 * Critical Findings * DEFORESTATION IN THE MID-1800s RESOURCE USE: CHANGING NEEDS THROUGH TIME * Social and Economic Analysis Community Well-Being in the Sierra Management Scenarios and Strategies
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* DEFORESTATION IN THE MID-1800s
As towns and settlements grew during the post gold rush years, circa 1850 80, the
forests of the Mother Lode country were extensively changed. What we see there today
is the result of human action that accelerated about 150 years ago. Native forests
of mixed conifers were cut for housing and mine construction, and the lower edge of the
mixed conifer belt shifted uphill. Exotics were planted in the towns. Seeds from
the remaining pines fostered regeneration of pines on open sites (figure 2.2). Black
oaks resprouted from stumps (foreground).  FIGURE 2.2 (ACTUAL VIEW 30K) Drawn from nature and on stone by Kuchel and Dresel. Lithographed by Britton and Rey and reproduced by their successors, A. Carlisle & Co., by Lithotone, for John Howell, San Francisco, 1935. (Courtesy of The Family of Joseph and Hilda Marinelli.) RESOURCE USE: CHANGING NEEDS THROUGH TIME
The complex history of resource utilization in the Sierra Nevada can be followed through
the use patterns of six different resources over the past 150 years:
The latter half of the nineteenth century was marked by intense boom-and-bust patterns. The first half of the twentieth century was marked by strong federal protection policies and reduced but still significant levels of private resource utilization. Resource utilization in the past 50 years added new patterns of water and residential development to the more local patterns of resource uses that characterized the preceding century. Since the 1960s, all resource utilization on both public and private land has been guided by new environmental regulations. Figure 2.5 summarizes the patterns of resource utilization at three points during the past 150 years. Utilization of any single resource has never been constant or sustainable for the whole period but the Sierra Nevada as a whole has constantly produced large quantities of valuable resources. Since the 1884 Sawyer decision to limit hydraulic gold mining because of environmental damage, resource utilization has been governed to protect broad social interests.  FIGURE 2.5 (ACTUAL VIEW 30K) Resource utility indices in the Sierra Nevada for three periods: 1880s, 1950s, and 1985-95. (From volume III, chapter 23.) Resource utilization in the Sierra Nevada has always been closely intertwined with the markets and institutions of urban California. For resources other than gold and other minerals, linkages to urban markets often had more influence on utilization patterns than the availability of the natural resources themselves. After the destructive clearings of the foothills during the first years of the gold rush, timber harvests in the higher-altitude and less accessible regions were limited by the relatively small size of California markets and cheaper imports from Oregon. The decline of hydraulic gold mining after 1884 was the result of court injunctions stemming from the damage done downstream by hydraulic mining debris. The capture of Owens Valley water to promote urban growth in Los Angeles rather than a federally financed reclamation project is the most well known example of the value of a resource in a distant urban area dominating its potential value within the Sierra Nevada. Opening the Sierra Nevada: 1848-1900
The discovery of gold at John Sutters mill in 1848 began a series of boom-and-bust
cycles of resource utilization. During the 1850s, the Sierra Nevada produced nearly
half the worlds gold output and spurred an enormous migration to California. By 1860,
the 25,000 gold miners had collected the easily accessible placer gold deposits, and
many miners left or shifted to other resource-related work. Twenty years of hydraulic
mining begun in the 1850s created an enormous amount of sediment and altered the
river systems for decades. Large areas of the foothills were cleared and converted to farms
and grazing lands to supply the growing population of California and Nevada. More
land in the Sierra Nevada was under cultivation in 1860 than in any year since.  (ACTUAL VIEW 48K) Hydraulic mining, Malakoff Diggins State Historic Park, North Bloomfield, Nevada County, Humbug Creek, tributary to the South Yuba River. (Photo by Timothy P. Duane.) Cattle grazing increased fivefold in the first decade of the gold rush and stayed at these high levels for the next century. Sheep proved to be more effective harvesters of the higher-elevation meadows. By 1870, sheep ate more grass than did cattle in the Sierra Nevada and probably caused considerably more ecological damage than cattle. It is widely acknowledged that the essentially unregulated grazing led to ecological damage still visible across much of the Sierra Nevada. One of the most enduring legacies of the 1800s is the physical and institutional impact of water diversions in the mining camps and the surrounding farms. The need to divert water to make it useful for the mining communities led to the first in time, first in right miners code that eventually became enshrined in California water law. Water diversions through ditches or wooden flumes crisscrossed the Sierra Nevada to create financial wealth by reordering hydrologic processes. Even after the restrictions on hydraulic mining in 1884, the ditches continued to be used for irrigation and power production for many widely dispersed but relatively small operations. More than 300 communities grew up in the Sierra Nevada to house all the resource-based workers as well as the many people who provided services, nearly 50% more than the number of communities in the region today. The recreation industry got off to an early start with the creation of state parks in Yosemite Valley and at Calaveras Big Trees in the 1860s. In the 1880s the California legislature created a special commission to protect Lake Tahoe for tourism. By the end of the 1800s, three national parks had been established, and a veritable army of tourist guide writers extolled the Sierra Nevada for tourism and recreation. Conflicting interests laid the institutional groundwork for the strong local desire for governmental regulation of resource use. The 1884 court decision to limit hydraulic mining because of the damage it caused downstream cities and agriculture broke with water law based on first in time, first in right and validated broader state constraints on resource utilization. The creation of the State Board of Forestry in 1885 was designed to address problems of poor regeneration of cutover forests, large fires, and grazing-related erosion. Federal forest reserves and national parks were created in the 1890s with strong support from urban Californians. In all three cases, what were considered to be the excesses of resource utilization led to a strengthened governmental role in resource management. (continue next page) 
 
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