No More Dam Sites

I had a day to myself, so I did what I do best: I chose to climb a peak. Naturally, it was a county highpoint--Snow Mountain East, the highest point in Colusa and Lake counties, at 7056 feet. This checks one more peak and two counties off the list. My lifelong goal is to reach the highest point in each of California's 58 counties, and I've got six more on the list that are higher than this one and nine more that are lower. At a rate of one per year lately, I've got about 15 years left on this project. The nice thing about doing this is you get to spend time in and learn about every county in the state.

Snow Mountain East is the southernmost subalpine peak in the Coast Ranges, and the closest one to the Bay Area. It isn't very close though--it takes about four hours of driving to get to the trailhead, and about an hour of that is on dirt or curvy roads. You can get there from the west through the watershed of the Rice Fork of the Eel River, whose waters are diverted to the Russian River below Pillsbury Reservoir. Or you can get there the way I did, from the east, via the Stony Creek drainage, and just to the east of that, the proposed Sites Reservoir.

View from Snow Mountain of the Sacramento Valley. The Sutter Buttes can
be seen at the top right. East Park Reservoir is visible in the middle, and the
much larger area proposed for Sites Reservoir is just behind the hills behind it.

A Great Great Grand Coincidence?

My last update on the mystery of my great-great-grandparents left off with a probable coincidence in similar names. The essence of the mystery is that before the 1860 census, I couldn't find much information about my Spanish ancestors. Their names in the records available on the Internet are often misspelled, or variably-spelled. Not only that, but the change in countries when the U.S. conquered California means that to take my family history back deeper into the past, and farther southeast geographically, I need to start looking at Mexican records instead of U.S. records. At least, that is what I used to think the major challenge was.

I've got some new breakthroughs to report, thanks to some new resources I've discovered, and some more-than-coincidences that my detective work has unearthed.

I Should Have Been a Schnautenhaus

I wanted to post it here, but the script wouldn't work on blogspot, so here is my family tree, color-coded with the migration status of my ancestors. This project had its roots in a California Geography class I took two decades ago at El Camino College, when the assignment was to summarize the immigration history of my ancestors. Below is an expanded (beyond what was on my former Website) Javascript version of just my mom's side, four years in the making (mostly four years of not getting around to finishing it).

This wouldn't have been possible without the work of my cousin Brian who did extensive research and put together a book on the Schwerin family history. I intend to refine, update, and fine tune the page as needed.

The surprising thing is that despite my grandfather's parents "arriving" (one was born there) in San Francisco by 1864, the proportion of my ancestors that never reached the New World (in black text) is overwhelming. Going back 350-450 years, 67 of my direct ancestors on my mom's side never reached the New World, one reached the New World but not San Francisco, four migrated to San Francisco, and only three (including my mom) were born in San Francisco. If we look back only to the last 164 years, since my first ancestor to get off the boat arrived in San Francisco in January 1850, four migrated and only three were born here.

That is fascinating because if you think about how long white people's families have been in California, it really isn't very long when measured in direct ancestors. I feel like my family has a long history in California, but only three of my direct ancestors on my mom's side were born here and only about five or six on my dad's side. On my mom's side, 8 lived in California, and probably 9 on my dad's side. So my generation is the pivot point where half of my direct ancestors that lived in California were born here.

Think about how new we all are! How quickly we have changed this state! Can we please stop messing it up and work a little harder to live here sustainably and restore the amazing and incredible natural environment that we took from the natives? Because a lot of us plan to be here a while...