HISTORICAL SOCIETY OF THE UPPER MOJAVE DESERT

Vol. 17 No. 1 A UNITED WAY AGENCY January 2002

JANUARY MEETING: THE STORY OF SEEP

By now most of us have heard about SEEP. But, what is the Sand Canyon Environmental Education Program? Dr. Katie Wash and Marcia Nevins will give us a "slide-based" presentation on this topic at 7:30 Tuesday evening, January 15, at the Maturango Museum.

Dr. Wash, a supervisor at our local Bureau of Land Management office and Maturango Museum board member, started the program for local fifth graders 10 years ago with federal seed money, then obtained local monetary and volunteer support. She will tell us about the SEEP beginnings and a new program, Hands on the Land.

Marcia Nevins, who will tell us of how the program operates now, has been the coordinator for the program for the past year. A retired teacher, she was born in Trona. After retirement she missed contact with children so when the job of coordinator became available, she jumped at the chance. She loves the desert and talks enthusiastically with our fifth graders in both the pre-sessions and post-sessions about the field trip to Sand Canyon.

Come see and hear this presentation on Tuesday, the 15th. Bring a friend.

VOLUNTEERS NEEDED FOR SEEP PROGRAM

We had a small, but good response to our request for volunteers for the SEEP program in the November newsletter, but we still are in need of additional volunteers to help with the Sand Canyon Environment and Education Program.

The field trips to Sand Canyon start in February and continue into May, specifically: Wednesday, Feb. 27; Thursday, March 7; Friday, March 15; Tuesday, March 19; Friday, April 12; Friday, May 3 and Thursday, May 9.
At the present, we do not know how many groups of students there will be each day. We try to have our station markers and guides in place by 11 a.m. Volunteers are needed to help guide the children to the several historical locations in the canyon, as well as give them some of the history of the place. For additional information, please call Lou Pracchia at 375-7385. There is the possibility of a short training session for new volunteers.

WE ARE BUSY!

Members of your Board of Directors have been spending quite a few hours revising our Bylaws and supporting documents such as the Collection Policy. Hopefully they will be ready before March.

Several of our members have expressed interest in working with archives and as things progress with the procedure changes you will receive a call. All the best for 2002! Lou Pracchia

RENEWAL TIME: DUES DUE

The New Year is here! For those of you who haven't already done so, it is time to renew your membership in the Historical Society. Our membership year is the same as the calendar year. Dues are $15.00 per family unit per year. The dues help support our programs, publish and mail our newsletters and in various other ways support our activities.

To renew your membership in the Historical Society, just send your check to Fred Weals, Treasurer, P.O. Box 2001, Ridgecrest, CA 93556, or bring your check to our January 15 meeting and give it to him then. Also, please send in the membership form included with the November 2001 newsletter to update our information on your volunteer interests on behalf of the HSUMD. (And many thanks to those of you who have already renewed and sent in their forms.)

BUSINESS MEMBERS

We appreciate the support of our business members: Farris' at the Heritage,the Swap Sheet, Granite Construction ­ Sand and Gravel. Please patronize them. We also encourage any of our members who are eligible to become business members, to do so.

CHRISTMAS PARTY ­ PAST

We had a great Christmas party last December 18. The Farris Family Singers were in fine voice and started off the evening with a selection of Christmas carols. Wally Martin was our mystery guest, who gave a great reading of a Cajun version of "A Visit From St. Nicholas." The game we were presented with ended in a tie for first place between Jean Bennett and Liz Babcock. The desserts brought in by members were delicious, plentiful and "calorific!"

FOUNDING HSUMD BOARD MEMBER BILLIE HISE PASSES AWAY

It is with deep regret that we note the passing of Elizabeth Jane "Billie" Hise after a long-time illness. Billie was one of the founding board members of our historical society and served on it for a number of years, some as president of the board. An article on her will appear in next month's newsletter. Memorials in her name may be sent to the Historical Society at P. O. Box 2001, Ridgecrest, CA 93556

FUND ESTABLISHED TO HONOR JODY STEWART-PATTERSON

A very special former member of HSUMD passed away on Dec. 7. Jody Stewart-Patterson, who was only 57 when she died, was the owner of historic Cerro Gordo. Many HSUMD members think fondly of the visit she and her husband Mike Patterson paid us a few years ago to give us a great annual dinner talk about the old mining town and the work they were doing to restore it.

In honor of the occasion, we installed an exhibit about Cerro Gordo in the Maturango Museum. After we took the exhibit down, we donated it to Jody and Mike, and parts of it are still displayed proudly in their museum at Cerro Gordo.

Jody, who spent her last months in a valiant struggle with cancer, died in Swansea, just down the famed Yellow Grade Road from the former mining village she had transformed into what the international press labeled the only ghost-town bed and breakfast in the world.

She had an accomplishment-filled career that included work as a TV actress, game-show hostess, pilot, ground-school instructor, political campaign worker, realtor, miner, and bed-and-breakfast hostess -- "just an all-around remarkable girl," as Mike said.
Jody took over full ownership of Cerro Gordo from her uncle in 1984. Her warm hospitality soon attracted helpers to her Cerro Gordo restoration project. Among those who dropped in to have a look around, then came back to help, was HSUMD member Jean Bennett, who remembers Jody as "one of those rare people who made you feel you were the most important person in her life. She was wonderful at making people feel welcome."

Over the years, Jody and Mike spent many hours planning the future of Cerro Gordo. After she became ill, the future of the project was a prime concern.

"We agreed that her friends and I would carry on the restoration and the educational activities at Cerro Gordo," Mike said. "The youth camps, photo workshops and mineral symposiums that go on there were always very important to her."

To keep the memory of Jody alive at Cerro Gordo, her friends have set up a memorial fund for contributions in lieu of flowers. Checks may be made out to the Jody Stewart-Patterson Memorial Fund and sent to Jean Bennett, 1275 Sage Court, Ridgecrest, CA 93555. For more information, call Jean at 446-4339. Liz Babcock
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OWENS VALLEY ­ IN THE BEGINNING

The following article, written by Beveridge R. Spear, is reprinted from "The Saga of Inyo County," a bicentennial book published in 1977 by Chapter 183, Southern Inyo American Association of Retired Persons. Ed.

My father, Reuben C. Spear, came to Lone Pine in 1874. My mother was a child in old camp Cerro Gordo. Her father, Francis Duval, supplied the camp with water at one time. W. L. Hunter, an explorer pioneer of southern Inyo County was my uncle. I came along in 1894. There's only found second generation pioneers left in Lone Pine who were born before 1895. Tom Hancock, one of them, said to me, "When I visit my old friends now, I go to the graveyard and read their headstones.

Our family knew Owens Valley in its primitive state. We saw it gradually fade from a paradise of wild game, stock raising, orchards, and field of alfalfa to a hopeless desert.

From the Alabama Gates, northward was a series of cattle ranches, and green fields.
We remember the Moffitt ranch, Glade, Albers, McGovern, Shepard, Lacey, Walters, Hunter, Kispert, Russell, Strawmeyer, Wrinkle and others. No one now would suspect that those miles of brush wasteland were once beautiful Wild West farms nestled along the foot of the snow clad Sierra. There were flowing springs on a number of those ranches. Manzanar, the apple district came later.

From the Alabama Gates to Bishop, 60 miles north, almost every big canyon had its beautiful bounding stream of clear snow water, and most of these had trout playing in its rapids.

In the valley just under the Alabama Gates, the river divided and came together a mile or more down stream. This formed what pioneers called "The Island." It was a sanctuary and feeding ground for migratory geese. Long V-shaped lines of the beautiful birds could be seen circling and settling for the night, or they continued on ten miles to Owens Lake.

The lake was alive with wild fowl, from the swift flying Teel to the honker goose. It's hard to visualize all this as reality, unless one lived back there. Ducks were by the square mile, millions of them. When they rose in flight, the roar of their wings was awesome. In the still, cold winter it could be heard on the mountain top at Cerro Gordo, ten miles away.

The ducks feasted on a small black fly that covered the shoreline. Occasionally, when shot down, a duck would burst open from fatness, which was butter yellow.

In the spring and fall, deer crossed the valley in droves going from the Sierras to the Inyos and White mountains or returning. Quail and doves were in abundance. Grouse were always a prize. The streams and lakes were alive with wild life, and the river had an abundance of trout, catfish and carp.

Diaz Lake, south of Lone Pine, formed by the earthquake in 1872, and a series of large ponds stretching for a mile or more north and east, surrounded by wet pasture lands, formed another ideal area for ducks and geese to gather. For the people of Lone Pine this was their prime hunting grounds.