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Epilogue

Katharine A. Rodger

in Breaking Through: Essays, Journals, and Travelogues of Edward F. Ricketts

Edward F. Ricketts's career ended prematurely, at a time of considerable environmental and economic peril for the Monterey Bay. In his final essay, Ricketts struggled to come to grips with a crisis ... More

Edward F. Ricketts's career ended prematurely, at a time of considerable environmental and economic peril for the Monterey Bay. In his final essay, Ricketts struggled to come to grips with a crisis and reconcile the complexity of the human and natural factors affecting the sardines. Had he lived, Ricketts would have borne witness to the final collapse of Cannery Row and the canning industry that transformed Monterey from a mere fishing village to one of the world's industrialized fishing and canning centers for more than half a century. His work was far from finished; he intended to write a comprehensive book about the North American Pacific coast invertebrates, which would have integrated his studies ranging from the Sea of Cortez to the outer shores of British Columbia. More than fifty-five years after his death, Ricketts remains an example of one personality who healed the breach between science and art—at least for himself—and a central figure in interdisciplinary cross-pollination and the rise of American ecology.Less

Foreword to the 1925 Pacific Biological Laboratories Catalog

Katharine A. Rodger

in Breaking Through: Essays, Journals, and Travelogues of Edward F. Ricketts

The 1925 Pacific Biological Laboratories catalog that Edward F. Ricketts produced was his first major scientific publication. A twenty-five-page, letter-size volume, it is bound in a dark-brown paper ... More

The 1925 Pacific Biological Laboratories catalog that Edward F. Ricketts produced was his first major scientific publication. A twenty-five-page, letter-size volume, it is bound in a dark-brown paper cover, and includes photographs and line drawings of many specimens available from his company, along with information about the size of the specimens, packaging, and cost. The catalog's primary purpose was to advertise, but it was likely the first handbook of some of the common intertidal species of the Monterey Bay area. Though it is far from comprehensive, the catalog evidences Ricketts's growing knowledge about the region and its marine life. Its brief foreword is especially significant, for it features his earliest statements about his work as a collector, and his views on conservation and ecology.Less

Serra and the Introduction of Sacred Song: , and

Craig H. Russell

in From Serra to Sancho: Music and Pageantry in the California Missions

“Modern-day” California began with the founding of the San Diego Mission by Junípero Serra in 1769. The accounts of sacred services and the founding of this and other mission settlements—as described ... More

“Modern-day” California began with the founding of the San Diego Mission by Junípero Serra in 1769. The accounts of sacred services and the founding of this and other mission settlements—as described by Serra and his friend and biographer Francisco Palóu—provide the source material for this chapter's discussion of pageantry and sacred song in California. Special attention is devoted to the founding of Monterey in all its magnificent splendor and theatricality, as well as the relevant musical pieces such as the Veni Creator Spiritus, the Salve Regina, the Te Deum, the Alabado (a song of thanksgiving that was an obligatory part of the daily routine at the mission communities), and the Alba (a dawn song).Less

Sacred Celebration: Song, Sequence, Dance, and Pageantry

Craig H. Russell

in From Serra to Sancho: Music and Pageantry in the California Missions

This chapter delves into sacred songs in the vernacular, such as the family of gozos (songs of praise), one of which had harmonies that were similar to the folía. The villancico is examined, as are ... More

This chapter delves into sacred songs in the vernacular, such as the family of gozos (songs of praise), one of which had harmonies that were similar to the folía. The villancico is examined, as are vernacular-texted hymns and their processional pageantry that were associated with Corpus Christi. For this feast day, the Latin hymn Pange lingua and sequence Lauda Sion Salvatorem were sung quite differently in California than they were in medieval Europe. The procession for Corpus Christi utilized a semistandardized repertoire of Classical-sounding melodies (¡O qué suave!, ¡O Rey de corazones!, ¡O pan de vida!, and ¡O sacratissimo cuerpo de Jesús!) that accompanied an elaborate parade to four altars set up outside the mission walls. The founding of Monterey in 1770 by Father Serra serves as a representative example of this magnificent spectacle. Additional repertoire and feasts are examined, such as the Dies irae and Pentecost's Veni Sancte Spiritus. Less

A Venice of Pine

Edward Dallam Melillo

in Strangers On Familiar Soil: Rediscovering the Chile-California Connection

This chapter discusses how Chilean ships and wheat provided the literal foundations for San Francisco's territorial and demographic expansions during the mid-1800s. Beginning in 1848, the city's ... More

This chapter discusses how Chilean ships and wheat provided the literal foundations for San Francisco's territorial and demographic expansions during the mid-1800s. Beginning in 1848, the city's developers converted nearly all of Chile's merchant fleet into waterfront structures, initiating a process known as landmaking. These ships ended up as anchor points in an intricate network of wharves, earthen fill, foundation piles, and gangplanks. Wheat from Chile also fed the city's burgeoning population. During the mid-1800s, merchants sold 72,575 metric tons of Chilean wheat flour to the city's newcomers. This boom in wheat exports triggered profound agrarian changes in Chile, including the clearing of hundreds of thousands of acres of native forest in Chile's south-central provinces to open land for wheat cultivation. This change in traditional land-use patterns exposed these regions to swift colonization by Monterey pines during the twentieth century.Less

Mountains of Infamy, Vines of Plenty

Edward Dallam Melillo

in Strangers On Familiar Soil: Rediscovering the Chile-California Connection

This chapter focuses on Chile's forestry and viticulture in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. It details the successful cultivation of California's native Monterey pine (Pinus radiata) in ... More

This chapter focuses on Chile's forestry and viticulture in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. It details the successful cultivation of California's native Monterey pine (Pinus radiata) in Chile, making it the preeminent softwood in Chilean silviculture by the late twentieth century. It also describes the successive outbreaks of grape phylloxera (Daktulosphaira vitifoliae) that devastated California's wine industry, which destroyed so-called Old World grapevines (Vitis vinifera). The blight has never afflicted Chilean vineyards due to Chile's relative geographic isolation; a Chilean vintner's fortuitous importation of French rootstock just before Europe's first phylloxera outbreak in the 1860s; and a series of botanical quarantine policies that protected Chile's vineyards from the microscopic pest.Less

The Community Service Organization, 1953–1963

Lori A. Flores

in Grounds For Dreaming: Mexican Americans, Mexican Immigrants, and the California Farmworker Movement

This chapter focuses on a local Community Service Organization (CSO) in the Salinas Valley and how it operated in the agriculture-centered environment of the region in the years 1953–1963. It first ... More

This chapter focuses on a local Community Service Organization (CSO) in the Salinas Valley and how it operated in the agriculture-centered environment of the region in the years 1953–1963. It first provides an overview of the beginnings of the CSO chapter in Monterey County, founded by Fred Ross as a platform for Mexican Americans to prove their good citizenship while asserting their right to equal treatment. It then considers the CSO's membership, goals, and trajectory as well as its impact on California's Mexican-origin population and members' attitudes toward braceros and the Bracero Program. It also highlights the CSO's successes and failures, with particular emphasis on its inability to create interracial alliances, involve the larger Mexican-origin community in specific protests, maintain stable leadership, and risk its cultivated image of respectability.Less

Loss in the Tortilla Flats

Steven W. Bender

in Tierra Y Libertad: Land, Liberty, and Latino Housing

This chapter makes the first geographical stop in a national housing survey, examining the wrenching economics for farm workers and other manual laborers in California’s affluent Monterey and Santa ... More

This chapter makes the first geographical stop in a national housing survey, examining the wrenching economics for farm workers and other manual laborers in California’s affluent Monterey and Santa Cruz counties. This chapter also offers literary examples of the popular conception of Latino/as as poor stewards of their houses and the land, which resonates in U.S. society’s shabby treatment of Latino/as in the arena of housing policy. The chapter addresses specifically the derogatory literary depictions of Latino/a housing in John Steinbeck’s 1935 novel Tortilla Flat and T. C. Boyle’s Tortilla Curtain, which complement the history of the literal loss of Latino/as’ land and homes, as well as their historical and current exclusion from the American dream of homeownership.Less

“Investigator Blames Industry, Nature for Shortage”

Katharine A. Rodger

in Breaking Through: Essays, Journals, and Travelogues of Edward F. Ricketts

Edward F. Ricketts's serious studies of the sardine cycle span the almost twenty-five years he lived and worked in Monterey Bay—from the mid-1920s through the late 1940s—as he watched the boom and ... More

Edward F. Ricketts's serious studies of the sardine cycle span the almost twenty-five years he lived and worked in Monterey Bay—from the mid-1920s through the late 1940s—as he watched the boom and bust of Cannery Row. By the time his last and most articulate essay about the subject, “Investigator Blames Industry, Nature for Shortage,” appeared in the 1948 Monterey Peninsula Herald, the canning industry had begun to collapse. In his article, Ricketts attempted to explain the crisis in a historical context. The article ran on the first and third pages of the newspaper and included a bar graph of the annual tonnage of sardines caught along the entire North American Pacific coastline from the 1920–1921 season through the 1947–1948 season. Ricketts was a staunch conservationist, and while he was willing to take, and took, the unpopular position that overfishing was a major factor in the collapse of the sardine population, he recognized that it was affected by a diverse and complicated set of factors—both human and natural—and knew the problem could not be solved simply.Less

From Businessman to Sage

Michael J Lannoo

in Leopold's Shack and Ricketts's Lab: The Emergence of Environmentalism

Edward F. Ricketts sought to parlay his midwestern work ethic and his University of Chicago experiences into a career built on nature. After he left Chicago in 1923, Ricketts and his new family ... More

Edward F. Ricketts sought to parlay his midwestern work ethic and his University of Chicago experiences into a career built on nature. After he left Chicago in 1923, Ricketts and his new family settled on the Monterey Peninsula. The year before, Libbie Hyman, a member of the faculty at the University of Chicago, had studied at the Hopkins Marine Station there, and Joel Hedgpeth speculates that it may have been her accounts of the rich seashore life that prompted Ricketts and Albert E. Galigher to choose the region for their biological supply business. As with any business where customers are distributed, Pacific Biological Laboratories needed a catalog, and Ricketts assembled one. He became friends with John Steinbeck, with whom he shared his ideas on biology, ecology, and philosophy, as well as any other topics that arose. The story of Ricketts's maturation intertwines and tangles with those of Steinbeck and Joseph Campbell. Xenia Cage, the wife of the avant-garde composer John Cage, was an important link among members of Ricketts's Lab.Less

The Lab

Michael J Lannoo

in Leopold's Shack and Ricketts's Lab: The Emergence of Environmentalism

When Edward F. Ricketts arrived, the Monterey Peninsula was “still a quiet part of the world, a pleasant end of the road along one of the loveliest of seashores.” In an airplane “it looks like a ... More

When Edward F. Ricketts arrived, the Monterey Peninsula was “still a quiet part of the world, a pleasant end of the road along one of the loveliest of seashores.” In an airplane “it looks like a bear's head jutting out into the sea, Pacific Grove is in the bear's mouth, Cannery Row lies under its jaw, and Monterey, the largest of the three towns, spreads out along its throat and chest.” Aside from churches, in 1923 the principal intellectual establishment of the peninsula was the Hopkins Marine Station of Stanford University, recently relocated to Cabrillo Point, not far from the canneries. After only a year in business together, Ricketts and Albert E. Galigher dissolved their partnership. Ricketts became the sole owner of Pacific Biological Laboratories. During the spring and summer of 1932, John Steinbeck's wife Carol was also in the Lab quite a lot, working part-time for Ricketts. In late 1936, Cannery Row caught fire and Ricketts's Lab was incinerated. By the end of January 1937, a new Lab was built.Less

Introduction

Katharine A. Rodger

in Breaking Through: Essays, Journals, and Travelogues of Edward F. Ricketts

Edward F. Ricketts's passion for zoology began when he was a child in urban Chicago during the first years of the twentieth century, well before he was a fledgling collector on the shores of Monterey ... More

Edward F. Ricketts's passion for zoology began when he was a child in urban Chicago during the first years of the twentieth century, well before he was a fledgling collector on the shores of Monterey Bay in California in the 1920s. In his seminal text, Between Pacific Tides, Ricketts grouped animals by five primary intertidal habitats: rocky shores, sandy beaches, sand flats, mud flats, and wharf pilings. Ricketts also collected specimens to add to his Pacific Biological Laboratories stock and to further develop his theories on the effects of wave shock on the distribution of marine animals. In the decade before his seminal trip to the Gulf of California, he had begun to piece together the concept in a series of three philosophical essays that articulated the components of his holistic worldview: “The Philosophy of Breaking Through,” “A Spiritual Morphology of Poetry,” and “Essay on Non-teleological Thinking.” John Steinbeck included a version of the latter essay in the log portion of Sea of Cortez, which he composed in mid-1941.Less

Transcendence

Michael J Lannoo

in Leopold's Shack and Ricketts's Lab: The Emergence of Environmentalism

On Thursday, April 22, 1948, Dan Thompson, one of Aldo Leopold's students, and his research assistant were driving south along U.S. Highway 51 in northern Wisconsin when the news of Leopold's death ... More

On Thursday, April 22, 1948, Dan Thompson, one of Aldo Leopold's students, and his research assistant were driving south along U.S. Highway 51 in northern Wisconsin when the news of Leopold's death came over their car radio. Leopold was buried in the Starker family plot at the Aspen Grove Cemetery. Edward F. Ricketts died weeks after Leopold, and his funeral was held in a chapel above the ocean. After Leopold died, farmers in the area turned their properties—a total of 1,200 acres—into a management trust called the Leopold Memorial Reserve. Today, its cornerstone is the energy-efficient Leopold Legacy Center, which serves as a multipurpose facility designed for both research and education. John Steinbeck sold Ricketts' Pacific Biological Laboratories to Jack Yee, a Cannery Row landlord. The Lab was then sold to the City of Monterey, which restored the structure and occasionally opens it to the public. Leopold's memory lives on at the University of Wisconsin. Today, Leopold and Ricketts have thousands, perhaps tens of thousands, of admirers.Less

Race, Place and Cultural Production in Carmel-by-the-Sea

Geneva M. Gano

in The Little Art Colony and US Modernism: Carmel, Provincetown, Taos

Carmel-by-the-Sea, a newly developed artist’s village located on the central California coast, claimed for itself the title of the first year-round little art colony in the nation, one that boasted ... More

Carmel-by-the-Sea, a newly developed artist’s village located on the central California coast, claimed for itself the title of the first year-round little art colony in the nation, one that boasted an elaborate infrastructure including an experimental community theatre, communist study groups, dada-inspired balls, ‘straight’ photography, music festivals, and literary work of all stripes. This chapter describes the strange blend of intellectuals, bohemians, socialists, and businessmen that made the Carmel colony exemplary and excavates the history of land development for the high-end tourism and real estate economy on the Monterey Peninsula at the end of the nineteenth century. As local newspaper articles, real estate brochures, and guidebooks reveal, this small village used emergent real estate development and cutting-edge marketing techniques to position itself as what Richard Florida might call a ‘creative city.’ These helped to promote the area to a predominantly white middle and upper class with the time and money to spend on tourism and leisure activities. This chapter fleshes out this economic history—one that importantly includes the racially targeted displacements of Chinese fishermen to make way for the artists and tourists—and connects it to a remarkable scene of modernist primitivism in Jack London’s 1913 novel, Valley of the Moon.Less

To Palm Springs

in Los Angeles in the 1930s: The WPA Guide to the City of Angels

This chapter describes a tour to Palm Springs which takes the following route: Los Angeles–Monterey Park–Pomona–Ontario–Colton–Redlands–Beaumont–Banning–Palm Springs–Cathedral City–Indio; 128.4 m.; ... More

This chapter describes a tour to Palm Springs which takes the following route: Los Angeles–Monterey Park–Pomona–Ontario–Colton–Redlands–Beaumont–Banning–Palm Springs–Cathedral City–Indio; 128.4 m.; N. Main St., Aliso St., Ramona Blvd., US 99, State 111. This route runs through the citrus groves of the coastal valley, the wind-swept heights of a mountain pass, and the hot, sandy soil of a below-sea-level basin.Less

Down the Peninsula

David Kipen

in San Francisco in the 1930s: The WPA Guide to the City by the Bay

The wedge-shaped strip of territory known to all San Franciscans as “the Peninsula,” broad at its base in the south and pinched to a tip by ocean and Bay at its northern end, is a multicolored land. ... More

The wedge-shaped strip of territory known to all San Franciscans as “the Peninsula,” broad at its base in the south and pinched to a tip by ocean and Bay at its northern end, is a multicolored land. It embraces tall mountains darkly forested, white sandy beaches enclosed on three sides by steep rocky cliffs, peaceful farms with chaste white buildings, broad walled estates with stately old mansions, and busy towns bright with red and green roofs of modern stucco homes. Explorers of Spain and Catholic mission builders, trudging north from established Monterey, were the first white men to look on its hills and water and plain. Today, thousands of San Franciscans live on the Peninsula and drive to work or ride the commute trains playing never-ending games of bridge on tables held on knees between coach seats.Less

. Central Coast Bioregion

Frank W. Davis and Mark I. Borchert

in Fire in California's Ecosystems

This chapter describes the Central Coast bioregion, which include coastal valleys and mountains and interior mountains. Major ecological zones include: coastal prairie and coastal sage scrub, coast ... More

This chapter describes the Central Coast bioregion, which include coastal valleys and mountains and interior mountains. Major ecological zones include: coastal prairie and coastal sage scrub, coast redwood-Douglas-fir and coast redwood-mixed evergreen forests, and chaparral and oak woodland. The chapter outlines the ecology of several species and community types that, with the exception of coast live oak, are characteristic of the region but are relatively localized. In the coastal plain and foothills zone, the chapter reviews Bishop pine, Monterey pine, maritime chaparral, and coastal live oak forests and woodlands. Of the many species and community types characteristic of the lower montane zone, knobcone pine and Sargent cypress are discussed. It then evaluates the four important management issues that face fire and natural resource managers in the Central Coast bioregion, notably: climate change, fire and exotic species, the management of fire-dependent species, and fire management at the wildland-urban interface.Less

News of California Gold Discoveries Spreads across France

Malcolm J. Rohrbough

in Rush to Gold: The French and the California Gold Rush, 1848–1854

In May 1848, Jacques Moerenhout, the French consul in Monterey, wrote to the minister of foreign affairs telling them about the discovery of gold in California. The chapter charts his discoveries and ... More

In May 1848, Jacques Moerenhout, the French consul in Monterey, wrote to the minister of foreign affairs telling them about the discovery of gold in California. The chapter charts his discoveries and the impact this had in France in the year that followed. Among the many stories and accounts (official and unofficial) that flooded the newspapers in early 1849, a few themes stood out. The first was the sense of excitement, movement, and energy wrought by the gold discoveries. Peoples from diverse places across the western hemisphere and into the Pacific were in motion toward California. They encountered one another in the transit points and the ports of call, where they competed for services and accommodation. Another was the rising consensus among the authors of the accounts that the gold discoveries were real.Less

Holocene Monterey Bay Fur Seals: Distribution, Dates, and Ecological Implications

Diane Gifford-Gonzalez

in Human Impacts on Seals, Sea Lions, and Sea Otters: Integrating Archaeology and Ecology in the Northeast Pacific

The research reported in this chapter has proceeded on the assumption that zooarchaeological, stable isotopic, and ancient DNA analyses can, in combination, elucidate the longer-term histories of ... More

The research reported in this chapter has proceeded on the assumption that zooarchaeological, stable isotopic, and ancient DNA analyses can, in combination, elucidate the longer-term histories of northern fur seals (Callorhinus ursinus) in the North Pacific. After a decade of collaboration by investigators from several institutions and agencies, this expectation has proved to be justified. This chapter reviews current state of knowledge about the distribution of northern fur seal remains in the Greater Monterey Bay region, commenting on emerging geographic and temporal patterns. It then presents detailed data on the ecology of present-day northern fur seals and discusses possible differences in ecological parameters between the ancient California Callorhinus population and its contemporaneous cousins north of Oregon. It also considers how these factors, in concert with human predation, may have contributed to the Middle to Late Holocene demise of near-coastal rookeries in California. Finally, it outlines some ways in which collaborative approaches can shed light on emerging questions and problems in northern fur seal historical ecology.Less