Graphic I cobbled together some years back for an article in the old Faultline.
We went to the Oakland Museum today, to see an exhibit on Yosemite as reflected in art. I’ll have more to say about it soon, but for now: it was a good exhibit, providing a much-needed Hudson River School fix to this Bierstadt and William Keith addict, and it wasn’t just Art Of The Conquerors: native art of Yosemite, baskets and regalia, traditional and Modern, are represented as well.
But it was a different exhibit that’s preoccupied me for the rest of the day.
“Grizzlies Ate Salmon at the Oakland Museum of California” reveals the topological roots of the land now occupied by the museum. In the 1700s salmon swam and bear dined in the San Antonio Creek, the estuary adjacent to the museum and Laney College. The spawning streams have become storm drains, and the estuary’s level is now controlled by a tide-gate pump station at 10th Street.”
Nothing I didn’t really know there. A palimpsest of loss: the griz habitat of the East Bay replaced by small cities and ranchland in the 1860s, the ranchland paved over and replaced with suburbs in the 1890s and onward, the urbanized former suburbs — thriving vibrant neighborhoods — torn down and replaced by freeways in the 1960s.
Still.
Becky and I were talking recently about time machines, and what we’d do with them. Of course we thought about showing up at home four years ago while the previous us were at work and taking Zeke out for a hike. The Mid-Hills-to-Hole-in-the-Wall trail would be a nice destination, sometime before 2005 when all the hyphens burned down. Or even just camping at the unburned Mid-Hills one more time. Maybe Buffalo in the 1970s, tolerating it just long enough to give myself some much-needed advice, not that I’ve ever listened to me? (Would I say “don’t listen to the people you’re currently listening to?” Or tell me about the ADD? Or to buy Microsoft stock?)
The Grand Canyon before the smog got bad, or Glen Canyon before the dam? Hetch Hetchy before the dam? Yosemite before the roads? Or hell, the Grand Canyon two million years ago when lava dammed it, making a waterfall 12 times the height of Niagara Falls with twice the Niagara’s flow?
Tonight I’m thinking downtown Oakland, maybe around 1750 or so, before the Spanish brought the benefits of Christianity, cattle, and cholera. Just to show up and look around, to try not to bother the Huchiun too much, to see what my home looked like before.
Maybe I’d make that literal: hike up from Huchiun territory into Karkin turf to to see what grew in my garden two hundred fifty years ago, to see if I could even find this piece of land, to drink from the springs that once bubbled up out of our backyard.
Where would you go? Aside, of course, from the Philips Academy in 1943 to give the young George Herbert Walker Bush a free vasectomy.
Note:Many old comments were lost in a database crash in 2008. Some conversations may seem to make less sense than they would have. A few will make more sense now.
16 comments on "Grizzlies ate salmon here"Long time reader, first time commenter.
You made me nostalgic for Oakland, Chris! I lived there for a short period, eons ago. To give you some idea of how long ago that was, the place always makes me think of Earth, Wind and Fire songs. :)
I worked at a godawful mall at 41st and Broadway. I think it’s still there? It was the first “food court” I ever saw, before the idea went national or international.
You write: “thriving vibrant neighborhoods — torn down and replaced by freeways in the 1960s.” ... what was the reason given for this at the time? Just to make it easier to get to SF? Are there any books/websites you know of that might explain the ideology (is there one?) of suburban “planning”? Or did they just pop up like mushrooms?
I am currently thinking a lot about suburbs and freeways, since apparently, I can’t escape.
I’d love to travel back in time, before there were any suburbs.
What a great idea, Chris. I’d go back further, to 1400 or so, and try to circumnavigate the Bay. I want to see what California was like before the bunchgrasses were replaced with oaks, and before the eucalyptus came.
Daisy, that place is still there, (at Macarthur and Broadway) though the last time I went in it had about a 94 percent vacancy rate, including the food court. The businesses open were mainly of the hair-beading and nail polishing variety. There might have been a cell phone store as well.
A block away on Piedmont is a thriving Yuppie food district. Go figure.
That bear looks pretty mad about missing the trolley. Looks like he’s trying to hail a taxi cab now.
I was reading recently about the difference between grizzly bears and black bears. It’s a pretty useful thing to know, apparently. Black bears’ butts are higher than their shoulders… Black bears are way less dangerous than grizzlies. I guess you can scream at them and scare them off. Grizzlies, no.
We only have black bears down here in Florida.
Nice blog!
How to tell a grizzly from a black bear (old joke version):
1) sneak up behind bear
2) kick bear really hard
3) run like hell to nearest tree
4) climb tree
5) if bear chases, climbs tree and eats you, it’s a black bear
6) if bear chases, knocks tree down and eats you, it’s a grizzly.
I’d be happy to go back 50 years or so, when it was possible, as a geologist, to get access to private lands around the bay area. I hear so many stories from professors and senior colleagues about such-and-such a <hill / quarry / ranch / etc> with these really informative rock exposures, but the owner’s fed up with vandals or had some fool lawsuit, and closed the place to outsiders.
I’d also like to go back to before the cliffs on the coast were all parceled out and restricted to outsiders.
I’d like to go back to every day that I wanted to go quickly and live it with a different approach, even the miserable ones.
And, of course, there was that unfortunate incident in Utica that I’d like to avoid this time around.
That bear looks pretty mad about missing the trolley.
The bear missed the train.
The bear missed the train.
The bear missed the train,
And now he’s walkin’.
You know that bear can’t take airplanes;
He don’t drive no car.
So when that bear misses his train,
He won’t get too far.
The bear missed the train.
The bear missed the train.
The bear missed the train,
And now he’s walkin’.
OK, I’ll move watching that to the top of the list. And THEN downtown Oakland.
I thought the old bear joke was:
1. Kick bear.
2. If it goes up the tree, it’s a black.
3. If you go up the tree, it’s a grizzly.
And then there is the old one about the pair of hikers coming into grizzly country, and one stops to put on running shoes; the other explains that people can’t out run bears; the punch line is…..
“I don’t have to outrun the bear. I just have to outrun you.”
Here’s my answer to “what I would do with a time machine.” I’d go back to when the Spanish were burning the Maya codices, and snatch the codices out of their hands. And then I’d do the same with the Inka quipa. And then there was that fire in Alexandria. And so on.
I like to go back to each of the great extinctions, hang around for awile to see what the recovery was like (my time machine would have a fast forward).
Please. The mid-Cretaceous, in a heartbeat.
The Pleistocene Mojave not-yet-a-Desert.
Haight ‘66.
The old 52nd St. Birdland, at will.
“I’d probably want to go back in time and visit each of my female ancestors…And tell them about birth control.
um…you don’t see the, uh, danger inherent in that plan?