History
During the 1830s and 40s, when California was still part of Mexico, large land grants were created, called ranchos. The lands now included in the State Park were once parts of three different ranchos. Rancho Cañada del Rincon en el Rio San Lorenzo, Rancho Zayante and Rancho Carbonera. By 1865, most of the former rancho lands had been subdivided. Industrialist Henry Cowell purchased 6,500 acres (26 km2) of the former Rancho Cañada del Rincon en el Rio San Lorenzo, including 1,600 acres (6 km2) of forest, in 1865, adding to his quarrying and lime operations in the vicinity. A significant number of buildings in San Francisco were built using the redwood and limestone products from this area. In the 1920s the owners of a large resort adjacent to Henry Cowell's holdings raised support for the County of Santa Cruz to buy and preserve their pristine redwood lands, an action finally approved of, in large part thanks to the work of California Lieutenant Governor William Jeter, in 1930. Eventually Samuel Cowell, aged 90, last of the Cowell line, donated the rest of what became the park to the state, but only under the condition that Santa Cruz County also give up its portion of the land (Big Trees Park) to the state so that it could all be managed together. Thus Henry Cowell Redwoods State Park was officially created on August 18, 1954. The separate Fall Creek unit was added later.
Read more about this topic: Henry Cowell Redwoods State Park
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“What has history to do with me? Mine is the first and only world! I want to report how I find the world. What others have told me about the world is a very small and incidental part of my experience. I have to judge the world, to measure things.”
—Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889–1951)
“I saw the Arab map.
It resembled a mare shuffling on,
dragging its history like saddlebags,
nearing its tomb and the pitch of hell.”
—Adonis [Ali Ahmed Said] (b. 1930)
“Postmodernism is, almost by definition, a transitional cusp of social, cultural, economic and ideological history when modernism’s high-minded principles and preoccupations have ceased to function, but before they have been replaced with a totally new system of values. It represents a moment of suspension before the batteries are recharged for the new millennium, an acknowledgment that preceding the future is a strange and hybrid interregnum that might be called the last gasp of the past.”
—Gilbert Adair, British author, critic. Sunday Times: Books (London, April 21, 1991)