A GREAT FOREST - Leveling A Giant Martinez News-Gazette Martinez, California · Thursday, January 13, 1977
A GREAT FOREST
Leveling A Giant
[Ed. note - This account of the harsh life 1853-55 in what is now mostly Redwood Regional Park when its redwood forest, described as "the most magnificent on the continent," was being felled. It is by Monte Monteagle, veteran Bay Area newsman and most recently information officer for East Bay Regional Park District. Much of the material has never been published before and is replete with such dramatic incidents as four lynchings, manhunts for San Quentin convicts who escaped through cannon-fire, threats to "reduce Oakland to ashes," a coast redwood tree 33-1/2 feet in diameter, perhaps the largest in the world, and two crude 1849 graves, still within the boundaries of the park which lies both in Alameda and Contra Costa counties.]
Redwood Regional Park, the darling of Sunday School picnickers and others, the locus for carefree pickup baseball games, horseback riding and other placid weekend relaxation, was once the grim staging area for at least four East Oakland lynchings.
During the approximate period 1840-60, a virgin redwood forest described as "the most magnificent on the the continent" was being felled in what is now an East Bay Regional Park District 2074-acre two-county park. And the feared, hard-drinking and oath-bawling loggers, dubbed "the redwood boys, redwoodites or redwood rangers" by an awed Bay Area press, would emerge from the forest fastnesses from time to time to deal out summary and retributive justice to horse and cattle thieves.
According to accounts of timid observers, the redwoods were in many ways, a suburb of hell populated by ship deserters comparatively immune to degenerate refinements and who remained undefiled temperance or cotillions and were tough and unregenerate to the end.
The park, all of which was once in Contra Costa County and 755 acres of which still remain within its boundaries, was also the site where grew a prodigious coast redwood that measured 33-1/2 feet in diameter, perhaps perhaps the largest of its kind in the world. And two crude 1849 grave markers, mentioned by Bible thumping Methodist Minister William Taylor in his "California Life," published in 1853, are still visible in the park.
The incredible story, much of which lay sleeping in the archives of the prestigious California Historical Society and the University of California's Bancroft Library, continues, in summary:
In Redwood Regional Park and adjacent areas, there were at least sawmills, nine steam powered and one driven by water; the California Condor, the "rarest of all birds and the Thunder bird of legend," of which, perhaps, only 35 to 50 now survive, was commonplace in the park and in one hour, more than 50 "flew over the forest," 25 being counted in a few moments; and 250 "redwood rangers," enraged by the fact that three oxen owned by Hiram Thorne, a sawmill and toll road operator (Oakland's Thornhill Drive), had disappeared, surrounded the home of a suspect, Oakland deputy pound keeper, threatening lynching: marched up and down Oakland streets carrying rifles; and delivered a 24-hour ultimatum that unless their demands were met, they would "lay the town in ashes." Mayor Horace Carpentier, a prudent man, acknowledged city liability and pledged himself to see that payment was made.
Belying its tranquil existence today, the park was the scene for a nighttime manhunt by some 110 armed and mounted men searching for about 25 hardened felons who had escaped from a San Quentin Prison Camp on the Marin Islands in 1854; pet rattlesnakes were "barbarously murdered" by being barbecued alive by some drunks who concluded "their orgy with delirium tremens;" fearsome grizzly bears and mountain lions frequented the redwoods and raided the stock; and for raffish, light comedy relief, "Hannah," a cigar-smoking 18-year-old "Kanaka lady" who had married a sailor at 13, rode horseback through the redwoods, attired in a blue calico dress, a man's straw hat and a woolen jacket belonging to her husband, "Kanaka Joe."
Then there was "Parson" William J. Brown, a ham-fisted "fighting Missouri Campbellite minister" who rode a mule, split rails, posts, pickets and shingles during the week and preached under the redwoods on the Sabbath. Annoyed by a persistent fellow who tried to cadge a drink on the Oakland-bound boat, he sent him sprawling to the deck and would have stomped him if women had not shrieked.
"This little affair," a contemporary diarist wrote, "very naturally increased the parson's popularity in the redwoods and he was highly applauded for the spirit he had manifested on the occasion."
Oath-shouting bullwhackers spurring on the laboring ox teams in Redwood Canyon with braided green hide lashes 12 to 20 feet long, cracked their whips until "the reports resounded through the canyon like an irregular discharge of musketry. They are cruel instruments of torture and are used without mercy...
Much of this account comes from the prolific pen of Joseph P. Lamson of Lubec, Me., [Sebec, ME - MF] who wrote under the name of James Lamson and arrived in San Francisco aboard the Barque James W. Paige on September 7, 1852. But other solid historic research in the stacks of the California Historical Society is the work of Sherwood D. Burgess who authored a monograph in its quarterly entitled "The Forgotten Redwoods of the East Bay."
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The Forgotten Redwoods of the East Bay, by Sherwood D. Burgess,
California Historical Society quarterly, Vol. 1-40, 1922-61. 1 v |
Lamson modestly insisted his diary or journal "did not aspire to the dignity of a book..." and he entitled it "Nine Years Adventures in California from September, 1852 to September, 1861" with excursions into Oregon, Washington and Nevada.
Lamson was an enigmatic widower and disappointed gold seeker who came to the redwoods in July, 1853 to operate a combination lodging house, liquor and grocery store and stayed until about January, 1855 when little timber remained and he removed to the Moraga Redwoods to the north- east.
He was an amateur naturalist, botanist and ornithologist; an observant diarist who occasionally wrote articles for "Hutching's California Magazine," a respected publication of the day; for a brief period was the redwood forests' Justice of the Peace who was indicted for altering and falsifying records but subsequently acquitted; and a devoted correspondent, writing regularly to his only child, Anne W. Lamson, who remained in Maine.
Since Lamson is the protagonist in the 1853-55 portion of this story of the redwoods in Redwood Regional Park and the nearby areas, an appropriate title might be "A Yankee Trader in the California Redwoods."
And a personality profile may be in order.
"I am," he wrote, "unfortunately possessed of an unsocial disposition. I love solitude... I am smarting under the vexations and disappointments incident, perhaps, more than in any other country, to a life in this land of gold... Greedy California is where money is worth two to five per cent per month..."
Lamson continually tramped the redwood trails in his red morroco-topped boots, carrying a redwood or manzanita cane.
An illustrator as well as a writer, he tells of "placing a sheet of paper in the crown of my hat" to sketch a "lofty oak, just outside of the village of Martinez."
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Rather austere in appearance and by his own admission, "unsocial," Joseph P. Lamson, Maine expatriate, enigmatic widower and disappointed gold seeker, operated a combination lodging house, liquor and grocery store in the heart of virgin redwoods in the East Bay for about 18 months during the period 1853-55. The area is now Redwood Regional Park. A careful diarist and good observer, Lamson set down a day-to-day account of life in a brawling logging camp, chiefly for his daughter, Ann who remained in Maine. Lynchings, manhunts for escaped convicts and incredibly large redwoods were all grist to his pen. Photo, courtesy, California Historical Society. |
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