Ranching On The Point Reyes Peninsula

The Point Reyes Peninsula has a rich history encompassing thriving Native American settlements, visits by Francis Drake and Spanish explorers, dramatic shipwrecks, Mexican rancheros, famous dairy farms, railroads, and one of the country's most spectacular lighthouses. These historical facets spawned the three small towns of Olema, Point Reyes Station, and Inverness; each is unique with its own distinctive foundations. Most of the land is now within Point Reyes National Seashore, a refuge created during the Kennedy administration and now one of the more popular destinations on the California coast. The unique geography of the forest, bay, and ocean environments and the abundant wildlife in Point Reyes offers fine scenery, diverse recreational opportunities, and good food and lodging, while the towns retain their old-time character.

Point Reyes National Seashore has a long history as a working landscape, with dairy and beef ranching, fishing, and oyster farming; yet, since 1962 it has also been managed as a National Seashore. The Paradox of Preservation chronicles how national ideals about what a park “ought to be” have developed over time and what happens when these ideals are implemented by the National Park Service (NPS) in its efforts to preserve places that are also lived-in landscapes. Using the conflict surrounding the closure of the Drakes Bay Oyster Company, Laura Alice Watt examines how NPS management policies and processes for land use and protection do not always reflect the needs and values of local residents. Instead, the resulting landscapes produced by the NPS represent a series of compromises between use and protection—and between the area’s historic pastoral character and a newer vision of wilderness. A fascinating and deeply researched book, The Paradox of Preservation will appeal to those studying environmental history, conservation, public lands, and cultural landscape management, and to those looking to learn more about the history of this dynamic California coastal region.

Committee Serial No. 91-5. Considers H.R. 3786 and related bills, to authorize acquisition and improvement of land for Point Reyes National Seashore, Calif.

Winner of the 2021 California Book Award (Californiana category) A brilliant California history, in word and image, from an award-winning historian and a documentary photographer. “This is the West, sir. When the legend becomes fact, print the legend.” This indelible quote from The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance applies especially well to California, where legend has so thoroughly become fact that it is visible in everyday landscapes. Our foremost historian of the West, Richard White, never content to “print the legend,” collaborates here with his son, a talented photographer, in excavating the layers of legend built into California’s landscapes. Together they expose the bedrock of the past, and the history they uncover is astonishing. Jesse White’s evocative photographs illustrate the sites of Richard’s historical investigations. A vista of Drakes Estero conjures the darkly amusing story of the Drake Navigators Guild and its dubious efforts to establish an Anglo-Saxon heritage for California. The restored Spanish missions of Los Angeles frame another origin story in which California’s native inhabitants, civilized through contact with friars, gift their territories to white settlers. But the history is not so placid. A quiet riverside park in the Tulare Lake Basin belies scenes of horror from when settlers in the 1850s transformed native homelands into American property. Near the lake bed stands a small marker commemorating the Mussel Slough massacre, the culmination of a violent struggle over land titles between local farmers and the Southern Pacific Railroad in the 1870s. Tulare is today a fertile agricultural county, but its population is poor and unhealthy. The California Dream lives elsewhere. The lake itself disappeared when tributary rivers were rerouted to deliver government-subsidized water to big agriculture and cities. But climate change ensures that it will be back—the only question is when.