Almost forgot, but on the way east from California, I finally stopped at this obscure unit between Mojave National Preserve and Nevada. This is an undeveloped park in all senses of the word. There are no park facilities (besides the small sign), and the center of the park is still a open pit, unprofitable gold mine, which is supposed to be transferred to the park service soon. Not much to see, despite lots of warnings about not running over the Desert Tortoises. From the Castle Mountains on the left, you can look across at the Castle Peaks on the right, but the former don’t look like castles and the latter are outside the park in the New York Mountains. (I blame the miners for the naming confusion).
The “roads” in the park are 4WD high clearance only and sometimes wash out completely. Since I’m trying not to damage my car again (Chaco!), I thought I’d test out my new e-bike on the 10 mile road in from Clara Bow’s old ranch (now a Nature Conservancy reserve). My car would have bumped along well enough until the park entrance, but then it might have gotten tricky. There’s another even rougher way in from the Ivanpah Road. (If you’ve ever driven around here, you’ve seen the Ivanpah Solar Towers which use mirrors to boil salt but burn natural gas each morning to get warmed up. And they kill birds.) Anyways, there was a nice sunset lighting up some of the Joshua Trees, but I didn’t stop to take another photo on my way out.
At 10:15 pm on 17 July 1944, 320 people were vaporized in a munitions explosion while loading two ships simultaneously. The blast registered 3.4 on the Richter scale, disintegrated the docks above, blew one ship into small pieces, threw other ships hundreds of yards away, and injured people on the other side of Suisun Bay above. Most of the victims were young African Americans, and the Navy blamed the poorly trained black workers rather than the white officers in charge. When 50 survivors refused to return to work, they were sentenced to 8 to 15 years in prison and others were threatened with firing squad for mutiny. Despite the efforts of Thurgood Marshall to defend them and focus the blame on the Navy’s negligence, the ‘mutineers’ spent the rest of the war in prison, and the story was lost to history until a Cal professor named Robert Allen found a pamphlet, interviewed a dozen survivors and wrote a book in 1989.
The story is powerful, and the ranger and volunteer did an excellent job of painting a detailed picture of racism, dereliction of duty (among the officers who bet on load rates), the lies that the enlisted workers were told (that the bombs were inert), and the trial. Photographs, oral accounts and actually visiting the spot where it happened, including touring the revetments where munitions were transferred from boxcars and out to the docks, bring the impact home. The volunteer, Diana, noted that the Navy suffered an even more deadly munitions loading accident less than 4 months later, when the USS Mt Hood exploded in New Guinea on 10 November 1944, obviously not learning the lessons of Port Chicago. The ranger, Eric, made a persuasive case that the negligence and racism uncovered and protested, while officially unpunished, likely prompted the Navy to be the first branch of the military to desegregate completely in February 1946, two years before the other branches.
This park unit is dedicated to preventing this unjust tragedy from being forgotten. Tours must be reserved at least two weeks in advance for Thursday through Saturday when the Army, who took over the base, allows visitors. Although the tour met at the Muir home, I was able to drive my EV to the site above. Fortunately, the park service is working on improving access by building a visitor center nearby.
The view from the cupola of Muir’s father-in-law’s orchard estate upsets me. Between the palm trees, you can see smoke rising from the refineries in Martinez, and to the right across the street is a gas station. Muir never rode in cars, took horse carriages and preferred walking. In the house, there’s a print of the Muir Glacier in Alaska, now the Muir Inlet. He lived just long enough to lose the battle to prevent Hetch Hetchy Dam at Yosemite. Many of the giant sequoia groves at Sequoia have been destroyed by wildfires. And all his work with Teddy Roosevelt and the Sierra Club he helped found to protect millions of acres of wilderness is failing to protect nature from the man made climate crisis.
The battle for conservation will go on endlessly. It is the universal warfare between right and wrong.
John Muir, 1896
At least he was happy in this house. Muir visited the owner, a Polish botanist who introduced varieties of fruit trees to the valley, and fell in love with his daughter, Louie. They married, settled here and inherited the orchards. They had children and also invited some of Muir’s siblings to join them, allowing John time to write. One of the oldest buildings in the area is the Martinez Adobe in the back of the property, which gave room for the Muir clan to stay and take care of the orchards. Influenced by Emerson, who he met later in life, Thoreau and Marsh, Muir continued traveling and became the most influential conservationist in the world, writing books, articles and letters to protect Yosemite, sequoia groves, glaciers and other natural wonders from human consumption. He would not forgive us for our fossil fuel pollution.
Being a cantankerous old mule, I decided not to reserve a spot on the free shuttle and hiked through Las Trampas Wilderness Regional Preserve to visit the site, partly because I’m trying to visit the parks via non-carbon transport and partly because I visited the park not too many years ago and didn’t need a repeat experience. The wealthy landowning neighbors (one property currently listed at $10 million) don’t like the riff-raff driving past their landscaping, so they insist that visitors take the shuttle from downtown, even though there’s plenty of space for parking on site. When locals benefit from tax spending on public parks, then try to limit public access, and typically complain about tax spending going to the poor, the selfish hypocrisy stinks. So I decided to park in front of the most ostentatious private drive I could find and hiked about a mile to Tao House.
O’Neill, America’s most accomplished playwright and father of American tragedy who won four Pulitzers and the Nobel Prize for Literature, used the stipend from that last award to settle here on this quiet ranch. He enjoyed several years here with his wife Carlotta and wrote some of his best work, including the autobiographical plays The Iceman Cometh and Long Day’s Journey Into Night. Many of the artifacts here are not original but do a good job of recreating the atmosphere of his comfortable, private writer’s retreat, and the few original items and personal touches, showing Asian theatrical influences and his love of his dogs, make the tour worthwhile. Illness forced him to leave during the war, prevented him from continuing to write, and he died in Boston, although his work continued winning awards.
FDR said, “we can’t afford to indulge in prejudice now”, and with that, the “Rosie” in the lower part of the collage above suddenly was able to qualify for a job that previously hired neither blacks nor women nor LGBTQ+ nor any other minority. Note that she is riveting aircraft grade aluminum while wearing lipstick, nail polish, a large wedding ring and a classic “Rosie” red bandana. Many women were surprised how easy riveting was and didn’t understand why men said they couldn’t do it. By 1944, women were about 1/3 of the workforce, and 10,000 African Americans worked here in Richmond during the war along with all other minorities (except Japanese Americans). Leadership is required to change society’s prejudices and discriminatory practices, and once the door was opened, many women decided to continue working after the war.
The visitor center is next to the Ford Assembly Plant, which is still full of industrial activity. Check in at the gate on Harbor, then drive around back and all the way down to the right. There are ChargePoint stations in the lot, and a good restaurant next to the visitor center. The factory used to make tanks, and across Marina Bay was Shipyard #2 which produced a new ship every 4 days, loaded with tanks and sent off immediately. Walk a bit of the SF Bay Trail along the waterfront to a fine memorial to the Rosies in Marina Bay Park, next to the yachts and fancy condos. Shipyards #1 and #4 were up the channel on the other side, along with the Prefab Yard. And Shipyard #3 still has the SS Red Oak Victory Ship, launched in November 1944, with worthwhile tours. This was the beating heart of America’s “Arsenal of Democracy”, and it was a unified effort of all hands on deck which changed the course of labor and civil rights overnight.
The staircase down to the lighthouse below is often closed due to high winds, and, especially during the summer, the scene above is hidden in fog. Of course, that’s why the lighthouse was needed, as this rocky point sticks far out into the Pacific, due in part to the San Andreas Fault. If you hike the Earthquake Trail from the Bear Valley visitor center, you can see a fence that has a 16 foot gap representing how far the land moved along the fault line in 1906. There’s also a replica native village and a horse ranch that used to raise Morgans.
Due to its remote coastal location, there are wildlife viewing opportunities, especially Tule Elk at the north point, migrating whales, seals, and birds in different seasons. I saw a coyote, some raptors, deer and coveys of California Quail (our state bird), and I only visited the lighthouse this trip. There are glorious miles of hiking trails, especially out to the estuary and Drakes Bay, where Sir Francis Drake most likely landed during his 1579 circumnavigation.
The park service is working to preserve and restore the area due to its ecological importance. The commercial oyster farm out here is gone, but there are still several historic ranches that date back to the 1850’s. There are kayaks for rent next to the Tomales Bay Resort in Inverness, and the town of Point Reyes Station has some restaurants and organic markets for picnic supplies.
The redwoods here are coastal, Sequoia Sempervirens, and are not the shorter, but more massive giant sequoias up in the Sierra Nevada mountains. Both types of redwoods, and a relative, the dawn redwood found in China, once lived all around the northern hemisphere, but now their numbers are drastically reduced. The coastal redwoods are the tallest living beings on earth, each one living for centuries. Dinosaurs walked through these coastal redwood groves.
This old growth forest was donated in 1908, made a national monument by Teddy Roosevelt, named for his friend the naturalist John Muir, and was the site of a UN founding meeting held in 1945 in memory of FDR. Despite the many visitors (parking or shuttle reservations required), it is still possible to find a quiet moment among these silent sentinels and connect to the ancient world.
This most-visited park protects land in San Francisco, Marin and San Mateo Counties, but most of the fun stuff for visitors is near the Golden Gate Bridge. The southern units include the unimaginatively named Ocean Beach, Fort Funston which is great for watching hang gliding, Rancho Corral de Tierra for horseback riding, and Sweeney Ridge which has views, hikes and wildlife. If you’re on your way north to Muir Woods and Point Reyes, then you can wind your way up the coast past Muir and Stinson Beaches, past Bolinas Lagoon and through the bucolic Olema Valley. If you have young kids, a stop at the Bay Area Discovery Museum is fun, especially if you’re going to Sausalito. The urban units include Alcatraz, Fort Mason, the Presidio, China Beach, and Lands End near the Legion of Honor art museum.
But if you’re focusing on San Francisco, then you may want to start with the bridge. On the north side, there are nice views from the Marin Headlands, not just Vista Point, but through the tunnel to the Marin Headlands along the loop road to the old forts. On the south side, there are good views from Lands End to the Presidio. If you’re taking photos, note that the north end of Baker Beach is clothing optional. Crissy Field, the naturally restored area once used by the Wright Brothers, is popular for kite surfing, which must be a fun way to see the bridge. Fort Point is under the south east side of the bridge, about as close as you can get without being on the bridge. At the last northbound exit, there’s a visitor center with a small parking lot and info about the bridge, and if you want to go on the bridge, one side is for pedestrians, the other for bicyclists and the middle for cars ;).
The Presidio was originally fortified by the Spanish in 1776, passed to Mexico, and then was taken by the US around 1846. It was an important military base for every US conflict for the next 140 years, and it includes a national cemetery, an officers club dating back to Spain, a former military hospital now used by Lucasfilm (see Yoda above), and a museum dedicated to Walt Disney, who stole some of his best ideas from Oakland’s Fairyland, along with a whole list of other interesting projects. The park leases many of its historic buildings as private residences. I don’t normally write long travel guides to parks, but I can’t help it as I used to live near the Sutro Baths ruin. OK, one last tip. Reserve tickets for Alcatraz months earlier than you think is necessary and try to do the night tour if possible. Unfortunately, the only way out there is by fossil fuel ferry.
Before the bridge was even conceived, the opening from the Pacific into the San Francisco Bay with passage up the Sacramento River was known as the golden gate, and people came from all over the world to get rich quick. In Chinese the area was called 金山 meaning ‘Gold Mountain’, and San Francisco is still called 舊金山 or ‘Old Gold Mountain’ today. (Many Chinese immigrant dreams were quashed by racist immigration policies, despite laboring on the railroads, levees and in a variety of businesses). Of course, nowadays, the path to riches is in the Bay Area’s high tech industries, where dreams are spun into gold. Which is why Yoda is a fine image for the Golden Gate NRA.
The photo above shows the park, but you’ll need to zoom in to see the following details left to right. The dock to the far left belongs to the Sea Scouts. The island to the left above the municipal pier is Alcatraz, part of the Golden Gate NRA. There are swimmers in the cold water between the small blue and red boats in Aquatic Cove. The three masted square rigger on the left is the Balclutha, and the three masted schooner on the right is the C. A. Thayer, both late 19th century cargo ships. Also on Hyde Street Pier is the Eureka, an old ferry boat recently restored, along with a number of smaller vessels, which are typically open for tours ($15). On weekends there’s a ranger led waterfront walk from the Argonaut Hotel near the pier entrance. Be sure to ask what it meant to get Shanghaied, how and where it allegedly happened, and why sailors were initially exempt from the 13th Amendment. On the far right, there’s an Art Deco style building resembling a ship outside, with murals and maritime exhibits inside. And above that is the sign for Ghirardelli Square (‘gear-a-deli’) which serves delectable old fashioned hot fudge sundaes, after you’ve explored the park.
The Civil War era fort was obsolete as soon as it was built, since rifled cannon penetrated brick walls, and the one threat it faced, the CSS Shenandoah via the Indian and Pacific, called off their mission when they learned the war had ended months earlier. (They spent their round the world voyage attacking whaling ships out of New Bedford, since they often had escaped slaves on their crews.) Before that, there was a Spanish fort here, which was taken over by the Mexicans and then by a band of Americans including Capt. Fremont and Kit Carson, shortly before California became a state.
These days, it’s best used as a place to get a nice photo of the Golden Gate Bridge (when it’s less foggy). The fort is open on weekends, and you can get a good photo from the roof. I walked down from Battery East, but walking or biking from Crissy Field is nicer. There is parking at the fort, although it requires persistence navigating, since more roads are open to bikes than cars around here.
Zero Carbon Travel 