Cultural Significance
Lassen National Forest is also the site of significant events in California history: Ishi Wilderness was the refuge of the "last wild Indian", Caribou Wilderness was one of first protected "primitive areas" decades before the federal wilderness system was established, and the volcanic explosion of Mt. Lassen was the first eruption to be witnessed and photographed in the history of the continental United States.
On Labor Day 1911, a Native American was discovered outside the slaughterhouse in Oroville, California. Ishi, as he came to be known, became a celebrity. He lived his remaining years at the University of California's Anthropology Museum on Parnassus Heights in San Francisco, under the sponsorship of anthropologist Alfred Kroeber. The university had no protocol for keeping a living museum exhibit, so Kroeber arranged for Ishi's employment as assistant janitor.
Ishi was Yahi, the southern-most division of the Yana and had spent the majority of his life in hiding in the rugged Deer Creek territory north of Oroville. After his discovery, he would not disclose his name. Ishi, the name given by Kroeber, was the Yahi word for man. Kroeber believed that cultural etiquette prevented Ishi from disclosing his name.
In 1908, a utility company crew surprised the small band of survivors in their camp. Ishi and the three others fled. When Ishi was discovered outside the slaughterhouse, he was alone, his hair burned short in mourning.
Ishi died in Berkeley in 1916 of tuberculosis. In 1984 Congress established the 41,100-acre (16,600 ha) Ishi Wilderness in the dry, rugged, volcanic terrain, where the last band of Southern Yanas had sought refuge. (Visitors to this wilderness are advised by the United States Forest Service to visit only during cooler months because of a lack of water during the summer.)
A year before Ishi's death, Mt. Lassen exploded. Mt. Lassen is officially recognized as Lassen Peak by the United States Board on Geographic Names. Before the eruption on May 22, 1915, the smoking volcano became a tourist draw. Today, within Lassen Volcanic National Park, the area surrounding the volcano is known as the Devastated Area.
An ancient volcano, known as Mount Tehama is believed to have been much larger than Lassen Peak. Its explosion is responsible for the topography of the national forest and the national park: a volcanic rim, with elevations beginning at 6,000 feet (1,800 m) above sea level.
The third historical resource is the 20,000-acre (8,100 ha) Caribou Wilderness immediately east of the National Park. Caribou Wilderness received protection as a Primitive Area beginning in 1932.
In the 1920s, the managers of the Forest Service engaged in both an internal and external struggle regarding the agency's mission. Aldo Leopold and Bob Marshall, forest service employees, each advocated setting aside some forest areas as wilderness off-limits to mining, logging, road construction and grazing.
The first primitive area was created in 1924 in New Mexico and is now named the Aldo Leopold Wilderness. But creation of primitive areas did not become a forest agency policy until 1929.
Externally, the National Park Service, sought to expand parks from existing public lands, primarily national forest lands. The forest service responded by creating primitive areas. Initially these new wilderness areas received no special protections other than the official designation. Caribou Primitive area became a likely candidate for primitive status as it shares the length of its western border with the national park.
Caribou Primitive Area received greater protection in 1939, when Interior Secretary Harold Ickes sought to convince President Franklin D. Roosevelt to combine the national forests and the National Park Service into a new agency under the management of the United States Department of Interior. Roosevelt declined to act, but the threat of moving the Forest Service out of the United States Department of Agriculture resulted in greater protections for national forest wilderness areas. A congressional bill had earlier given the President authority to act on this new Department of Conservation.
In 1964, Caribou was among the first group of federally protected wildernesses created by the first Wilderness Act. The Lassen forest also contains the 16,335-acre (6,611 ha) Thousand Lakes Wilderness, also created in 1964.
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