This is the second installment of a thirty-part series of articles by Frederick J. "Monte" Monteagle for the Martinez News-Gazette, written January - February, 1977. I'll publish each one as an individual blog post. They tell great stories. MF
A MAN WHO KEPT RATTLESNAKES ·
Felling The Redwood Giants
[This outstanding series on the felling of a magnificent Bay Area redwood forest 1853-55 in what is now mostly Redwood Regional Park is appearing periodically in installments.]
By Monte Monteagle
Installment Two
A strange man, Joseph Lamson bought and kept rattlesnakes in cages which he thought looked, "despite their venomous natures, the picture of affection and innocence.. We often sat and gazed at each other for several minutes through the glass that separated us. . . It may, perhaps, excite a smile when I say that I acquired a degree of affection for the reptiles.
"They had become my pets and I felt a sort of companionship for them.."
He also trapped foxes, having 20 in cages at one time and experimented with taming condors and ravens. His last middle redwoods abode was was a two-room shack, about 16 by 20 feet near Spicer's Mill where he performed his daily ablutions in a wooden tub fashioned from a powder keg.
"My house," he wrote, "is situated about equidistant from my former cabin and Spicer's Mill, about 100 rods from each but quite hidden from the view of both, by intervening hills.
[Various tellings put Spicer's Mill farther up Redwood Canyon, north of the other mills, near the base of the Thorn road. This would be closer to what's now McCosker Ranch and Eastport. - MF]
"I have placed it at the foot of a hill which is covered at this season of the year with a fine green herbage.
"Several large oaks and madrones and some shrubbery consisting of hazel, whortleberry, wild rose and other bushes, intermingled with raspberry vines, ferns, soap plants, the yerba buena and some flowers grow at the base and, in some places, nearly cover the hill."
To set the scene for Lamson's 18-month stay in the East Bay hills, it is necessary to know that the redwood forests in which he made his home and conducted his modest business were variously described as 1-1/2 by a half a mile or 3-1/2 by two miles in extent, depending on whose figures you believe.
Dr. William P. Gibbons, pioneer Alameda physician and botanist, who discovered the 33-1/2 foot redwood stump said the area "must have constituted the most magnificent forest on the continent" and declared trees 12, 16 and 20 feet in diameter were common. Felling of trees first began about 1840 and by 1858-60 every first growth redwood including the colossus atop Redwood Peak, which measured 33-1⁄2 feet in diameter and must have towered some 300 feet, were gone.
[Gibbons said the stump was 22-1/2 feet in diameter. - MF]
The forest was arbitrarily divided into three sections:
-The San Antonio or "first" redwoods. on the skyline and western slopes of the hills. This probably included today's Joaquin Miller Park.
-The so-called second, "middle redwoods" or "center forest" in Mill Canyon constituting what is now Redwood Regional Park and the Redwood Creek area.
-Further to the northeast, the third or Moraga Redwoods on Upper San Leandro Creek in the vicinity of what is now the community of Canyon.
The first saw mill to be erected was the Spier and Hinckley Mill, a water-powered affair that went into operation in 1841. The proprietors were Nathan Spier [Nathan Spear] and Capt. William S. Hinckley.
Next was the pioneer Palo Seco Mill, the first steam-powered mill in the East Bay Redwoods. It was situated on Palo Seco Creek a short distance above Dimond Canyon and construction was begun in 1849 by two Frenchmen, Joseph Lavigne and Jean Baptiste Bajoux. The succession of ownerships thereafter included Henry Meiggs, San Francisco wheeler and dealer of Meiggs Wharf fame; Oakland Banker Volney D. Moody whose name was often associated with the mill; and Daniel A. Plummer who closed the mill in1854.
[The Oakland localwiki page for the Palo Seco Mill says "French naval deserters known as Sicard and Leroy likely began construction on the Palo Seco Mill in 1841, according to Amelia Sue Marshall's book East Bay Hills: A Brief History." I have not heard of Joseph Lavigne or Jean Baptiste Bajoux before, and cannot find corroborating evidence. - MF]
About 50 men were employed here, and lumber from the Palo Seco Mill built the Moses Chase home on East 10th Street, reportedly the first frame house erected in Oakland.
[Next: Information about eight more of the steam-powered saw mills in what is
now Redwood Regional Park and environs in the 1850's.]
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