In 1844, she was appointed matron of the women's ward at Sing Sing Prison, New York. She had radical views, on how women prisoners should be treated and this eventually resulted in her forced resignation. It was at Sing Sing that she met and worked with Georgiana Bruce.

Eliza’s husband had left for California, and in 1848, she received news of his death. Eliza travelled west to settle his affairs, settling on land he had acquired in Santa Cruz County. Here she became a farmer. She was highly critical of the Anglo men who had married into ranchero families in order to gain title to the land.

In California, women were able to own land, and it was her goal that the profits from her land benefit her sons. However, she wrote: “It is no easy thing for a women to defend property here …”

Santa Cruz Weekly Sentinel, February 28, 1863,
Courtesy of Newspapers.com

She found the local society to be illiterate and unsophisticated, and her harsh remarks left her lonely and isolated. She sent for Georgiana Bruce. Georgiana’s gentler character enabled the two to gain a place in Santa Cruz’s social and religious circles.

In 1864, she published Woman and Her Era where she promoted the concept that women were naturally superior to men.  She believed that women should not “be compelled to earn money,” but should be “supported by men,” and because of their high moral values they could and should influence society.

She died soon after of consumption.

In the book History of Woman Suffrage: 1876-1885, by Elizabeth Cady Stanton et al. they wrote: "The advocacy of woman's rights began in Santa Cruz county, with the advent of that grand champion of her sex, the immortal Eliza Farnham, who braved public scorn and contumely because of her advanced views, for many years before the suffrage movement assumed organized form Mrs. Farnham's work rendered it possible for those advocating woman suffrage years later, to do so with comparative immunity from public ridicule."

White Redwoods

When snow falls in the Santa Cruz Mountains our beautiful redwoods turn a glimmering white. Although snowfall is not common, true white redwoods are very rare. These are albino redwoods, that is, they are unable to produce chlorophyll, and need a mother tree in order to survive. The albino tree and the mother tree share a root system and thus the albino obtains the nutrients it needs to grow. 

David Kuty, a docent at Henry Cowell Redwoods State Park has classified them based upon the color of their foliage. There are six variations including white, bright yellow, green and white, and yellow-green. Most albino redwoods are white. Green and white specimens are much rarer.

Botanist Zane Moore, pictured here next to an albino redwood hedge in the Santa Cruz Mountains, has studied and written about albino redwoods. Two such articles written by Zane appear in the Santa Cruz MAH publication Redwood Logging and Conservation in the Santa Cruz Mountains which is available in the San Lorenzo Valley Museum bookstore.

The locations of these rare trees are not publicized in order to protect them; however an albino redwood can be seen on the Redwood Grove Loop Trail at Henry Cowell Redwoods State Park. Look out for it at stop number 14.

During the late 1800s and early 1900s, white redwood sprigs were used in ornamental floral arrangements especially for weddings and at Christmas. Indeed, the casual way in which the sprigs were referenced implies they were not considered too unusual. One such arrangement was described in 1882: “… then there were baskets of tea roses, interspersed with spays of fern, smilax and rare foliage plants, veiled, but not hidden, with the little fairy gypsaphilla, and these were sitting on beds of soft, green wood moss, bordered with flowers and white redwood in Grecian bric-a-brac …” In 1890, a white redwood from Paul Sweet gulch decorated the stage at Signor Enrico de Tomaso's testimonial held at Santa Cruz Opera House.

A ranch at the headwaters of Bear Creek, White Redwood Ranch, was named for the white redwoods that grew “to a respectable size” from the stump of a felled tree. “The green and white trees grow side by side and even from the same stump, and the general appearance of the groves is very peculiar.”

When in 1911, the San Francisco Chronicle reported that a white redwood found near in San Mateo County was the “only one that has been found in California,” the Santa Cruz Sentinel responded with an article entitled “White Redwood Not So Rare.”

In 1915, Andrew P. Hill photographed white redwood sprigs in Big Basin State Park, these photographs were published in the San Jose Mercury Herald. The article attests that “white redwood is rare and is only occasionally found where the second growth comes up after cut-over lands have been burned over.” While this may be a simplified statement, it does appear that stress may be a factor in the growth of white redwoods.

In 1917, a beautiful specimen of white redwood was found between Boulder Creek and Felton. It was presented to the San Jose Chamber of Commerce.

At Christmas 1928, Santa Cruzan Iva Davis and her relatives gathered white redwood at Skyland Ranch, just off Summit Road in the Santa Cruz Mountains.

References to white redwood being used in floral displays continue until the 1940s. In July 1936, “Plant Novelties and Fall Flowers” was the subject for the Santa Cruz Flower Lovers club. It was apparently the most interesting meeting of the season with a wealth of odd plants, shrubs, and “freak blossoms.” A large spray of white redwood was described as “lovely … This was grown where no sun ever reached it.”

You can find out more about these amazing mutations at www.chimeraredwoods.com. 

This is a reprint of an article printed in the Santa Cruz Mountain Bulletin in the November/December 2015 issue.

Locatelli's Famous Cheese Spread

The Ford Treasury of Favorite Recipes
from Famous Eating Places

Newly donated to the Museum Collection is this great little book of Recipes from Famous Eating Places. The book was published in the 1950s by the Ford Motor Company and contains over 250 recipes from restaurants all over the United States.

On page 223, is a recipe for Cheese Spread from Locatelli's Inn in Boulder Creek, California - now Scopazzi's Restaurant and Lounge.

Giuseppe (Joe) Locatelli began construction of the inn in 1915, and it opened as the Italia Hotel. The dining room was added in 1924 and Joe Locatelli's wife Catherine managed the restaurant.  Her food was praised by KCBS radio broadcaster Jim Grady in his show This is San Francisco, especially her “famed salads with Roquefort cheese, her raviolis, and preparation of brook trout.”

From page 223 of the book, a painting of the
Dining Room at Locatelli's Inn by Amber Eustus.

Cheese Spread

1 pound Roquefort or blue cheese
5 tablespoons lemon juice
5 tablespoons Worcester sauce
2 tablespoons A-1 sauce
1 teaspoon dry mustard
1 teaspoon pepper
4 cakes Philadelphia cream cheese or 1 pound of cottage cheese

Cut the Roquefort cheese in small pieces. Place in electric mixer bowl. Add lemon juice, sauces, mustard, and pepper. Beat, using low speed, till light and smooth. Add cottage or cream cheese. Beat again to the consistency of heavy whipped cream. This spread can be kept for weeks in the refrigerator in a tightly covered jar.