1952 May 1 full clip of Redwood history Thu, May 1, 1952 – Page 118
· Oakland Tribune (Oakland, California) · Newspapers.com
TALL TREES GREW HERE AWAY BACK
Redwood Forest Reached for Oakland Sky
CUT TO REBUILD S.F.
It's hard to imagine the smoke of lumber mills shrouding the Oakland skyline and
sweating oxen hauling gigantic redwood logs down Broadway but that's just what
was happening in the year 1849, when most Californians were off to make a
fortune in the foothills of the Sierra Nevada.
Lumber, not gold, lured the first settlers to Oakland. Three forests of gigantic
trees led the hardy pioneers of early California to the east shore of San
Francisco Bay as early as 1840. That towering timber, forgotten now but for a
few scattered stands of second growth and the rotting remains of an old mill,
formed the basis for more than one fortune and the establishment of the city of
Oakland.
THEY BUILT CITY
The big redwoods were directly responsible for Oakland's first streets. They
furnished the wood for its first house and attracted the men who were later to
become the leaders of the state and the community. But by 1860 the towering
groves were only a sea of stumps.
The last remains of Oakland's redwood groves still can be seen from Mountain
Boulevard, where second growth has sprung up around the site of
the Eastbay's
first steam mill on Palo Seco Creek, and in Redwood Regional Park, where
there are the rotting remains of another sawmill that supplied lumber for buildings
"from Martinez to Alvarado.”
Jose de Canizarez, Spanish explorer and cartographer recognized the groves in
1776 and
clearly indicated their position on maps he made at that time as
"bosques de buenas maderas," or forest of good wood.
LUMBERMAN'S HAVOC
Dr. William P. Gibbons, San Francisco physician and student of natural
sciences, explored the redwoods in 1855 and wrote: "But for the sad havoc
wrought there 40 years ago by lumbermen and wood choppers these Oakland hills
might still have presented one of the noblest natural parks conceivable."
Dr. Gibbons, who apparently visited the cut-over forests in the vicinity of
Mountain Boulevard, describes stumps of from 12 to 20 feet in diameter. The
most remarkable specimen in this group, the doctor said, was the united stumps
of three trees which had grown together to give the appearance of one enormous
tree whose trunk presented a body of solid wood 57 feet in diameter.
The San Francisco physician also mentions another grove a half-mile to the
southwest "on the brow of a hill which overlooks the Golden Gate" and where,
at the time of his visit there were many living trees! "At this point," Dr.
Gibbons relates, "partly concealed by a dense growth of ambitious saplings,
are to be found the relics of a redwood tree that once must have been among
the most remarkable and gigantic individuals of its species; now forgotten and
despoiled of its glory, showing nothing but a shell of wood and bark as a
memorial of its past."
Entering the hollow of this forest monolith, "one finds himself within an area
circumscribed by a wall of solid wood, the greatest diameter of which is 32
feet at a distance of four feet from the ground; this measurement not
including the bark, which would raise the diameter to 33 and a half feet,"
wrote Dr. Gibbons.
"One particular portion of this redwood tract under discussion lies just
below and to the westward of the highest point of the Oakland Hills. It
occupies a small depression in the hill somewhat resembling a moraine, about
two acres in extent. In this small area, on my first visit to the locality,
which was in 1855, there were about a hundred and fifty stumps of redwood,
the great majority of which were from twelve to twenty feet in diameter, the
trees having been cut from one to eight feet above the surface of the
ground."
"I have mentioned first this nearly extinct group of Alameda County
redwoods, on account of this prodigious triple trunk which it contains. And
now I shall make mention of another group which is located at a distance of
a half mile to the southwestward from it, on the brow of a hill which
overlooks the Golden Gate and its environs. Here we have many living trees,
not only of redwood, but of other Coast Range arborescent and shrubby
plants; such as Arbutus,
Arctostaphylos,
Vaccinium and others.
At this point, partly concealed by a dense growth of ambitious saplings, are
to be found the relics of a redwood tree that once must have been among the
most remarkable and gigantic individuals of its species; now forgotten and
despoiled of its glory, showing nothing but a shell of wood and bark as a
memorial of its past. Entering the hollow, one finds himself within an area
circumscribed by a wall of solid wood, the greatest diameter of which is
thirty-two feet at a distance of four feet from the ground; this measurement
not including the bark, which would raise the diameter to thirty three and a
half feet. Four other cross measurements give a clean average of thirty feet
excluding the bark, or thirty one and a half with it."
Erythea: A Journal of Botany, West American and General. (1893). United
States: University of California.
BRITON'S DESCRIPTION
What the pioneer naturalist undoubtedly saw was, the remains of one of the "two
trees south of Palos Colorados, a wood of pines situated on top of the hill over
San Antonio, too conspicuous to be overlooked," as described by
Capt. F. W.Beechey of the Royal Navy in 1826. The British sea captain, and other navigators
of San Francisco Bay, used those huge trees as landmarks upon entering the
harbor in order to miss treacherous Blossom Rock. "An idea of their size is
gained in the realization that these two trees were "conspicuous" from the
Golden Gate, 16 miles away.
Other than a casual mention in histories of the Bay area, the Oakland redwoods
have been ignored by most writers. Most extensive study of the groves was made
by
Sherwood D. Burgess, Alameda High School teacher and
published by theCalifornia Historical Society Quarterly in March of last year.
LENGTHY RESEARCH
Burgess, an Army captain is now in charge of the ROTC unit at Alameda High
School, spent more than a year preparing the article and did extensive research,
delving into old real estate records, county documents, and early California
history.
Known originally the
San Antonio Redwoods, the big Sequoia Sempervirens grew in
the only groves outside the Coast Range proper. There were three distinct stands
within an area of about five miles square. One grove was on the western slope of
the hills above Oakland and inherited the nomenclature of “San Antonio
redwoods.” The "
middle redwoods” were in Redwood Canyon of Redwood Regional Park
and a third stand was in the vicinity of Lake Chabot in the upper San Leandro
Canyon and came to be known as the “
Moraga redwoods."
VALUE RECOGNIZED
The forests were recognized for their value by the padres of the California
missions who maintained that "the cutting of wood comprehended in the place
asked for must remain in common" when they granted permission for the
formation of the
Peralta grant. Although not used in connection with the
establishment of the Presidio of San Francisco or its mission, timbers for
Mission San Jose probably constituted the first logging operation in the
Oakland hills.
The first record that foreigners were active in the groves occurred in 1840,
according to Captain Burgess, when an Irishman by the name of
George Patterson deserted the English barque Columbia in San Francisco harbor and
worked with John Parker, another deserter, bucking planks which they sold to
John Sutter. Two years later Patterson was joined by Harry J. Bee, another
sailor who jumped ship in 1830 and had experience in the Santa Cruz
forests.
HALTED IN 1842
A sawmill operated by
Nathan Spear and Capt.
William S. Hinckley was turning
out shingles and planks in 1841 but after Sutter established mills in the
Sierra and the Santa Cruz operations expanded, Oakland's lumbering stopped
about 1842.
Napoleon Bonapart Smith,
Henry Clay Smith, his brother and a friend,
William Mendenhall, were among the first Americans to cut the forests of San
Antonio. They arrived in the timber in 1845 and a few months later were
driven from the groves by a party of Spaniards. After participating in the
Bear Flag revolt, the two Smith brothers joined with Elam Brown of Santa
Clara in a lumbering operation, shipping their hand cut planks to San
Francisco in 1847. In the woods at the same time were Jacob Harlan and
Richard Swift, who cut 15,000 shingles from a single tree and sold them in
San Francisco at $5 a 100.
How much lumber the San Antonio groves produced for San Francisco during
this period is not known, but it was sold at about $30 per 1000 board feet,
along with that coming from the Santa Cruz and Bodega mills. Operations fell
off during 1848 but in 1849
Harry Meiggs, "a man of tremendous energy,
physically a perfect athlete, good-natured and gentlemanly," cleaned up
$500,000 in the Eastbay groves.
According to
Samuel G. Upham's "
Notes of a Voyage to California," Meiggs
arrived in San Francisco in July 1849 and sold a shipload of lumber for a
$50,000 profit. After working in a San Francisco lumber yard studying the
local situation," Meiggs sent an army of 500 men into "the forests of Contra
Costa County, felled the choicest trees in the then densely-wooded region,
hauled them in saw-logs to the shore of the bay of San Francisco, built them
into huge rafts, floated them to a wharf which he had constructed, converted
them into lumber by the agency of a steam saw which he had erected and made
$500,000 in gold by the operation."
It was this sawmill, supposedly the first in what is now Oakland, that
helped reduce the stands of redwood trees here.
The mill was built on Palo Seco Creek, near Dimond, by an unidentified Frenchman in 1849 and was the
first steam mill here. It was operated by
Volney D. Moody, one of Oakland's
early officials.
Mrs. Chelton Hill of Piedmont, a granddaughter of Moody,
says that timbers from this mill constructed
the first frame house in Oakland, that of Moses Chase. Moody also sold great quantities of lumber to
residents of San Francisco to rebuild homes and stores after fire destroyed
portions of that city several times. Volney Moody, according to Mrs. Hill,
delivered his lumber to
Larue's landing at the foot of 14th Avenue. One day,
she says, when her grandfather was taking a load to the waterfront he met a
Spaniard who offered to trade a piece of land for the lumber. Moody
accepted. This land was in a densely wooded oak forest located at what
became part of
Lafayette Square. Once when Moody was asked where his newly
acquired land was, according to his grand-daughter, he replied, "My land is
at Oakland" and it may have been this remark that gave the city its name.
Below is pictured
Moses Chase, first white settler in what is now Oakland,
and his house built from lumber sawed in the mill of Volney Moody.
FLED FROM CREDITORS
Meiggs, a leader in California business, municipal politics and social
life, went bankrupt in 1854 and in October of that year, loaded his
family and remaining cash on a clipper ship and sailed off for South
America, his creditors none the wiser.
During 1849 logs were being taken from the western slopes of the hills on
roads winding down
Dimond Canyon following a route along Park Boulevard and
Thirteenth Avenue. Timber was also being cut in the Moraga woods and shipped
across Suisun Bay to Benicia. Teams which carried the redwood to Martinez
traveled a route now traversed by the
Jonah Hill road to Lafayette, which
became a resting point for the teamsters, whose rigs lined its streets and
who "spent their hard-earned money with reckless profusion" in the local
pubs.
Oakland's first steam mill, which grew into the present day General Mills,
Inc., provided the boards for Oakland's first house and helped establish a
bank. Interest from that original investment is still being paid Mrs.
Chelton Hill of Piedmont, granddaughter of
Volney Moody, who operated the
mill for about a year.
Forerunner of others to be built in Redwood Canyon, the Moody lumber
operation was in the San Antonio redwoods along Palo Seco Creek a short
distance above Dimond Canyon. The mill was built by a Frenchman in 1849,
sold to Meiggs and later acquired by Moody. With four oxen which helped
bring Moody and his brother Charles across the plains to California, lumber
was hauled down what is now Fourteenth Avenue to the San Antonio
embarcadero. Moody was 17 years old at the time. Lumber from that mill built
the first house in Oakland on East Tenth Street for Moses Chase.
WENT EAST TO WED
With $500 earned in the operation of the mill with his brother, Moody went
East where he married. He and his bride returned to the West Coast and
brought with them a small grist mill, which he set up in San Jose and later
sold to the Central Milling Company. The business later became the Sperry
Flour Company and finally General Mills, Inc. Moody became president of the
First National Bank of Oakland and lived in Piedmont for many years. He
later established his home in Berkeley at Le Roy and Le Conte Avenues, where
he died in 1901 at the age of 72.
Moody's mill continued to produce until about 1854, when the timber in the
area was depleted. At that time another mill was operated in the San Leandro
area near Pinehurst Station by William Taylor and in 1852
Thomas and William Prince established a mill in the western end of Redwood Canyon, the remains
of which are still to be seen. Three other mills operated in the general
area until about 1856, when the timberland was exhausted,
OTHER MILLS BUILT
Soon after the Prince mill was built Joseph Witherall and
Nathaniel Lampson erected another just to the north of the Prince property and it was finally
acquired by Henry Spicer. Near the mouth of Redwood Canyon, Chester Tupper
and Richard Hamilton helped themselves to 350 acres of public land and set
up a steam operation, which burned in the summer of 1854. Then Thomas Eager
and Erasmus Brown erected a $10,000 mill between the Prince and Tupper sites
and by 1860 the area was reduced to stumps.
In 1852
Hiram Thorn and William Hamilton constructed a $20,000 mill near
Taylor's operation in the Moraga redwoods. There were from 300 to 400 men in
the forests at that time and the mills were the economic center of the
Eastbay. Nearly all the east to west roads were planned in relation to
them.
BECAME BOULEVARD
Another thoroughfare led from Thorn's mill to Castro Valley and still
another followed present-day Broadway, Broadway Terrace and Mountain
Boulevard to the Prince road. Tupper and Hamilton, seeking a shorter route
to the embarcadero, built a road across the ridge which today is Redwood
Road and 35th Avenue. Thorn constructed a toll road from his mills to
Oakland in 1854, traces of which still can be seen at the eastern end of
Sobrante Road above Montclair.
The big redwoods are forgotten and gone today. Only the small but beautiful
groves of second growth remains to remind of a few short years when the
mighty Sequoia Gigantea reigned over the life of Metropolitan Oakland.
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