Female elephant seals and their pups rest at Año Nuevo beach. Photo: Mike Merrit

South of San Francisco, about 20 miles north of Santa Cruz along Highway 1, lies a beach hidden behind sand dunes covered in an undulating meadow of native grasses. From December through March, if you visit, you’ll hear what sounds like a fleet of diesel-powered tractors echoing off the dunes, because this stretch of sand is the breeding ground for northern elephant seals.

This beach is part of a Marine Protected Area called Año Nuevo State Reserve. These marine mammals, which weigh more than 1000 pounds each, migrate thousands of miles to reach this beach every year, where they mate and then give birth.

Male elephant seals can weigh up to 5,000 pounds. Photo: Dan Costa

For a real-life encounter with these marine mammals, you must reserve or join an Año Nuevo guided tour during breeding season, December 15 through March 31. During these months, visitors to Año Nuevo State Park must be on a guided walk to see the seals, and that’s for good reason.

Male elephant seals, called bulls, are extremely protective of their females and will fight other males to ensure exclusive rights to their harems. Weighing in at 3000-5000 pounds during breeding season, these roughly 15-foot behemoths come barreling toward one another on the beach in surprisingly fast undulations.

A bull elephant seal guards one of the females in his harem. Photo: Dan Costa

What’s That Sound?

As the bull rears up, with his two-foot trunk-like proboscis flapping, he lets out a series of deep, guttural bellows in rhythmic bursts. They sound somewhat like a series of loud farts and burps in an echo chamber or a diesel engine from the early 1900s.

Wildlife biologists once thought that the louder the bellow, the larger and stronger the bull, so the encroaching male could determine by sound alone whether he was a match for his opponent. Although this theory isn’t far off, recent research by Caroline Casey and Colleen Reichmuth at the University of California Santa Cruz has revealed that each male has a distinct “clap-threat call.” If two males have fought before, they recognize each other by this call. This gives the challenger a chance to back down from starting a fight with an opponent he knows he can’t beat.

Females lose 16.5 pounds per day while nursing their pups. Photo: Dan Costa

Mom of the Year

After the females give birth, the pups must be nursed for three weeks straight. During this time, the mothers lose 30-40% of their body weight. That works out to 16.5 pounds per day! As soon as her pup stops suckling, the emaciated female becomes sexually receptive, so males try to mate with her as she makes her way to the ocean for a feast of fish after a nearly month-long fast.

This map shows the diving pattern of an individual female elephant seal foraging at Pratt Seamount in the northeast Pacific. Image: From the collection of Dan Costa, adapted from his article in Marine Mammal Science, 2011

Deep Divers and Long-Distance Swimmers

Out in the ocean, both the females and males dive to depths of 1500 feet, on average, and can stay submerged for up to two hours in search of bottom-dwelling fish. The deepest dive recorded was 5778 feet, which is more than a mile.

A female northern elephant seal in the ocean where she spends 10 months of the year foraging. Photo: Dan Costa

When the northern elephant seals aren’t overrunning the beach at Año Nuevo, they spend most of the year in the open ocean foraging for food. For one month, they rest on a sandy beach during a catastrophic molt. They shed all of their fur at once and grow a new coat. Females and males travel thousands of miles apart on their semiannual migrations. They frequent different feeding areas but return to the same beaches to mate and molt. In one year, females travel approximately 11,000 miles and males travel about 13,000 miles.

Tracks of male (red) and female (yellow) northern elephant seals on their foraging trips to the North Pacific and Gulf of Alaska. Animals were followed by the Tagging of Pacific Pelagics (TOPP) research group at Año Nuevo. Image. Courtesy of Dan Costa/University of California, Santa Cruz

Although they were nearly hunted to extinction in the 19th century for the oil in their blubber, their population is now an estimated 150,000. In California, their population continues to grow each year by 20-30%. There are multiple factors involved in that increase, but one is protection under the Marine Mammal Act since 1972 and another is the grizzly bear’s disappearance from the entire state because they were hunted to extinction. With no more bear attacks to threaten them while they are breeding, nursing, and molting on the beach, the seals have thrived.

Females and their pups in the water just offshore at Año Nuevo State Reserve. Photo: Dan Costa

Take the Self-Guided Mobile Tour

This piece is part of the Santa Cruz Marine Protected Areas Beaches Tour made possible by the Santa Cruz Collaborative with support from the California Marine Sanctuary Foundation and the Resources Legacy Fund. Download the free app with many tours of the Santa Cruz area and beyond.

1. Sources

   • "Benthic foraging on seamounts: A specialized foraging behavior in a deep-diving pinniped," S. M. Maxwell, J. J. Frank, G. A. Breed, P. W. Robinson, S. E. Simmons, D. E. Crocker, and J. P. Gallo-Reynoso. Department of Ocean Sciences and Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Center for Ocean Health, University of California Santa Cruz, 2011.
   • Año Nuevo State Park. California Department of Parks and Recreation website.
   • Guided Walks: Explore Año Nuevo with a Docent Naturalist. California Department of Parks and Recreation website.
   • “Call of the Beach Master.” Año Nuevo Blog, UC Santa Cruz Natural Reserves, September 1, 2015.
   • "Male elephant seals use ‘voice recognition’ to identify rivals, study finds,” by Tim Stephens. University of California Santa Cruz website, August 12, 2015.
   • "Elephant seal tracking reveals hidden lives of deep-diving animals.” May 15, 2012; Tim Stephens. University of California Santa Cruz Website.
   • Northern Elephant Seals: Bioacoustics. Research: Seals and Sea Lions, The Costa Lab website.
   • Northern Elephant Seal (Mirounga angustirostris). Seal Conservation Society website.
   • Northern Elephant Seal. The Marine Mammal Center website.
   • The Northern Elephant Seal: A Life of Singular Extremes. Point Reyes National Seashore. National Park Service, US Department of the Interior.
   • "Benthic foraging on seamounts: A specialized foraging behavior in a deep-diving pinniped," by Jessica J. Frank, Greg A. Breed, Patrick W. Robinson, Samantha E. Simmons, Daniel E. Crocker, Juan Pablo Gallo-Reynoso, and Daniel P. Costa. Marine Mammal Science, Vol. 28, Issue 3, Society for Marine Mammalogy, September 2011.

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Moffett Field from the air in 2008. Hangar One can be seen in the left center and Hangars Two and Tree in the right center. Photo credit: NASA.

Looking out over Silicon Valley, the airstrips of Moffett Field and its three gigantic hangars are a defining feature. The airfield is a bastion of open space surrounded by dense urbanity to the west and salt ponds and the bay to the east. If you drive by it along Highway 101, your eye naturally finds Hangar One. Oddly beautiful, it stands apart from Hangars Two and Three and conjures up a sense of hugeness, achievement, and possibility. Built in 1932 to house the Navy’s cutting edge lighter-than-air rigid airship, the USS Macon, Hangar One is the icon of Moffett Field and a symbol of pioneering aeronautical achievement in the 20th century.

You might have noticed that Hangar One looks different since 2011. This change in appearance was quite a catalyst for other significant changes.

The USS Macon in flight near Hangar One, 1933. Photo credit: NASA

Decades-long Dilemma: What to Do with Hangar One?

Heavy airfield use and related high costs for upkeep nearly shut Moffett Field down on numerous occasions throughout the six decades that it served the Navy as Naval Air Station Moffett Field. It officially closed as a Naval operation in 1994, when it was turned over to NASA Ames Research Center and renamed Moffett Federal Airfield.

Since that time, there has been near continuous evaluation of the fate of the airfield, and Hangar One in particular, by various federal agencies and commissions. The 1994 Moffett Field Comprehensive Use Plan found Moffett Field to be an important federal asset, as did all the other commisssions and committees over the years.

Hangar One in 1992. It looked pretty much like this for 78 years. Photo: NASA Ames Research Center

In 2003, plans to turn Hangar One into a space and science center were put on hold when polychlorinated biphenyl (PCB) was discovered to be leaking from its metal exterior. The Navy was still responsible for the environmental remediation, and its price tag of tens of millions of dollars. Initially, the Navy decided just to remove the metal skin and then demolish Hangar One. This prompted an outcry from local politicians, history preservation groups, and local residents who all wanted to save the Silicon Valley icon.

Graphic on the website of SaveHangarOne.org, founded in 2005. Photo: Courtesy of SaveHangarOne.org

In May 2008, the National Trust for Historic Preservation named Hangar One as one of America’s 11 most endangered historic places. In its news release about the designation, they wrote that the Navy would probably be compelled to complete the remediation but then leave the skeletal frame exposed to the elements to avoid costly restoration. They were right.

Public Protests the Navy’s Plans

In 2011, the Navy began stripping the interior and exterior PCB-laden metal covering of Hangar One at a cost of $25 million. They had no intention of refurbishing the building, but they sprayed the remaining metal skeleton with a coating to protect it from the elements.

Meanwhile, three Google executives, chairman Eric Schmidt and co-founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin, had been leasing Moffett Field’s Hangar 211 for a fleet of private jets since 2007. In October 2011, while Hagar One was still being stripped, they offered NASA $33 million via their company called H211 LLC, to pay for Hangar One’s restoration. In return, they wanted two-thirds of Hangar One’s floor space set aside for eight private jets. NASA could use the rest of the hangar floor area and the space above it.

NASA apparently did not respond to their offer. Perhaps it was because of previous cries of favoritism to Google that resulted because their lease of Hangar 211 was never put up for bid, and they might have purchased jet fuel at a much-reduced cost. Regardless of the reason, the local community saw H211’s offer as the last best hope to save Hangar One.

Hangar One while the outer skin was being removed, 2011. Photo: NASA

In late 2011, Congresswoman Anna Eshoo motivated 21 members of Congress, representatives of the cities of Sunnyvale and Mountain View, and several other interested groups to communicate with Charles Bolden, NASA Administrator, and implore him to accept H211 LLC’s lease offer. With such a viable solution so close, Bolden’s April 12, 2012 written response to Anna Eshoo did not go over well. Bolden replied that “…because NASA has determined that these properties no longer have a mission need and are therefore excess to the Agency, NASA’s Enhanced Use Lease Authorities are not available for these properties.” This incited a firestorm of local outrage and political maneuvering to bring the fate of hangar One and Moffett Field to the attention of all levels of the federal government.

April 27, 2012 letter from Congresswoman Anna Eshoo and 10 other members of Congress to the Honorable Rob Nabors, then White House Director of Legislative Affairs. The letter expresses profound concern about NASA Administrator Charles Bolden’s plan to declare Moffett Field and Hangar One as excess property. Source: Navydocs.org

Just Google it

By mid-2013, thanks to Congressional pressure, it was decided that NASA could negotiate a lease after all. An official NASA request for proposal (RFP) to lease the entire 1000-acre Moffet Federal Airfield (including Hangars One, Two, and Three) was issued in October 2013. A $500,000 cashier’s check was required as a bid deposit (returnable to any non-successful bidders).

Hangar One with its rafters exposed and artfully lit, 2013. Photo: NASA

In February 2014, NASA announced that Google’s proposal won and the company had signed a $1.16 billion, 60-year lease for Moffett Field. The runner-up was Orton Development Inc. of Emeryville, California, which specializes in building renovation and reuse. Google plans to allocate $200 million to rehabilitate the three hangars and two runways, as well as the site’s 18-hole golf course.

As of early 2016, Google is testing three methods for removing the coating that the Navy applied to the frame of Hangar One to prevent corrosion. Some contaminants remain under the coating, and the goal is to remove them before replacing the skin and renovating the hangar. According to Lenny Siegel of SaveHangarOne.org, who is also the recipient of the US Environmental Protection Agency’s 2011 Award for Citizen Excellence in Community Involvement, Google is also in the process of seeking approval for their planned work. According to Siegel, the most significant approval will likely come from the State Historic Preservation Office.

Google intends to use the three renovated hangars as research facilities for robotics and other developing technology. It’s not clear where their eight private jets will go, but cutting edge technology will again be housed in Moffett Field’s Hangar One.

Hangar One in 2014. Photo: NASA

Artichoke Industry by Henrietta Shore, 1937. The oil on canvas painting is located in a lunette at the south end of the Santa Cruz post office. Photo: Julia Gaudinski

The next time you are standing in line to mail a package or renew a passport in the downtown Santa Cruz, California post office, look at the four murals high on the walls above you. Painted by the renowned artist Henrietta Shore, the murals honor local industries: farming, fishing, and limestone quarrying. They depict the laborers as “dignified, monumental forms.”

“Artichoke Industry,” 1 of 2. Mounted in a lunette at the south end of the main lobby in 1937, above the postmaster’s office (oil on canvas, 36 x 72 inches).

“Artichoke Industry,” 2 of 2. Mounted in a lunette at the south end of the main lobby in 1937, above the postmaster’s office (oil on canvas, 36 x 72 inches).

These murals, like the post office itself, were paid for by the federal government. The post office was built in 1912 with a grant from the US Treasury Department. The murals came later when they were commissioned in 1935 by the Treasury Relief Art Project (TRAP). It was in the depths of the Great Depression that followed the stock market crash of 1929, and TRAP was part of the New Deal initiated by President Franklin D. Roosevelt “to put people to work.” In this case, the people put to work were artists.

“Fishing Industry.” Mounted in a lunette at the south end of the lobby in 1937, facing the main entrance (oil on canvas, 48 x 102 inches).

“Limestone Quarries Industry.” Mounted in a lunette at the north end of the lobby in 1937, facing the main entrance (oil on canvas, 48 x 102 inches).

Henrietta Shore, of Carmel, submitted color sketches to TRAP, which commissioned the murals for the Santa Cruz post office. She was paid $233.74 for all four.

Unlike most artists who received TRAP grants, Henrietta Shore was not happy collecting welfare, which is how she saw the TRAP grant. She hated signing a document that said she was “destitute.” Presumably, she saw herself as an important artist who was reduced to begging.

Henrietta Shore painting “Limestone Quarries Industry” in her Carmel, California studio, 1936-1937. This photograph is on display in the lobby of the Santa Cruz post office. Photo: Monterey Museum of Art collection, photographer unknown

Henrietta Shore’s life as an artist

She was born in Toronto, Canada, in 1888. Her prosperous family encouraged her art, and she studied and exhibited in London, New York, and Toronto. In 1914, she moved to Los Angeles, where she exhibited at the new Los Angeles Art Museum. She won prizes at the Pan-Pacific Exposition in San Diego in 1915 and, in 1916, helped found the Los Angeles Art Society.

In 1920, she moved to New York. This was a turning point in her career. She embraced a Modernist approach, painting what she called “semi-abstractions.” Her work had always emphasized line and form. Now, according to writer Roger Aiken, it “emphasized simple line and shape to achieve an effect of sonorous rhythm.” In 1923 when she exhibited her new work, she received higher praise than Georgia O’Keefe did for her concurrent exhibit.

“Henrietta Shore in her Los Angeles studio,” c. 1915. Photo: Andrée Hollingrake Dell collection, photographer unknown

After she moved back to Los Angeles in 1927, Arthur Miller of the Los Angeles Times claimed she was “unquestionably one of the most important living painters of this century.” That same year, Reginald Poland, director of the San Diego Museum of Art, said, “She is a profound artist…. A great future awaits Henrietta Shore.”

The Carmel-based photographer Edward Weston is well known today partly through the efforts of Henrietta Shore. They met in Los Angeles, where he visited her studio and was profoundly moved by her work. She convinced Reginald Poland to exhibit Weston’s photographs at the San Diego Museum of Art. The two artists became close friends, and Weston claimed that he was awakened to shells, a frequent subject of his work, by her paintings.

“Waterfall,” an example of Henrietta Shore’s semi-abstractions, c. 1922 (oil on canvas, 26 x 26 inches). Dallas Museum of Art, Foundation for the Arts Collection, Boeckman Mayer Family Fund of the Foundation for the Arts.

When Shore visited Weston in Carmel, she was delighted and inspired by the beauty of the Carmel coast. In her youth, when she studied in London, John Singer Sargent advised her to abandon school and go directly to nature for inspiration. In Carmel, she followed that advice. Her mature work showed an intense interest in nature, albeit a nature that was transcendent and mystical. One of the few statements Shore made about her work was in a letter she wrote to Weston in 1933:

“To be true to nature one must abstract. Nature does not waste her forms. If you would know the clouds, then study the rocks.”

In 1930, Shore moved to Carmel where Weston lived. She was 50 years old and wanted to settle down. Although she remained in Carmel for the rest of her working life, she had no further significant commissions nor exhibitions except for the post office murals, one exhibit in 1931 at the Legion of Honor museum in San Francisco, and one small book of her work that was published in 1933. In 1939, Weston wrote in a Monterey newspaper, “Henrietta Shore is an artist by destiny, a figure of national importance, lost in Carmel.”

She spent her later years in poverty. In 1958, she experienced a final indignity when she was committed to a mental hospital in San Jose, even though there is no evidence that she was insane. Supposedly, a busybody neighbor went to her studio and, finding it disorganized, had her committed. She died in that hospital on May 17, 1963 at the age of 83.

In the last 30 years, there has been a resurgence of interest in Henrietta Shore’s art. Her work has appeared in numerous exhibits, she has been extolled in books and articles, and in 2015, her painting titled “Waterfall” was acquired by the Dallas Museum of Art.

See More of Henrietta Shore’s Work

Currently, the Santa Cruz Museum of Art and History (MAH) has a small, temporary installation of Shore’s work on their second floor landing.

This blog post is a shorter version of a more in-depth article on Shore’s life and work entitled “A Gift to the City,” which can be found in Pathways to the Past: Adventures in Santa Cruz County History. The entire article is available as a downloadable pdf file on the MAH website.

Take the Self-Guided Mobile Tour

This piece is part of the Downtown Historic-Art Tour made possible Don Lauritson with the support of the Santa Cruz Historic Preservation Commission. Download the free app with many tours of the Santa Cruz area and beyond.

“She has all the suffering of mankind in her but all of the perseverance too. A restraint and a strange courage. You can see anything you want in her. She is immortal.” – Roy Stryker. Photo by Dorothea Lange, Nipomo, California, 1936. Photo courtesy the US Library of Congress and Wikipedia.

It was March of 1936, in the farms of southwest California. The woman pictured above had just sold her tires as a last, desperate effort to barter another day’s worth of food for her large and hungry family. She represented the impoverished migrant workers trapped in Nipomo Mesa, California. This is what you would gather if you were to read Dorothea Lange’s field notes for this image. In fact, the woman’s name is Florence Owens Thompson, and she was to became the face of the Great Depression, and poverty in America.

The Making of The Migrant Mother

Lange, a Resettlement Administration (RA) photographer, was returning from a month shooting images of poverty in the West Coast. As she drove through the valleys of California, she passed signs calling for pea-pickers, directing passersby to the migrant workers camp not far down the road. Twenty minutes had passed since the signs, and Lange’s growing intuition of a good photo opportunity waiting for her at the camps caused her to turn around. When she arrived, she found thousands of workers with no work, and hundreds of families with no food. Out of the entire camp, she choose one family to introduce to the world.

A photo of Dorothea Lange by Robert Partridge. Photo courtesy the US Library of Congress and Wikipedia.

Florence and her family were on their way from their home in Modesto, California, to find work picking crops in the farms of Pajaro Valley. As they were driving past Nipomo Mesa, the t-chain in the car snapped. Her husband, Jim, took the older children to town to get the parts needed to repair the car. In the meantime, Florence took her youngsters to a massive camp full of stranded migrant workers stuck in poverty after the promised, harvestable crop was devastated due to freezing rain.

According to Florence, Lange quietly wandered to their make-shift site with a camera in her hand, took some photos and jotted down a few notes along the way. Responding to Florence’s concern, Lange said that the photos would never be published. Lange did not keep her word.

Mama’s Been Shot

A day after her photo shoot in Nipomo, Lange took the freshly developed images straight to the San Francisco News. A day later, a story titled “What Does the New Deal Mean to this Mother and Her Child?” ran in the paper with the now iconic “Migrant Mother” photo as the lead. That photo helped solidify Lange as an established American photographer. It also prompted the shipment of 20,000 pounds of food to the 2,500 to 3,500 starving workers in the camps of Nipomo Mesa. The picture however, did nothing positive for Florence and her family. They quickly repaired their car and continued on their way to find work elsewhere. While selling newspapers outside of Watsonville, California, one of the Thompson sons saw the photo and brought it back to his family screaming “Mama’s been shot, Mama’s been shot!” Florence looked at the picture in silence.

The other five photos of the Thompson family taken by Lange in Nipomo, California, 1936. Photo courtesy of the US Library of Congress and Wikipedia.

Consequences of the Betrayal

Florence’s identity wasn’t discovered until the late 1970s and it was only then she began to tell her story to the media. She did not shy away from mentioning that she never received even a penny for the photo that sold for $244,500 in 1998 to the Getty Museum of Los Angeles. When speaking of life after the photo, Florence mentioned the work it required to sustain a family of ten children: “I worked in hospitals, I tended bars, I cooked, and I worked in the fields.” Unfortunately, the Thompson’s lives were not improved after Lange. “Our life was hard long after that photograph was taken,” said one of Thompson’s daughter’s. For the next four decades after the publication of the image, Florence worked her family out of poverty and up to the middle class without any help from Lange’s valuable photo.

Thompson’s character and perseverance were tested until the very end of her life when she battled with recovery after a stroke, heart complications, and cancer. Her children, unfamiliar with asking for and receiving charity, created the Migrant Mother Fund in order to uphold their vow of keeping their mother out of a nursing home. The family received an amazing $35,000 from the effort to pay for the weekly care costs of $1,400. Just a few weeks after the funds were raised, at the age of 80, Florence died in her home in Scotts Valley, California. She is buried at Lakewood Memorial Park in Hughson California. The inscription on her gravestone reads “Migrant Mother – A Legend of the Strength of American Motherhood.”

This is exactly the feeling that the temple builders were going for. The Pulgas Water Temple was designed to be a grandiose monument to the wide-ranging achievements culminating in the Hetch Hetchy water system. It marks the end of the 167-mile Hetch Hetchy aqueduct. The aqueduct moves water from the majestic peaks of Yosemite National Park in the high Sierra Nevada mountain range across the parched Central Valley of California to the San Francisco Bay Area. The system involves more than 60 miles of tunnels and several reservoirs and pump stations.

The full inscription on the Pulgas Water Temple reads “I give waters in the wilderness and rivers in the desert, to give drink to my people.” Isaiah 43:20. Photo: Julia Gaudinski/Mobile Ranger

The temple is at the southern edge of the Upper Crystal Springs Reservoir, which is one of a system of four reservoirs built between 1865 and 1888 by the Spring Valley Water Company to provide water for San Francisco. It straddles the spot where waters from the Tuolumne River watershed mix with local water within the San Francisco and Peninsula watersheds.

Century-long Controversy over Moving Water to San Francisco

Acquiring the necessary land, capital, and permits for the Hetch Hetchy water system required not only impressive feats of structural engineering but also feats of political maneuvering and deft public relations. The story begins in the 1880s when San Francisco’s leaders realized they needed more water than their local watersheds could provide.

Bringing water west from the Sierra was an idea that had started as early as the 1860s when a former Spring Valley Water Company employee decided to try to bring Sierra water to both the Central Valley and the Nevada desert for irrigation. Although he had little success, the idea took root of moving water across huge distances, not to mention challenging geography.

In 1882, getting water to San Francisco from the Tuolumne River watershed was seen as a real possibility, so numerous investigations and several studies were conducted. In 1900, the United States Geological Survey (USGS) recommended the Hetch Hetchy Valley, at the headwaters of the Tuolumne River, as the best source for San Francisco’s water supply. It was during this time, in 1890, that Congress established Yosemite National Park, which includes the Hetch Hetchy Valley.

View across Hetch Hetchy Valley, early 1900s, before the O’Shaughnessy Dam was built. Photo: Isaiah West Taber, Sierra Club Bulletin, Vol. VI, No. 4, January 1908.

James Phelan, then the mayor of San Francisco, was so convinced that Tuolumne water was essential that he and city engineers privately funded surveys and filed for water rights as private citizens. From past experience with the Spring Valley Water Company, they were afraid that if what San Francisco was up to became known, private investors would move in for a profiteering land grab.

San Francisco’s first attempt to secure a permit from the US Department of Interior to develop Hetch Hetchy, in 1903, was denied by E. A. Hitchcock, who was then Secretary of the Interior. Major issues concerned whether he had the authority to approve such a permit and the fact that Hetch Hetchy was in a national park.

The next 10 years were a decade of fierce political maneuvering and hardball plays by the City of San Francisco, which wanted to develop Hetch Hetchy, as well as other water companies that wanted to sell San Francisco a different water system (getting water from other Sierra watersheds: the American and Consumnes), irrigation districts in the Toulomne watershed that also wanted rights to the water, and the legendary John Muir and the Sierra Club who wanted to save Hetch Hetchy Valley from being dammed.

The city applied for another development permit in 1905 and was again turned down. In early 1906, the city supervisors voted to abandon the Hetch Hetchy project. But the 1906 earthquake quickly changed their minds. The quake caused fires that burned for days, and the failure of the water system to provide enough water to fight the fires became fuel to reignite the city’s commitment to secure water rights to Hetch Hetchy.

In 1907, the city began courting the latest Secretary of Interior, James R. Garfield. The Sierra Club, which formed in 1892, saw what the city was trying to do and began a serious campaign to save Hetch Hetchy Valley. When the city applied for a permit again in 1908, Garfield approved it but only conditionally. He stipulated that Lake Eleanor, a much smaller water source, had to be developed first, before they could develop Hetch Hetchy Valley, the real prize.

Map of the Hetch Hetchy aqueduct, which began to deliver water 167 miles west to San Francisco in 1934. Map:  Shannon1

In 1910, San Francisco began development of Lake Eleanor but insisted that it needed to develop Hetch Hetchy at the same time. In response, the opposition successfully lobbied the new Secretary of the Interior, Richard A. Ballinger, to visit Hetch Hetchy Valley himself and reopen the issue. Ballinger forced the city to show cause why they truly needed to develop Hetch Hetchy Valley and to again investigate alternatives. He also created a special Board of Army Engineers to investigate the issue.

In 1911, Ballinger resigned due to poor health. In 1912, the next Secretary of the Interior, Walter L. Fisher, convened more hearings. In 1913, the Board of Army Engineers recommended approving the project. Fisher then backpedaled by deciding that he did not have the regulatory authority to grant such a permit after all and declared that it would require an act of Congress.

Final approval for the project came down to the 1913 Raker Act. Testimony in the Senate became national in scope, with letters and newspapers from coast to coast weighing in on the issue. The act passed on December 6, 1913, probably because on December 2, William Randolph Hearst created a 16-page Washington edition of the San Francisco Examiner in support of its passage and put it on every Senator’s desk. After winning, the city started work on damming Hetch Hetchy within four months.

Pulgas Water Temple: Grand Finale to an Epic Battle

Twenty years later, the first rush of water from Hetch Hetchy Reservoir came through the Pulgas Water Temple. The assembled dignitaries proclaimed the achievement and reminded San Franciscans how much safer the city was from future earthquake fires with this new reliable water supply. It turns out the dignitaries were assembled around only a temporary temple that was an exact replica of the Sunol Water Temple built in 1910.

Dignitaries surround the temporary temple to celebrate water from the Hetch Hetchy water system coming to San Francisco, October 28, 1934. No one seems to know exactly what happened to this temporary structure. Photo: Onsite interpretive sign, Julia Gaudinski/Mobile Ranger

The permanent temple was built in 1938 and, like the Sunol temple, was designed in the Beaux Arts style. The idea for both temples was to reflect the architecture of ancient Greeks and Romans whose engineering inspired the new water systems. For decades, the Hetch Hetchy water actually went through the Pulgas Water Temple. Stories abound of people jumping down into the temple and riding the waters through the tunnel into the reservoir. Whether these tales are true or urban legend is unclear, but in 2004, such a feat became impossible when the main water water flow was diverted to a treatment plant. Now, water that flows through the temple is just a small, symbolic amount and clearly flows to pipes.

The Sunol Water Temple. The first Pulgas Water Temple was an exact replica. Photo: Courtesy of Ike9898

Some of the details on the ornate Beaux Arts style of the Pulgas Water Temple. Photo: Julia Gaudinski/Mobile Ranger

The Fight Isn’t Over Yet

The Sierra Club has never forgotten Hecth Hetchy Valley. Beginning with a 1955 movie called Two Yosemites, they portray the Hetch Hetchy water system as a mistake. That opinion has gained a lot of traction since 1970 when the Sierra Club first began calling for O’Shaughnessy Dam, the dam that impounds Hetch Hetchy Valley, to be removed and the valley to be restored.

In 1999, the organization called Restore Hetch Hetchy was formed by a consortium of environmental groups, including the Sierra Club, to intensify lobbying for that goal. They have been so successful that, in 2012, San Francisco residents were asked to vote on Proposition F, which would have required the the City of San Francisco to evaluate how to drain and restore the Hetch Hetchy Valley and to identify replacement water and power sources. However, only 23% voted in favor, so that initiative failed.

Restore Hetch Hetchy advocates contend that numerous studies have shown the idea is feasible. They are regrouping and plan to continue the nearly 100-year fight. You can watch their short Restore Hetch Hetchy video on YouTube.

Restore Hetch Hetchy logo

This aerial photo taken about 3.5 miles north west of Western Drive on Highway 1 shows four marine terraces. The numbers correspond to the generally accepted numbering of each terrace—from the first marine terrace (agricultural fields) to the fourth (highest set). Picture © Kenneth and Gabrielle Adelman, California Coastal Records Project www.Californiacoastline.org

Have you ever wondered why much of the Westside of Santa Cruz and all the agricultural fields just north of it are so flat, or why many of the hills climb upwards like a staircase to flat tops? It’s because the local landscape is made up of ancient marine terraces, which formed as sea level rose and fell over the millennia. They are clearly visible from Western Drive north to Año Nuevo State Reserve.

The flat foreground is the first marine terrace. The second marine terrace is clearly visible. To the right of the middle white arrow, in the background, you can see the third.

The Santa Cruz marine terraces are a series of platforms cut into the ocean-facing slope of our local mountain (Ben Lomond Mountain). Each terrace is an ancient ocean floor that has since been slowly uplifted by large-scale tectonic movements. The higher the terrace, the older it is.

The first marine terrace is 105,000 years old and the fifth is about 550,000 years old. The steep surfaces that separate each terrace are old beach cliffs eroded away by waves during high stands in global sea level that occur during glacial cycles. The Westside of Santa Cruz and the many agricultural fields to the northwest are on the first marine terrace (also known as the Highway 1 Terrace). The second terrace parallels Highway 1 on the inland side all the way to Davenport. It is very easy to spot once you know it.

Map showing the Santa Cruz marine terraces. The purple is the first marine terrace. The blue is referred to here as the second, green the third, yellow the fourth and red the fifth marine terrace. The black arrow points to fifth marine terrace. Image is modified from a 2008 paper by Art White and colleagues on chemical weathering (listed at bottom).

How Do They Form?

Marine terraces can be found in many places around the globe but just the right conditions must be present for them to form. These are:

• Slow and steady tectonic uplift (rates of about 0.02 inches per year)
• Repeating cycles of rising and falling sea level (rise and fall of up to 400 feet!)
• Just the right rate of erosion for a wave cut platform to form and a sea-cliff to be preserved

To understand how marine terraces are created, begin by thinking about the beaches of today. Each of the terraces you see once looked like a modern beach.

Schematic showing how a modern beach platform evolves into a marine terrace. Figure from a 2001 USGS paper by Gerald Webber and Alan Allwardt .

Normally, most of the ocean’s wave energy is used in leveling the wave-cut platform. But during winter storms and high tides large energetic waves erode into the sea cliff. In order for a marine terrace to form from a modern sea cliff, two things must happen:

• Sea level falls by 10 to 100s of feet, leaving the cliff free from further wave erosion.
• Continuous tectonic uplift then isolates it from the next high sea level stand.

Once the ocean recedes during a low stand in sea level, the process starts over again. The beach slowly rises becoming the new elevated sea cliff and terrace platform, and when the ocean advances again it slowly cuts a new wave-cut platform into the terrace. Erosional processes during uplift round out and bury much of the original beach deposits and sharp contours.

Another key factor is the erosion rate of the rock that makes up the mountain. It has to be hard enough to hold a cliff edge. In Santa Cruz, it is the Santa Cruz Mudstone that forms the modern sea cliffs and most of the marine terraces. It makes a hard and durable sea cliff that takes time to erode. In fact, the waves need to be focused in one location for a long time — thousands of years — to form a sea cliff. Also, sea level must rise at a rate just slightly greater than the tectonic uplift rate. If sea level rises too fast or too slow, wave action will not be focused on one location long enough to create a wave-cut platform and a sea cliff.

Geek Details: How Many Terraces and How Old?

The number of marine terraces found on Ben Lomond Mountain is still debated in scientific papers. Papers in the 1960s reported up to nine. Since the mid-1970s, five or six are generally reported. Part of the reason for the disagreement is that the higher terraces are older, more modified by erosion and harder to identify conclusively. Also, not all of the terraces run contiguously along the length of the coast. For example one terrace is found only in the Davenport area. It is above the Highway 1 Terrace but below the second terrace (as it is shown in the image above).

The ages of the terraces from youngest (lowest) to oldest (highest) are reported to be 105, 213, 320, 430 and 545 thousand years. Terrace age is debated in scientific studies, in large part because of the different dating methods used:

• Uranium series dating, which measures the amount of short-lived decay products resulting from radioactive decay of Uranium in fossil corals and mollusks over time
• Amino-acid racemization, which measures the degradation of proteins in fossilized organisms into suites of amino acids over time
• Cosmogenic dating, which measures the buildup of beryllium-10 and aluminum-26, naturally occurring isotopes found in dust and known to be created at a fairly constant rate

Each method includes some unavoidable assumptions and has limitations. Their application to the terraces results in ages that vary 20-50 thousand years for the first terrace and 200+ thousand years for the third and higher terraces. I have given the ages from a 2001 paper by Gerald Webber and Alan Allwardt because the authors discuss all of the available studies and make a good case for their choices.

Monopole turbines at Altamont Pass, 2008. Photo: David J Laporte

I’m sure many Californians have marveled at the thousands of wind turbines spinning atop the golden hillsides along Highway 580 between eastern Alameda and Contra Costa counties. I remember looking out the window as a child in awe of the behemoths’ slowly turning blades, thinking they belonged to a futuristic era run by robots. Little did I know, the turbines of Altamont Pass comprise the oldest wind farm in the United States and once produced half of the world’s wind-generated electricity.

The Town of Altamont

Before Altamont Pass was realized as a prime location for wind turbines, a few homesteaders in the late 1800s tried to set down roots on the windy hillsides. The town of Altamont came to life in 1868 along with the Central Pacific Railroad. Settlers of Altamont had unfounded hopes of transforming the landscape into rolling fields of productive crops. The unrelenting winds, however, proved too strong and Altamont was mostly abandoned by 1939.

Ranchers took the place of these first settlers, grazing cattle on the windy hillsides. Some ranchers still live on the windswept lands today, bolstering their slim ranching profits with money made from harnessing the wind.

Altamont Pass, 2008. Photo: David J Laporte

The Wind Rush of the 1980s

After the 1973 oil crisis, the U.S. government began offering tax incentives for renewable sources of energy. With a new bill in 1979 that provided a 15 percent tax credit for wind projects, wind farms became a very profitable investment. This triggered an era called the ‘Wind Rush’ and visionary entrepreneurs began frantically scouting out the windiest sites. When one of these entrepreneurs, Alvin Duskin, was told by a state meteorologist of the unceasing winds of Altamont Pass, he quickly went to work getting investors and the site’s ranchers on board. In 1981, it was the first wind farm in the United States to start spinning its blades. Four years later 1,600 turbines harnessed the wind on Altamont Pass.

The big profits ended in 1986 when both state and federal credits were repealed. Many wind farmers barely made it through the late 80s and 90s. Things only got worse for Altamont Pass in 1992 when a study by the California Energy Commission revealed that the farm’s turbines killed an estimated 39 golden eagles per year.

Migratory Route Turned Wind Farm

It turns out Altamont Pass is a major migratory route and offers prime hunting grounds for golden eagles, American kestrels, and red-tailed hawks. Further studies have shown that 2 to 4 thousand birds, including the federally protected golden eagle, die each year from colliding with a turbine while flying through Altamont Pass. To add insult to injury, the design of the original 1980s windmills utilized a lattice base that is an attractive resting and nesting site for birds. Although the turbines’ blades appear to move slowly, some reach speeds of up to 179 mph, plenty fast to severely injure or kill a bird (or bat) if they get too close.

Newer monopole turbines tower above the old lattice base turbines from the 1980s. Pictured in 2008. Photo: David J Laporte

Quality Over Quantity: New Turbines at Altamont Pass

Today, the Altamont Pass Wind Farm is one of three major wind resource areas in the state, along with Tehachapi and San Gorgonio. The three regions combined provide 95 percent of the state’s commercial wind-powered electricity. As of 2012, five percent of the state’s power came from wind, and the goal is to ramp that number up to 33 percent by 2020. Altamont Pass is a huge part of this project: At over 4,000 turbines, it has the largest concentration of wind turbines in the world. The problem is, most of these turbines are over three decades old, and relative to their newer counterparts, don’t produce nearly as much power and are a greater threat to wildlife.

Seasonal shutdowns of the turbines help prevent bird fatalities but ‘repowering’ (replacing old, inefficient turbines with newer, safer and higher energy-producing models) will hopefully save more birds when the blades aren’t at rest. You can see these 430-foot turbines towering above the old 80 foot lattice base models. Each new turbine generates as much electricity as 23 of the old towers. The new towers are part of a 2010 agreement made between environmental groups, the state and NextEra Energy Resources (a Florida-based energy company with wind projects nationwide) to decrease the number of bird deaths at Altamont Pass. Not only do these new turbines decrease the concentration of windmills, but the blades rotate more slowly and are much quieter.

Initial studies conducted for the 2010 agreement showed a 54 percent decrease in raptor fatalities and 66 percent decrease in fatalities for all birds. More recent studies, however, are showing that the new models kill more birds per individual turbine because they reach into air space used by high-flying raptors and have a much wider rotor span.

Altamont Pass with green hills in 2008. Photo: Fietsbel

The Future of Wind Farms at Altamont Pass

A company called Ogin has broken away from the standard 18th century windmill design. The spinning rotors of their turbines have a diameter of only 41 feet—the monopole’s is 300!—surrounded by a ring of large flaps called a shroud, meant to prevent birds from flying too close to the deadly blades. These new-age windmills sit much lower to the ground, are much quieter and produce up to 50 percent more energy per turbine. The timeline is unclear, but Altamont Pass plans to replace some of the turbines with the new shrouded design in hopes of protecting both birds and bats while generating more power.

Ideally, because Altamont Pass is a major migratory route and breeding area for raptors, it wouldn’t be a wind farm at all. It’s hard to say what the distant future holds for Altamont Pass. Perhaps centuries from now the turbines will all stand still, artifacts of a bygone era. Wind will be harnessed from rooftops so that wide open spaces can remain just that. As people pass through the golden hills, children will peer out the window and wonder at the immobile robots standing sentinel over the barren landscape, and golden eagles will soar unscathed past the motionless blades in the unremitting wind.

Updated August 9, 2016

The bluffs and adjacent creek and valley are named after William Waddell who conducted timber operations there in the 1860s. At that time, stagecoaches could only pass the bluffs by waiting for low tide and using the hard packed sands of the beach. During winter, passage by beach crossing or even in a boat was essentially impossible and residents couldn’t reasonably reach the county seat in southerly Santa Cruz. In a surprising nod to geography over politics, Santa Cruz County allowed the area north of the bluffs to be annexed to its northerly neighbor, San Mateo County, in 1868.

An Engineering Nightmare

Even with the development of heavy machinery, engineers struggled for several more decades with how to construct safe passage over or past the cliffs at a reasonable cost. The Ocean Shore Electric Railway couldn’t complete a continuous railroad between San Francisco and Santa Cruz during 1905 to 1908 because of the Waddell Bluffs. The State of California acquired the land in 1933 but didn’t come up with a viable roadway design until 1941. The project was delayed due to WWII, but did begin in 1947 and was completed in 1948.

The design essentially cut into the slope and then used the material as fill to create an adjacent, flat roadbed along the beach. A massive 600 foot long retaining wall was built to protect the section exposed to the worst wave erosion. The retaining wall consisted of huge boulders weighing up to 11 tons each (called rip-rap). The original rip-rap was quarried granite from 8 miles away. The excavation of the bluffs alone moved 1.1 million cubic yards of material (52 football fields filled to a depth of 10 feet).

Erosion Never Stops

A debris trench 15 feet wide, 4 feet high, with a 2 foot berm separating it from the highway, was also constructed to catch falling pieces of rock. This design took advantage of a fortuitous property of the Santa Cruz Mudstone; it rarely falls as large blocks. Instead, it tends to break apart in small chunks. This produces a relatively manageable rain of debris, which can be removed periodically from the trench.

Unfortunately, large blocks do occasionally come down and bounce onto highway one. In the 1990s, a man traveling north in a passenger truck was killed by a rock that bounced through his front window. Litigation after the accident accused Caltrans of improper maintenance and emptying of the debris trench. Thus in 1994, Caltrans installed the steel-wire and rope-net barrier fence that is there today.

To maintain the depth of the trench, Caltrans annually removes 15 to 30,000 cubic yards of rock (0.7 to 1.4 football fields filled to 10 feet) and places it onto the beach. Winter storms entrain it into the ocean currents and carry it southward. Without the highway the rock would have fallen onto the beach and moved into the ocean currents naturally. Studies mandated by the California Coastal Commission have not found any adverse ecological impacts from this method of rock removal.

Erosions Many Forms

Not only are the rocks falling from the Waddell Bluffs a constant hazard, the roadbed is essentially on an active beach and is attacked by waves. The El Niño storms of 1983 removed all of the loose rock and fill protecting the highway at their southern half. This section was repaired and reinforced with rip-rap within that year.

Whenever I drive on those bluffs, I can’t help but imagine falling rocks or a huge slide. I always wonder how that weird fence will react and if that circled wire will really provide the needed flexibility to hold in the kinetic energy. I think my foot gets a little heavy in an effort to get me out of there fast.

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As a college student in the late 1980s I frequently drove from my mom’s house just north of San Francisco to college in Santa Cruz along Highway 1. The drive is stunning.  As I studied geology, what I saw slowly gained more meaning. Ah those funny slumping pockets of earth, wow I see them everywhere now, those are landslides. The flat staircase-like mountains, those are ancient ocean floors uplifted by the San Andreas Fault system. I could now see, understand, and interpret the forces of time, water and energy. They work predictably, and create awe-inspiring landscapes.

Park rangers teach people about natural resources and hopefully inspire wonder and desires toward stewardship. That’s what I wanted to do. Being a park ranger is a coveted job. I tried to get one; I ended up volunteering in the National Parks. I was not patient enough with visitors and, surprisingly to me in 1988; my being female was an issue. It did not work out.

California State Park Ranger Patricia M. Scully circa 1975.

Patricia M. Scully was a successful female park ranger in 1975. She had passion for the outdoors and took great joy in teaching people. Her brother Tom Scully says she had a gift and could effectively communicate the world’s natural beauty to even the most recalcitrant park visitor. On May 6, 1976 at the age of 25, she was killed while on duty in a senseless car accident. The driver of a Corvair was driving 80 mph, trying to get airborne, succeeded, and crushed Patty in her State Park truck.

Steve Barber is a State Park Ranger today at Millerton Lakes. This park is crowded and full of partying campers. He too often has to deal with the less inspirational side of being a park ranger and enforce the law. After a hard 9 am to midnight shift, he was decompressing by surfing the web, and found a very short write up about Patricia M. Scully on the “Officer Down Memorial Page.” He noticed there was no commemoration of her death, and decided it was time, about 36 years later, that she is officially honored for her service and her sacrifice. Steve wrote a letter directly to State Senator Leland Yee’s office and started the long and political process of getting a proper memorial for Patty.

The State Park Rangers and State Park Lifeguards assemble beneath the memorial highway sign, June 1, 2013 at San Gregorio State Breach, California.

On June 1, 2013, thanks to the emotional conviction of a young male park ranger, born after her death, a 4.5-mile stretch of Highway One, just north of San Gregorio State Park, was dedicated to State Park Ranger Patricia M. Scully. The event was a celebration of her life, her dedication to educating the public, and of the State Park Service itself. Containing the accident site, it is the first memorial highway section ever to be dedicated to a California State Park Ranger. She was further honored, by being inducted into the San Mateo County Peace Officer Memorial, on September 25, 2013.

I drove by the “State Park Ranger Patricia M. Scully Memorial Highway” sign last week. It tugged at my heart. This woman had moxy to be one of 18 female park rangers in the state of California in 1976. She could both understand and communicate passionately about nature. I wished I could have known her. I have recently left a stable career path, and taken a more risky turn at starting a business that communicates science and the wonders of nature to the general public. Its been rocky…thoughts of Patty bolstered my resolve. Made me promise to try harder and not give up.

State Park Ranger Patricia M. Scully’s memorial road sign. Located near the original accident site and just north of San Gregorio State Park, Highway 1, California. There is another sign 4.5 miles north of here facing southbound traffic.

I suddenly understood why we need memorial remembrances. Even in death, perhaps especially in tragic death, people’s stories inspire the living. Without that sign, I would not have known Patty’s story. Thank you Steve Barber. Thank you Patricia M. Scully.