What began as a simple look into why the Devil Mountain is so evil evolved on me into an untold story of American hard work and ingenuity. I have been hiking, mountain biking, and fishing on Mount Diablo for years without ever knowing who put the park there. I never thought to stop and ask myself “who built this trail? Why is it here? Why was this mountain chosen as state park”? I had no idea that it was the work of the Civilian Conservation Corps that I can thank for having a wilderness sanctuary so close to my home.
Professor Ivey lent me a book early on in the quarter when I was just beginning this research project. I had a vague idea of what I would have liked to do, but no idea what the future held for me. The book was Wilderness and the American Mind by Roderick Nash. In it Nash describes what a wilderness is and what it means to us as human beings. Wilderness is an idea in
vented by human beings to describe what is not a part of our civilized world. As early humans we clung together out of a sense of survival and fear. The wilderness represented what was dark, dangerous, unknown, and a threat to our existence. The only way we as humans can rise up and out of wilderness is for us to control the natural processes around us. We develop agriculture as a means of controlling nature for our benefit. We construct dwellings to keep us from the elements. We domesticate plants and animals to prove our domination over nature. We see ourselves as separate from nature and therefore must make a distinction between what we create, civilization, and what is already there, wilderness. Nash argues that “civilization created wilderness” (Nash, xiii), and sentiment that many Native Americans share as well. In their views, there was no wilderness until Westerners arrived. The Native Americans lived in harmony with the natural world around them and had no need to distinguish between civilization and wilderness. It was the white Europeans who came to the New World and felt the need to conquer all they saw in front of them. This is where our notion of a “wilderness idea” comes from.
Nash details more than just our fear and withdrawal from our perception of wilderness. Nash also explains where our appreciation of wilderness comes from. It comes from the cities, those who are so far removed from the wild that all they know is civilization. Nash points out that our love affair with the natural world began, aptly enough, during the period of Romanticism. The aesthetic beauty that nature had to offer was seen rather than just the resources it had to offer up. Individuals grew tired of city life and wanted to preserver what few wilderness areas were left so that they could escape to them. We leave our normal civilized lives behind to step back in time and live in wilderness only for a brief time. This is what I love to do, and why I chose this topic. Being able to leave a paved world of constant noise, overcrowding, and frustration for a wilderness that is miles away from civilization is one of my ultimate joys in life. The opportunity to pick up, essentially drop out of existence, and live in nature rather than against it is one every American needs to take advantage more of. We can learn something from wilderness that we can not get in the concrete jungles. And we learn a great deal about ourselves, what our limits our, and who we are as organisms on this planet when we travel out into the wilderness. John Muir left his life as an inventor and factory machinist behind to traverse the Sierra Nevada Mountains and found his paradise on earth.
The turn of the 20th Century brought about the change in American public opinion on wilderness. Now it was finally becoming understood how import wild open places are to us. The war shifted from conquering wilderness to preserving it. Under the New Deal projects created during the Great Depression the Civilian Conservation Corps was tasked with constructing our state parks. But they did not build them from the ground up. They built ways for people to access the wilderness around them. The CCC was in fact run as if it were a military unit by actual military officers. This was the first campaign to save our wilderness.
I learned a great deal about the CCC and the work they did not only in Mount Diablo State Park, but in all of the state and national parks in America. These men worked for a paycheck during a time when most Americans were desperate for work. But what they really accomplished was not finding employment but rather instilling a sense of preservation and service to our wilderness. They were the ones who made it possible for anyone in downtown San Francisco to be able to drive 30 minutes and ascend a wild mountain.
What I did find unfortunate about this story is what little our state parks keep on record of it. Mount Diablo State Park records only go back to the early 1970’s, and these are just short newspaper articles about park acquisition of land and donors to park causes. Nothing of who worked on the mountain or when is kept in any park records and is a story that has not yet been fully told. The story of the average CCC worker has not been brought out and little credit is paid to these wilderness warriors for making our open spaces accessible.
I would like to thank all of my fellow hikers who followed me on my journey up the mountain and into history. I hope by following my research you were able to take away even just a fraction of what I got from this story. I hope you find a new found appreciation of the not just Mount Diablo, but all of the great parks, open spaces, and wildernesses in California. I hope you can also realize the hard work companies of men put into the state parks on behalf of the CCC.
I would also like to thank California State Park Ranger Carl Nelson. He took the time to sit with me and talk not just about the park and the CCC but also what wilderness means to Americans today, the legacy of the CCC and what it means to be a state park ranger in 2010. Ranger Nelson is not only in charge of preserving Mount Diablo, but also educating future generations in the needs of preservation. I would also like to thank him for taking me through the behind the scenes action of running a state park and the natural history museum at the summit. He also showed me the few records kept on site in the park. He too agreed that this is an important story that needs more light shed on it, especially in our modern green initiative movements.
Finally, and most importantly, I would like to thank my instructor Professor Ivey. This was the first opportunity I have had to research something that is close to my heart rather than a topic assigned to me. Professor Ivey was the one who encouraged me to look inward, as to why I enjoy wilderness, as well as outward, why others enjoy wilderness. Without her I would have never thought to examine who built our state parks and why. I had always taken for granted my escape into the woods, not knowing who allowed me to do this and why. If anything Professor Ivey has only strengthened my love affair with the wilderness and increased my vast appreciation for it. This was a research project like no other I have ever undertaken before, and it has taught me a lot about being a historian and looking more critically at the world around me.
I hope you have enjoyed your time on the Devil Mountain with me and I hope you all get the chance some day to make your pilgrimage to the top. I hope you can see first hand the work of the CCC and its legacy. And I hope you too have an increased appreciation of our national and sate parks. Mount Diablo truly is a mysterious mountain that has captured the curiosity of Bay Area residence since the time of the Native Americans all the way up to our modern day.
The above video is a panoramic view from the summit of Mount Diablo
No comments:
Post a Comment