History of Tahoe National Forest: 1840-1940 A Cultural Resources Overview History

Historians interested in regional historical projects often discover themselves in a peculiar conceptual and methodological bind. On the one hand, most of the published works available to them on the region, counties, or communities represent what might be termed "old" or "popular" history — studies of local elites, early transportation routes, railroad building, the lumber industry, the discovery of gold, and so on. Typically, these histories are narrative, anecdotal, or topical and often focus exclusively on exceptional individuals and dramatic events. On the other hand, scholarly "social scientific" or "community studies" approaches using quantitative data and focusing on analysis of broad social or economic processes as they are manifested on the regional or local level is beyond the financial scope of most projects. In any case, these techniques have been most effectively applied to single towns, rather than whole regions. No community in the Tahoe National Forest has benefitted from such a study. To the degree possible, we have tried to combine these two poles, to look at broad patterns as they were manifested in a regional context, but also to deal with unique characteristics of purely local significance.

Surveying the relevant data base turned out to be a task of mammoth proportions. Relevant materials are scattered in a wide variety of research depositories and often exist in a raw form and in such massive quantities that time limitations prevented their use. The California Forest and Range Experiment Station, for instance, compiled a Bibliography of Early California Forestry, that runs some sixty-nine volumes. The catalog contains approximately 30,000 abstracts on records from newspapers, diaries, books, periodicals, documents and maps; it would take several weeks to peruse its contents. The USFS headquarters in Nevada City has a wealth of historical information scattered in storage boxes, in map file drawers, in file cabinets; it has a good photograph collection, land use records, cultural resource site forms, and other information. Each of the counties have large collections of official documents, manuscripts, business records, photographs, biographical files, etc. Information in the California State Library and the Bancroft Library is astounding in its quality and sheer quantity. In terms of the information base, the research problem does not lay in lack of basic information, but in managing an overabundance of materials — in viewing, analyzing and synthesizing them.

Future research on the Tahoe National Forest will need to address several perplexing questions. Some of the general concerns can be taken up point by point.

1. No area in the Northern Sierra has benefitted from a "community studies" approach to social and economic history. They could be of great value to historical archeologists involved in cultural resources mitigation activities. Take for instance the history of a mining town. The mining town stands almost alone as a phenomenon of frontier America. Other boom towns existed in the United States, but never in such large numbers or with such significance in American history. California mining towns served as the prototype. The mining town was different from other communities. In comparison to Eastern towns and villages, it was disorderly and unstable. Its birth and growth were quick, its life often short, and its decay rapid. On the Tahoe National Forest several towns have gone through recurring cycles of boom and decline. What sectors of the community persisted through these cycles allowing the towns to survive? The towns served the needs of a large surrounding area, its business and social districts were larger than appeared warranted by the needs of the immediate community. The towns were cosmopolitan and the population transitory. We know little about life in the major towns and much less about the surrounding settlements dependent on them. What was the spacial association between business and residential districts and what was life like in these places? How did it change over time?

Standard accounts of California mining and miners after the gold rush have put only slight emphasis on such matters as ethnicity, family life and living patterns. The work of Rodman Paul (1947, 1963) gives the general outlines of society in the mines as do the journals of the miners themselves, but there as been little detailed research into the structures of individual communities. The one exception perhaps, is Ralph Mann's useful comparative study of the social structure of Grass Valley and Nevada City from 1850 to 1860 in which he uses statistics and computer analysis to give a detailed picture of these mining towns, showing how different local economies resulted in contrasting social styles.

Social historians cannot depend on the sparse biographical material available for significant individuals to form generalizations about the lives of the general population. The case study approach only gives an aura of generality. Unfortunately, we now depend on this type of evidence almost exclusively. The sources for a comprehensive grass roots social history of California mining towns and cities are probably available for many areas — manuscript census schedules, city directories, local tax records, school records, mining district records, mining patents, store ledgers, etc. To trace and analyze the career patterns of occupational and ethnic groups in the region would require computer assistance. But it would allow for examination and comparison of the life of ordinary people and the structural and functional evolution of mining settlements (or other types of communities on the Tahoe National Forest).

Perhaps suggesting such studies is overly ambitious in these times of fiscal restraint, but asking these types of questions and piecemeal applications of the "community studies" approach in the long run will be a major benefit to cultural resource personnel struggling to understand an ethnically diverse population, one with a high rate of turn-over that in all likelihood left an eclectic legacy of material culture.

2. Comparative studies of mining and logging settlements. How did a hydraulic mining town differ from a quartz mining center of similar size in terms of ethnic composition, organization of workforce, prosperity of workers, labor-management relations, spatial organization of residences and business centers, clustering of residential areas, degree of geographic and social mobility?

It seems clear that the nature of gold deposits had a strong influence in determining population characteristics. Placer deposits after the mid-1850s tended to attract a larger number of the poorer elements within the mining population. By the 1870s the Chinese were the most prominent single ethnic group in the placer diggings. In the quartz districts, corporate mining developments created a larger working class population comprised largely of white miners.

In the lumber industry there is an obvious contrast between east and west slope industrial development. One of the key questions to be explored here is the adoption of new technologies by different types of operators and its subsequent impact on cutting methods and employment practices.

3. Functions and spatial associations of roadside inns on major routes and laterals and their evolution over time. On the main routes (which in some cases have not yet been precisely located) there were stage stations every three miles on the average. On laterals which sometimes extended as long as 30 miles between important settlements and were regularly traveled, were there regular pack train or wagon camping places, stage stops, or did local ranches and farms serve a dual function as quasi-wayside inn and boarding house?

4. There was a dramatic decline in the number of small farm/ranch complexes on the Forest in the latter nineteenth century. Why? What was their relation to the local town economy and surrounding mines or logging camps? Did they have significant multiple functions as service centers for traders as well as being producers of foodstuffs for the local population. What was the impact of improved transportation and eventually introduction of the automobile travel on this local economic nexus?

5. The population of the Tahoe National Forest declined steadily from the late 1850s into the 1920s. Were some occupational or social categories more likely to persist in the area? What kind of people remained and what impact did it have on the general historical processes of the region? How can we expect the archeological data base to be affected by these demographic changes?

6. When did the general shift occur in construction of roads from ridge top routes to river routes? What impact did it have on local and interregional travel and on settlements associated with the old and new routes?

7. There is a great need for a more comprehensive compilation of hydraulic mining water developments within the forest: dams, with dates of construction; ditches and canals and flumes, with dates of construction; capacities of the various systems; laterals, small canals, small reservoirs. A literature search, mapping project, and collection of other background information would be helpful. A good deal of this information is available for the major companies' systems that were developed to deliver water from the South Yuba to the San Juan Ridge. Less is known of the North Yuba ditches and canals, and those of Placer County on the North and Middle American Rivers that served the Forest Hill District.

8. Nineteenth century tourism/recreation is a subject about which little is known. Are any of the buildings currently existing at the alpine lakes that are remains of these early resorts?

9. There should be an effort to more closely locate, and perhaps mark, the route of the major trans-Sierra roads (Henness Pass, Pacific Turnpike, Dutch Flat and Donner Lake, and Yuba Gap) on the forest. Associated sites along the routes, such as waystations and ranches have potential to yield significant information about the lives of pioneer settlers in the region. These sites will come under greater scrutiny by historians as the new revisionist studies of the great American folk migration to the Pacific increasingly show that the success of the migrants was based largely on cooperation and interaction between the migrants and many temporary and permanent inhabitants of the west (see Unruh 1979).

Most of the histories of overland travel only cover the period through 1849. George Stewart's (1952) coverage is an exception, yet he devotes only a few pages to the entire decade of the 1850s. John Unruh provides good general information on that decade, however local studies of the changing travel conditions of the 1850s and 1860s and road development throughout the last half of the 19th century are needed.

10. We know very little about pre-National Forest grazing practices on the Forest. How did local ranchers establish boundaries to "customary" grazing area? Did they make strategic homestead purchases? If so, what types of improvements were made on their properties? To what degree were the informal patterns of prior use given sanction by early USFS grazing policies? How did forest policy change fundamental patterns in the operation of large-scale or transient sheepmen on the forest?

11. Physical remains of Forest improvements demonstrating major accomplishments of the conservation movement are potentially significant historical artifacts. The Banner Mountain lookout tower was the first fire lookout construction in the California Region; representative lookouts and other improvements constructed by the CCC's deserve careful consideration as potentially important historic resources.