History of Sonoma County, California, with biographical sketches of the leading men and women of the county, who have been identified with its growth and development from the early days to the present time, Part 3

Author: Gregory, Thomas Jefferson
Publication date: 1911
Publisher: Los Angeles, Calif., Historic record company
Number of Pages: 1190

USA > California > Sonoma County > History of Sonoma County, California, with biographical sketches of the leading men and women of the county, who have been identified with its growth and development from the early days to the present time > Part 3

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LAST OF THE MISSIONS.

Sonoma, as has been stated, was the last stand of the padres whose mis- sions commenced at the southern cape of the Californias. The friars of St. Francis, generally native and loyal subjects of Spain, openly or secretly sympa- thized with the mother country and against rebellious Mexico, and moreover, the Mexican in California was at best a weak churchman. The vast wealth of the missions in cattle that practically "roamed a thousand hills," and their leagues and leagues of land that covered most all the arable acreage of the southern half of the state were not calculated to moderate the growing ill will of the improvident government officials. Added to this the mission people set their faces like flints against the immigration which the most enlightened Cali-

HISTORY OF SONOMA COUNTY

fornians desired. From all this, secularization of the mission was inevitable. Also, the California Indian had not shown himself to be satisfactory or plastic material for whiteman's education, just as the Spaniard has never shown him- self to be a patient, just and practical teacher of subject native races. So not- withstanding the zeal of his ecclesiastical instructors the neophyte would "jump" the school, the chapel, and revert to the wilds of his native tribe. Hence, between the original natives who were indifferent and the original native sons, who were inimical, the mission of the Missions was failing. Yet Padre Jose Altimira, in obedience to the orders of his superior and the command, "Go ye and preach my gospel," sought a new field for labor. With Captain Alfres Sanchez and nineteen soldiers, accompanied by Senor Francisco Castro, repre- sentative of Governor Arguello, Altimira carefully explored favorable localities in Suisun and Napa valleys, finally selecting Sonoma because, as he wrote in his daily journal, "the valley was found best adapted by reason of its climate, location, abundance of building material and above all for its most excellent springs and streams." Thus did the representative of the civil, military and church power in that early day accord to this locality its full meed of merit, and wrote for Sonoma county its first "boom literature." July 4th-another auspicious fact and a date of happy omen-1823, the eagle of Mexico flew over the pueblo of Sonoma and the cross of San Solano was raised in the valley of the Moon.

HISTORY OF SONOMA COUNTY

CHAPTER III.

HIDDEN IN THE COAST RANGE.

Sonoma county might be said to be "hidden" in the Coast Range. Spurs of this mountain chain beginning at the bay shore on the south run northward and between them lie the famed valleys fertile and fair as "the gardens of the gods." The line of high peaks, that divide Napa from Sonoma are the eastern ramparts of Sonoma valley and its western iimit, another chain cutting it from the broad Petaluma plain which starts from tide-water and extends north toward the county-seat. West of Petaluma other spurs-like their fellows ever reaching north and south with the persistency of meridians of longitude-mark off the rich levels of Two Rock, Big, Blucher and Bodega sloping down to the ocean. The middle portion of the great central plateau of the county is the famed Valley of Santa Rosa-a veritable park timbered and flowered and spreading out between the lofty oak-covered peaks to the east and its western wall of sequoia-clad mountain. To the eastward of Santa Rosa are-rare gems in their setting of high hills-Bennett, Rincon and the beautiful vale of Los Guilicos ; while to the west over the wooded slopes is Green Valley-aptly named, for its vineyards, orchards or forest trees are in emerald the year around. As the Santa Rosa plain sweeps farther north it nears Russian river, which flowing from its Mendocino mountain source winds south and west to the sea. Though not navigable, it waters a large tract of densely timbered and exceed- ingly fertile lands. Russian River Valley is literally a parent-vale of the neighboring Dry Creek Valley-a striking misname, as the fruitful fields along its wooded banks testify. Then Knight's Valley nestling amid the slopes of Mount St. Helena, and Alpine-like-a hanging garden high in the air. two scenic levels where "Hills peep over hills and alps on alps arise."

Oat Valley, where Nature, the great Patroness of Industry, was making hay and sowing a name into the place long before the hunan sower appeared, and spread out in a broad vega, is the big orchard space around Cloverdale- Pomona's own Homestead.

These are only the larger valleys "hidden" in the Coast Range. Compara- tively few acres of Sonoma's soil are inaccessible to the plow and reaper. and on these plant-nurturing plains and plateaus fall the never failing winter rain from the skies, and the tradewind moisture from the seas. A list of the things that grow in Sonoma would take in nearly all the things that grow in this hemisphere, and a large importation from the other half of the globe. Sun and shower in turn call inevitably and impartially and earth responds in gener- ons fruitage. From the south where Petaluma, secure, independent and wealthy on the shores of her navigable estero, ships from her furrowed farms the rich vegetation and the golden cereal of commerce; from the west where full-fruit- age glows in the orchard and where the green of the vast potato fields paints the hills rolling down to the sea: from the north where the Russian. "the river of

HISTORY OF SONOMA COUNTY

ever-blooming flowers," threads leagues of verdant plain, and where Cloverdale stands like a dryad under her oaks or like a bride amid her orange blossoms ; and from the east where Sonoma in her matchless Vale of Luna, prunes and presses her grapes, racking and sending to the marts of the world the wines of her incomparable vineyards-from these fourfold compass points come unfail- ing harvests. On vega and mesa plant-life runs riot and agriculture holds high carnival.

SONOMA'S FRUITS AND FLOWERS.

Sonoma soil is old in history, but new in culture. On it are the pages of a record long pre-dating the white man, followed by the account of his coming, and then the years that went by leaving a grand state yet unoccupied by the master-builders. But immigration was lapping over the eastern mountain wall and the ox-trains, squadrons of "prairie schooners" began to end their "across the plains" voyage in the valley-places of the south. Then Sonoma, to use a fitting figure of speech, began to move out of her adobes somnolent with the spirit of their Spanish builders. The wild-lands were becoming home-lands ; the fruit-grower was planting on the slopes where the "warm belt," that phe- nomenal zone of thermal hanging above the middle levels, nurses the tendet buds, and the vineyardist seeking the warm hillsides where the dry atmosphere will sweeten the vintage, was climbing higher. Where the first settler grazed his great herds on leagues of rancho, partition has taken place and the farm of the second comer is in tillage. Where the lumber and other timber-workers have cleared away the forests, the soil enriched by ages of tree-shade and autumnal vegetation is the favored place of the proverbial vine and figtree. Open to the mild tradewinds from the ocean,-to the full winter rains that shade off to the moist sea fogs as the year slips to her summer,-to a dry sun season tempered by occasional showers,-to a land where the two means of temperature almost may be said to walk hand in hand down the months, can one wonder that the spontaneous harvests crowd and overlap as the seasons come and go? Berries and oranges in January, apples and olives in December. and grapes, peaches, pears, plums, prunes, limes, lemons, persimmons, apricots, cherries, nuts, currants, blackberries, raspberries, thimbleberries, dewberries and huckleberries the other ten-twelfths of the year. These are the fruits of this fruitful clime, and here it may be written of the "flowers that grow between," the delicate things that respond to the almost tropical mildness of the months to clothe the land in blossom and beauty. Led by California's own peerless poppy-Flora's vestal virgin in flower-they sweep over slope and plain troops of tinted faeries, mad with the joy of living, a riot of life and color. It was when Dr. Eschischoltz was riding from San Rafael to Fort Ross that he noted and tried to classify that strange yellow bloom, the "Cup of Gold" of the Spanish, that painted the hills and valcs with its rich tintings. The eminent German botanist could not find for it a name nor place, and a comrade immedi- ately called the noble golden flower "Eschscholtzia." Thus was the "State Flower" culled from its wild and nameless existence on the California plateaus. Here on this page devoted to Sonoma's plant perfection, it will not be out of place to lay a flower-even his own-at the feet of the world's first florist. Where grows a Sonoma bloom, whether in cultured soil or in the wild nooks. it is of the kingdom of Luther Burbank. He has gone down into the soul of

HISTORY OF SONOMA COUNTY

the flower and has called it into fairer and brighter form. He has entered the heart of the tree and has moved its vital forces into newer and better fruiting. Within her cryptic recesses he sought Nature, did this wizard scientist, and there she compromised with the man who learned her secrets.

SUB-SOIL MINERAL POSSIBILITIES.

While the soil of this county is rich in plant-food and other surface quali- fications that make for the wealth and prosperity of the country, below the fields and uplands, below the forests of redwood, pine and oak, and the more humble subjects of the vegetable kingdom which grow in the wild places, are sub-earthic possibilities, and the county may yet add to her productions a noble mineral output. Coal, the father of fuel, and which has no choice of a special geological formation, has been found in excellent quality though as yet in limited quantity in several places on Mount Sonoma. The time may be rapidly approaching when the main body of that great stratum of carbon will be uncov- ered. On the slope of that mountain near Petaluma wells bored for oil have tapped subterranean reservoirs of natural gas, which gushing fiercely to the surface have been found to be pure and highly combustible, and is unmistakable evidence that under these hills flow the long-sought channels of oil. In many parts of the county the small streams trickle down from the heights, their waters thickly oleaginous, one being Mark West creek near Santa Rosa. There is no doubt that this valuable liquid fuel is here, but the tertiary formation shat- tered and displaced by volcanic or earthquake forces will not hold the oil in-situ as do the paleozoic rocks of Pennsylvania, lying horizontal and undisturbed since that stratum was deposited there. Here oil escapes from the under basin and forced through the broken beds of rock some of it reaches the surface, but where that deep tank is no man has yet discovered. If coal and its oil are yet in terra incognito the depository of quick silver is known, for the cinnabar mines near Guerneville and north of Cloverdale have long been worked with consider- able profit. From the numerous basalt quarries throughout the country, roads and streets are paved, as the rock cleaves true and is easily shaped into blocks. Marble, limestone, also a fine yellow and green lava much valued for building purposes, are found and quarried in the hills. Kaolin is one of the natural productions of the county, but as the dry, pure air will not decompose its native rock separating the feldspar from the ore, as the damp atmosphere does in England, porcelain will never be one of the products of California. Copper, iron, umber, borax, galena and magnesite are among the stores found in the geology of Sonoma county.

SCENIC SONOMA.

To the practical utility of Sonoma county as a home place, to its possibili- ties as a wealth-producing field. and to its geographical location as to climatic advantages tending to the value of both desires, may be added its scenic attract- iveness, the features of which are now springing into greater public notice. Lying off and away from the great mains of travel through the Sacramento and San Joaquin valleys, Sonoma was late in drawing the attention of the wandering stranger. The tourist saw Tahoe. Yosemite, Big Trees and Yerba Buena's peerless bay but failed to find the "show" places of this portion of the state "hidden" in the Coast Range. However, the change from the stage-coach to the railroad cars, and four lines of steel-way threading the country brought

HISTORY OF SONOMA COUNTY

re-discovery, and the near-future construction of projected extensions northward through these coast counties to Oregon will turn a flood of homeseekers and sight-seeing travelers into the byways of the Sonoma valleys. The sylvan banks of Russian river, its waters clean and cold from their founts in the higher altitudes, are the summer-places of the metropolitan. Here is the lordly Sequoia Sempervirens, the great redwood of commerce, of commerce-alas ; for saw and axe are ruthlessly destroying this noble race of trees-the chief wonder of the world-rover even in this Wonderland. Up In a wild canyon. the deep furrow of a wild glacial flood or the cleavage of an earthquake's mighty heave, are the Geysers-springs that seethe and bubble over eternal flames below, and almost touching them, springs that sparkle icily from some frigid underflow. The Petrified Forest, a prehistoric wood in stone as though stricken by the glance of a Medusa, the solemn burial ground of once living trees felled possibly by the death-rain from the craters of Mount St. Helena. Sonoma. probably more than any one of her sister-counties, evidences her volcanic cre- ation, for her appearance in the second tertiary was when these plains came up from the miocene sea. The redwoods are remnants of that geological period's gigantic vegetation, and the hardpan under the more recent alluvium of the central plain, the erosion of the younger surface, is of the same distant forma- tion. The broad and deep beds of basalt which are the bases and frames of these chains are of the output of St. Helena in that far day when the grand peak lifting the lips of her crater four thousand three hundred and forty-three feet above the valley-floor, was making mountains. The twenty-three hundred feet elevation that cuts the Sonoma from the Petaluma basin, Hood and Taylor, that throw their shadows across Santa Rosa, Fitch in the suburbs of Healdsburg, raising as it were, its steep walls from the semi-circular bank of Russian river, Sulphur Peak standing thirty-four hundred and seventy feet over the boiling rock-caldrons of the Geysers, Mount Jackson nearer the sea, his foundations the red and brown crystals of mercury, and in the ranges north of Cloverdale where the pure silver globules well from the ruddy cinnabar, all, all these in their basaltic formation are the lava-creations of the Mother Moun- tain now silent and solitary. a noble landmark showing through the clear Cali- fornia atmosphere, a literal triple-corner-stone where the counties of Napa. Lake and Sonoma meet. The many mineral springs, hot and cold-the agua caliente and agua frio of the Spanish. health and pleasure resorts drawing their subjects from the world around, are products of the volcanic forces that long ago heaved the hills into being. In valley and in highland-gorge they flow strong in sulphur, soda, magnesia, iron and kindred chemicals, bubbling up from nature's deep laboratory. While life sweeps in warm floodtide around her. St. Helena sits in ashes; the once living fires cold and lifeless as the fair Rus- sian princess whose name the noble mountain bears.

HISTORY OF SONOMA COUNTY

CHAPTER IV.

CONCEPCION AND HER RUSSIAN LOVER.

Shortly previous to the time the Spaniards were settling down in their last pueblo at Sonoma there was nothing to take their attention from their internal troubics except the presence of the Russian interlopers at Bodega and Fort Ross. Spain, it will be remembered, claimed by right of discovery all the country between the Sierras and the sea and as far north as Puget Sound. Russia claimed the Alaskan territory and had quite a settlement at Sitka, conducted by the Alaska Fur Company under the protection of the imperial government. The coming of the Russians to California was more accident than design. Hunger drove them a-sca and southward. Most of the food and especially breadstuffs for the colony came from Russia across the wide Siberian wastes or by a long ocean trip, consequently much of the time at Sitka was passed in semi-starvation. April 5. 1806, Count Nicholi Petrovich Razanoff, the governor of Alaska, sailed into San Francisco bay, his ship filled with articles for trade and his crew filled with scurvy. His first reception was neither cordial nor commercial, the peculiar trade restrictions of the Spaniards prohibiting inter- course with foreigners although the people and padres needed the goods. Raza- noff could have bought for cash, as the Spanish port regulations did not taboo Russian gold, but unfortunately he was without the coin of any realm. But love, whose laugh at locksmiths has long been proverb, unlocked the port of San Francisco. The Count while dancing attendance on Comandante José Arguello, trying to work that official into a more commercial attitude, met Doña Concepcion Arguello, and the old. old drama of the heart was played. The beautiful California girl took up the work that diplomacy unfinishing had dropped. She consented to marry her noble Russian lover and the stern old Don was not proof against the coaxing of his daughter. Neither was Governor Arrillaga at Monterey, for it seems that this fascinating Español-Americana had her own way in both the capitol and the chief port of the territory. When Razanoff sailed with his new cargo for Alaska he parted from Concepcion forever, as on his way across Siberia to St. Petersburg where he was to get the permission of the Czar to wed the Spanish girl, he was thrown from his horse. Before fully recovering from his injuries he attempted to complete the journey, and from a relapse, died on the road.

It was years before Concepcion, awaiting at San Francisco, learned of his death. She then joined the order of the Sisters of Visitacion, and after a long life devoted to noble work, died at Benicia. Bret Harte, the California poet. has placed in tender verse this historical tale of a woman's waiting years when

"Long beside the deep embrasures, where the brazen cannon are,

Did she wait her promised bridegroom and the answer of the Czar; Watched the harbor-head with longing, half in faith and half in doubt, Every day some hope was kindled, flickered. faded and went out."

HISTORY OF SONOMA COUNTY

As he passed up the coast, hurrying his ship-load of food home to his hungry countrymen at Sitka, and also hurrying himself to a meeting with the emperor which meant so much to him, Razanoff's mind was not so taken up with thoughts of the pretty Spanish girl he was leaving that he did not notice that Spain had some localities along the Sonoman shore quite suitable for Russian uses and colonies, much more so than the wintry north. While strolling with the fair Concepcion along the bay-beach at San Francisco he had noted how weak were the fortifications and how few were the "brazen cannon" her father commanded; in fact, the Spanish never at any time had enough power in Cali- fornia to resist the attack of a single foreign ship of war. Only a special brand of luck ; also that there was then plenty of unoccupied country for other land- grabbing nations ; also because the incalculable value of this territory being then a totally unknown quantity to the world, permitted Spain to possess California as long as she did. The Russians also noted that the waters of this coast were teeming with marketable possibilities, especially sea-otter, the fur of which was extremely valuable. Nor was Count Razanoff the first to notice this harvest of the sea awaiting the hunter, for two years previous a sharp-eyed Yankee skipper, Captain Joseph O'Cain, in the vessel, the "O'Cain," had done consider- able pelt-poaching here, to be followed three years later by Captain Jonathan Winship in the same vessel, employed by the Alaska Fur Company. Notwith- standing Governor Arrillaga issued strongly-worded pronunciamentos against illicit and contraband trade with foreigners, and against equally lawless hunting and fishing in Spanish waters, their vessels were constantly hovering around the Farallone Islands and Bodega Bay, and finding excuses to anchor in ports near the missions. In fact it is remarkable how often these sly skippers ran out of fresh water or food, or were in urgent need of repairs. The Spanish officials doubtless made efforts to carry out the government instructions, but the articles the courteous visitors had to sell or give away were too tempting. That peculiar commercial characteristic now known as "graft" must have been slightly known in those simple days "before the Gringo came." Probably the previous removal of the four-gun battery from Bodega in a measure caused the reluctance of the Spanish comandantes to obey home orders. And the universally known fact that bribery shoots further than cannon had much to da with the stay of the Russians on the coast.

THE PIONEER "SQUATTERS" OF CALIFOR,: [1.

Early in 1811 Alexander Kuskoff sailed into Yerba Buena, and not enjoy- ing his reception, in high dudgeon sailed out again. He stopped at Bodega Bay and yet smarting from the insult, real or imaginary, annexed the whole territory to the Russian crown. naming it Roumiantzof. He noticed a large stream of water flowing into the ocean and called it Slavianki. These euphoni- ous titles passed away with the "squatters," as General Vallejo always called them. but the river retained the name of "Russian."

But these pioneer squatters were more practical locators than the Spanish. They treated the Indians kindly and showered small gifts upon the local chiefs. also going through the form of buying from them the territory they had taken possession of. There is no likelihood that Kuskoff was modest in the acreage of the land-present which he sliced off the Spanish dominion for the Czar, as it is known that Russian surveyors worked through the Santa Rosa and Russian

HISTORY OF SONOMA COUNTY

River valleys. They ascended Mount St. Helena leaving a copper plate on the summit of the grand landmark inscribed with the date of the visit; and what is more important, the name of the Princess Helena, wife of Count Rotscheff, commanding officer of Fort Ross. That the hig ranch they bought was within the area now known as Bodega township, with or without other townships added, old records show dimly. However,-and another credit to the Slavonians,-this is the only instance where the original owners of California lands were ever paid anything. The price gladly accepted by the Indians, according to statements made in later years, was three pairs of breeches; three hoes; two axes; four strings of beads. Certainly this early valuation of Sonoma was not a "boom" figure, but it must be remembered that California soil was figuratively and liter- ally rated "dirt cheap" in those days preceding the dawn of the more modern real estate man with his florid literature. But this peculiar "cash" purchase had its long, long day in court as it passed to Captain John A. Sutter for $30,000, finally to William Muldrew for about one-fifth of that amount, and for years clouded the land titles from Tomales Bay to Cape Mendocino. "Pie de Palo,' Foot of Wood, as the Spaniards derisively called Kuskoff because of his wooden leg, remained at Bodega seven or eight months, making good use of his time notwithstanding the warlike protests from Yerba Buena. With his twenty Russians and fifty Kadiac Indians he secured 2,000 otter skins worth in the world's market at that period nearly $100 apiece, and built a large storehouse on Bodega Point. While the Russian farmers are noted the world over for crude workmanship, Kuskoff's agriculturists around Bodega, which he had formed out of his fur hunters, seemed to have done well. He built a commodi- ous farm house at Bodega Corners and put under cultivation considerable grain land. On his return to Sitka with his rich cargo of skins and equally rich accounts of the mild summer spent at Roumiantzof, Count Baranof, the Russian Chamberlain, was easily persuaded to found a permanent settlement on the California coast. Russia and Spain then were as much at peace with each other as was possible in those stormy days, and it is quite possible that the Russian official was acting under secret instructions from St. Petersburg. As the Slav visitors at Yerba Buena had used well their eyes around the poor fortifications of that port the imperial government had little regard for Span- ish objection, and was fully advised of Spain's inability to defend her domin- ions against invasion.

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History of Sonoma County, California, with biographical sketches of the leading men and women of the county, who have been identified with its growth and development from the early days to the present time, Part 3

Author: Gregory, Thomas Jefferson Publication date: 1911 Publisher: Los Angeles, Calif., Historic record company Number of Pages: 1190

Author: Gregory, Thomas Jefferson
Publication date: 1911
Publisher: Los Angeles, Calif., Historic record company
Number of Pages: 1190