Meet our Spring Speaker
Native Plant Talk
4/18/23
7-9pm
Details
Mark Vande Pol is a fourth generation Californian, born in 1954 at Kaiser Hospital, Oakland. He grew up in several cities in the Bay Area: Richmond, Walnut Creek, El Cerrito, San Francisco, and Lafayette. Both parents were members of the Sierra Club taking him car-camping all through early childhood. “Home” at that time were Calaveras Big Trees and skipping rocks on the Stanislaus River, both including drives through the flower fields of the Central Valley. During high school in San Francisco, many weekends were spent hitchhiking to Point Reyes National Seashore. Summers included multi-week solo backpacking trips in Yosemite. After clawing back into academic life via the junior college system in Oakland, Mark graduated from Harvey Mudd College in 1985. The philosophical reason for choosing an engineering degree was to understand how wealth is created, hands-on, to do something about a country that appeared even then to be in productive decline. After starting in microwave microelectronic manufacturing, Mark and his wife took a two year hiatus to build their home in the Santa Cruz Mountains with the desire to save a piece of the California he knew as a child. The property had a 200 year history of weed introductions and was horribly overgrown. In his next job, Mark affected a turnaround, inventing machinery to make new products at Becton Dickinson in Los Gatos. At that time, he joined the Santa Cruz County Local UN Agenda 21 Biodiversity and Ecosystem Management Roundtable. That process induced him to write his first book proposing a free market environmental management business method, later patented. Touring the American West to sell the book made it clear that our property had to be a paragon of what was being proposed, with the goal being a 100% native plant landscape, including small annual forbs. What was not known at the time was that no one had ever done that before. In the process, a second book exposited a transformational interpretation of the Biblical Sabbath for the Land. As part of that work, a third online book was begun to teach what had been learned to achieve what is considered by many to be the finest native plant restoration project on earth. The current goal is for the property to function as a laboratory to teach and develop restoration processes and to bring them within the economic reach of a landowner while learning more about how we might use and benefit from native plant management.
April 8th
Roger Louis Mason was inspired by his granddaughter, Rachel, to found a mountain history museum group in 2015. Roger is a fourth generation Santa Cruz Mountain resident whose family settled in the Skyland community in the 1870’s. Great grandparents on both sides of the family lived and farmed on Stetson Road. Roger grew up and worked on the family fruit farm, and he also worked in construction with his father. Roger graduated from San Jose State University with an Industrial Engineering degree and a Business minor. After college he worked at the GE Nuclear Division in San Jose as a mechanical designer, then managed the Fuel Design Unit until he left in 1988 to manage a design group at Syntex Pharmaceuticals in Palo Alto. In 2002 Roche Pharmaceuticals acquired Syntex and Roger continued working as a construction project manager until he left in 2010 to manage his own construction company. Currently Roger continues working as a general contractor, owns the Mason-Taylor Ranch an organic fruit farm and is involved with the Loma Prieta Museum.
Happy Birthday!
Happy Birthday!
April 6th
Jan Villemaire was raised on an apple farm in upstate New York in an area where her family members were the first settlers in the early 1800's. Her interest in history and genealogy began many years ago when she started researching all of her ancestors from Europe who settled in New York from the late 1600s to the early 1800s. She believes it is important for the present and future generations living in the Santa Cruz Mountains to know about the amazing history and people who settled this area. The Loma Prieta Museum is fulfilling that need, and she is helping with the Early Settler database and with events for the community to learn and enjoy. After high school in 1962, Jan came to California and graduated from San Jose State University in 1966 with a Bachelor of Arts in Social Work. She worked for 34 years as a Social Worker for the Santa Clara County Department of Social Services. She has been living in the Santa Cruz Mountains since 1978, when she and her husband built a house on five acres and moved from San Jose. Her two girls and two grandchildren have been through grades K-8 in the Loma Prieta and C. T. English Schools. She was a volunteer in the classrooms, Home and School Clubs, Girl Scouts, and started a Young Astronaut Club at CTE. After retirement, she volunteered with MERC, Red Cross Disaster Services, and animal rescue groups. She enjoys her family and cat, living close to nature, hiking, and Tai Chi.
Celebrating
Asian History Month
Early Chinese Immigration
By Debra Staab
The San Lorenzo Valley Museum at the Belardi Gallery in Felton previously hosted a major exhibit on the San Lorenzo Valley Chinese 1850-1920. Photographs, documents, artifacts, and interpretive text revealed the significant challenges that the Chinese immigrants encountered. A few Chinese had migrated to California during the times of Spanish and Mexican rule, but the vast majority arrived during the Gold Rush, along with many others from around the world. The Chinese came primarily from the Southern Chinese province of Kuangtung to escape war, famine, droughts, and floods. They saw California as their golden ticket to prosperity. Race and immigration have long been contentious topics. In 1850, the US government recognized only two races, White and Black, and only Whites could become citizens. As a result, Asian immigrants, who were neither black nor white, were recognized as aliens, and they were not permitted to obtain citizenship. Competition in the gold fields was so fierce that the California legislature enacted a law in 1852 that disallowed all Chinese from owning a gold claim. This gave more opportunity to White miners and forced Chinese men to take work in other fields such as agriculture, construction, domestic service, and running laundries. Note that, at this time, only Chinese men immigrated—women and children were left behind. Many Chinese accepted dangerous and difficult work such as building the railroad through the Santa Cruz Mountains. The men worked in gangs, and these contracted laborers were often referred to as “coolies”. In spite of significant discrimination against the Chinese, they were applauded for being industrious and having great fidelity.
How the Chinese Built the Railroad
By Debra Staab
Santa Cruz Mountain settlers owed a tremendous debt to their Chinese immigrant counterparts. In the mid-1870s, when the South Pacific Coast and Santa Cruz Railroads sprang to life, gangs of Chinese workers were employed to perform most of the manual labor necessary to build the railroad. Their primary task was to excavate the six tunnels required for a train to pass from Los Gatos to Santa Cruz. It seemed like a nearly impossible goal to cut through the 12,000 feet of solid granite rock. Armed with little more than picks, shovels, and a few sticks of dynamite, workers started digging at both ends of the proposed tunnel line. Even using professional surveys, the excavation had to be extremely precise in order for the men to meet in the middle. Despite putting in very long days, the crews were only able to clear about 10 feet per day. Construction costs were high, running about $110,000 per mile or almost $21 per foot. The workers were paid pennies per day. The extremely dangerous working conditions resulted in an even higher cost—the loss of life. After accidentally hitting pockets of natural gas and oil in the mountains, explosions blasted through the tunnels killing dozens, if not hundreds. After the fourth incident, the Chinese workers quit en masse. Cornish workers from the Almaden Quicksilver Mines were brought in to finish the tunneling work.
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