Because California is News...

Well, at least on the blogs I frequent anyway.  In case you have not noticed by now, while I do try to cover North America from perspectives cultural as well as natural, I really have a passion for introducing my readers to "how things used to look", or at least "how we think things used to look".  Hence, when I come across a picture of a city street, I usually grimace, then purse my lips a little bit, walk around the room saying "no" a few times, and then push past the picture for something more wild in the albums of my adventures.  That said, places like southern California are extensively urbanized, and such places are part of what this blog covers.  Granted, much of urban southern California is actually on the Pacific plate, and thus is technically not a part of North America.  Oh come on, like this comes as a shock to anyone.

Ahem, anyway, this is the lovely city of Fontana, sprawling over 42 square miles and home to nearly 200,000 people.  The city started out being developed the way much of the eastern part of the greater Los Angeles area did, as orchard and vine land.  The city was settled by Italian immigrants, who mainly either went into agriculture, working the orchards and vines, or worked for Kaiser steel, which later expanded into the health care industry to become Kaiser Pemanente.  The city experienced long periods of prosperity, which has manifested physically in the many fine civic structures throughout the main thoroughfare.  Route 66 ran through here, and has been the focus of an ongoing battle between the forces of modernity and preservation.  Some of the old route still exists in the form of street signs and historic buildings that have managed to defy what the municipal government touts as road improvements.  One such place is Bono's Restaurant, which is undergoing renovations at the present time.  You can still pull up and see its "historic orange" though.

Southern California, back when it was more orchard than urban, used to be dotted with such road side fruit stands.  Believe me when I say that nothing quite tastes like a glass of orange juice freshly squeezed from the fruit right off the tree.  Sadly, there are very few places in Fontana, or any area of the greater L.A. area, where one can still find any actual orchards.  Fortunately, backyards still have trees in them.

So anyway, what does Fontana look like these days?  With the exception of some of the historic downtown, pretty average, or what one would expect from a suburban city.

The locals claim that the city is downtrodden and crime-ridden, but I remain skeptical that much crime exists in a city that has an average four minute response time to 911 calls, and sends in not only the usual responding units, but a police helicopter or two as well.  The streets are usually immaculate looking, and most people groom their lawns to golf-course standards.  Roughly half the residents are descended from the Italian immigrants, and the other half are largely Hispanic.  The end result is that anyone longing for Italian food in southern California needs but come around these parts, while they can also find some really good burritos.

In terms of climate, location, and scenery, Fontana is a good base from which to discover a little bit of everything the region has to offer.

While it is part of the greener and rainier coastal basins, the city does sit at the foot of Cajon Pass, and thus receives strong winds from the Mojave desert, which can heat things up to as much as 120 degrees in the summer, although the 90's are far more common.  Winter temperatures average in the upper 60's, with occasional night-time frosts.  The city is dwarfed by the surrounding mountain ranges, especially the San Gabriels, which lie to the north.

All in all, Fontana is an "average" city in southern California, albeit one with a bit more history than just "added as part of sprawl during 1960's-1980's".

Volcanoes in Arizona

O'Leary Peak is a volcano within a field of volcanoes in central Arizona, around Flagstaff.

The San Francisco Volcanic Field, which O'Leary Peak is but one summit of, is largely dormant, but by no means extinct.  Almost all types of volcano can be found here, from the violent stratovolcanoes to the ash spewing pyroclastic cones.  O'Leary Peak is a lava dome, which is generally quite peaceful, but now and then can build up enough pressure to explode, as did Mount Saint Helens.  8,500 foot O'Leary Peak is one of the larger volcanoes in the area, but is still dwarfed by the San Francisco Peaks.

The Peaks can be seen from as far away as the north rim of the Grand Canyon and the Petrified Forest, both well over 100 miles away.  The 11,000 foot peaks are snow packed in the winter, with nice, light powder that makes for excellent ski country.  Surrounding the volcanoes is high desert, which all in all, makes for a delightful contrast of lava, snowfields, pine forests, and desert.  The ancestral Puebloan people delighted in the variety of the land, and many fine ruins, some very much intact, can be found in the immediate environs.

National Park Sites that Need Love

Cedar Hill, the last home of Frederick Douglass, is one of the many historic sites around Washington, D.C. that is off the beaten path, and as a result, receives far fewer visitors than the major attractions like the museums and the Mall monuments.

For the most part, it is far away from the other attractions even in its Anacostia neighborhood, but it also suffers from a lack of nearby public transportation, is understaffed, and the facilities are sad looking leftovers from the 70's.  Sadly, the place will not likely get any needed attention because of budget cuts, and smaller park units like this have always been a bit neglected anyway.  The National Park Service is actually one of the more fiscally responsible government bureaus, and as a result, they do tend to delegate funding based on economic impacts and tourist counts.  While the eastern part of Washington could use a bit of economic boosting in general, the fact remains that this particular site does not see the traffic that the star attractions do.  This is a shame really, because Douglass was a pretty amazing fellow, who worked his way up in life not for his own ends, but the well-being of others, and did so from the bare bottom of society, being a slave.

So what do we do about building up the little places like this?  Some would say more money needs to be thrown here, while others insist that the government should get out of the business of that sort of thing.  Rather than feeding the constant sickening political diatribes that are really, really going to damage the Department of the Interior in the years to come, I suggest:

1. Visiting these places and learning more about why they why they exist.  This, after all, is the point of having them around, preservation with an end in education.

2. Volunteering at these places.  We don't have to give much time to them, as yeah, we are busy, and there are other causes out there that need us just as much if not more so.  Even the smallest bit of help goes a long way, however.  In some cases, volunteers are worth their weight in gold, because they assist with making sites better places out of the goodness of their hearts, without compensation for the most part.  Don't get me wrong, professional park staff is needed, but volunteers really, really make things happen.

3. Advertisement by word of mouth, blogs, reviews, and non-governmental organizations like Eastern National.

Whether or not we believe that our parks need to be the responsibility of our government is irrelevant when we do not consider that they exist as part of a democratic history.  People fought to make them happen, and they did so first not by petitioning governmental agencies, but by doing the above three things, which got the attention of the greater people, and then they participated in the exercise of democracy to make sure that such places would wind up as things for the people, not for some business, agency, agenda, or what have you.  The fine folks of the NPS exist to make sure this stays that way, but they cannot and should not do it alone.

Wednesday Filler: Eastern Great Lakes Savannas

When one thinks of pre-contact southern Michigan, northwestern Ohio, and southwestern Ontario, extensive forests usually come to mind.  While the regions are both heavily developed and otherwise farmed twice over these days, patches of remaining wild land usually have deciduous forests growing on them.  For the most part, trees would have been in great abundance.  A large canopy of maples, beeches, oaks, ashes, and the odd non-riparian cottonwood would have been pierced with extremely tall Eastern White Pine (Pinus Strobus) as well as Tulip Trees (Liriodendron Tulipifera) that would often nearly reach the height of the pines.  Along rivers and in swamps, ashes, cottonwoods, willows, and other such trees would dominate, with much of Detroit once being covered in lush black ash forests.  In certain areas, however, drier, open conditions prevailed.  The last glacial period dumped a lot of sand in the Great Lakes areas, especially on the margins of the great melt-water predecessors of our present bodies of water.

Case in point: The dunes of the shores of ancient Lake Maumee, just west of Toledo.  While much of the ancient shoreline is pretty much indistinguishable under modern development and farms, Oak Openings Preserve, run by Toledo metroparks, has managed to preserve and restore some oak savanna.

Note: That is NOT an abandoned field!  As you can see, lands that in general had more in common with eastern forests than the prairies of the Midwest had (and have, thanks to such places as this) a little bit of both worlds.  Sand, which is not very good at holding moisture, conspired with under-story fires that would burn through the area frequently, at least every few decades and at most annually.  This would result in areas of open prairie spread through mature trees, usually oaks and junipers (though I also suspect pines) which could handle the drier conditions and had some degree of resistance to ground fires.  These pockets of grass and isolated trees would have been surrounded by mixed-forests.  The sort of scene presented above would have been much more common back in the day.  In fact, Oakland county in Michigan is so named because of, you guessed it, its grand oak trees that once grew unfettered and broad in the grass.  Swing by in the next few days to see more of such places.

Parks in the News: Covering West Virginia

Mountain top removal is an ongoing crisis that has devastated much of West Virginia and eastern Kentucky.  Instead of digging shafts and galleries to extract coal and other mineral resources, mining companies have lately taken to literally shaving off the top of mountains to get at even small seams of the stuff.  The visual impact on the landscape is devastating, to say the least, but far more danger lies in the destructive aftermath of removal.  Entire forests are clear cut from the area, and the wood is often simply burned or used to fill holes left behind in the process.  Storms and existing streams are thus able to erode the land faster, bringing the by-products of this wasteful method of coal extraction with the run-off.  Entire watersheds are poisoned, and dramatic, unnatural flooding finishes off whatever has managed to survive thus far, including people.  This is destructive, disgusting, and economically damaging to all but the pocketbooks of the interests behind faster mineral extraction.  Think this is media hokum?  Take a look at this map below, or if you do not trust Google, any other satellite image:

The wider circle is where most of the removal takes place, with concentrations of wasteland found within the small the circles.  The area from about Hazard, Kentucky, to Webster Springs, West Virginia, is rapidly being turned into a landscape of desolation, with watersheds being impacted on both the Atlantic and Mississippi sides of the Appalachian crest.  So what can be done about this?  Well, for one, a national park could eliminate much of the problem, though questions have arisen about hunting, trapping, and fishing rights within park lands.  As a result, legislation that would have proposed a new park unit in the area has been put on hold, especially with elections on the line.  I suspect that political intimidation has been coming from the coal industry, however.  

As usual, decide for yourself.  The story can be found here:

http://www.nationalparkstraveler.com/2012/03/are-prospects-new-national-park-or-preserve-west-virginia-dead9610

The Front Range from "Behind", Colorado's Western Slope

Colorado is not actually entirely mountainous, as many would suspect it to be.  Well over a third of the state consists of the High Plains, and the great snow-capped peaks of common imagination actually take up very little ground in the mountain regions.  The most dramatic part of the Colorado Rockies, the Front Range, takes all of  about two hours to get through from east to west, at least on modern expressways.

After traversing the prairies and becoming accustomed to the forests of Subalpine Fir (Abies Lasiocarpa) and Engelmann Spruce (Picea Engelmannii), the rear of the Front Range is reached, and while still mountainous and on average over 7,000 feet above sea level, the land takes on a drier note.  Pines replace the firs, yuccas and sagebrush start popping up, and the peaks generally lose their snow in April or early May, rather than keeping it sometimes well into August.  This is not say that the land is any less lovely, or that one feels as if one has left mountain country, however.  Take this viewpoint, of the broad expanse of Gore Canyon, off of a very fun stretch of Colorado highway 1.

In places, there are taller, isolated peaks.

For those wondering, the lack of forest at high elevations is due to excessive logging and grazing that has taken place in the last century.  Still, little can dampen the grandeur of the dramatic walls and ridges that the Front Range itself makes up, towering over the relatively lower high country of the western slopes, especially when taken as a backdrop to one of the many lakes which lie on the western side of the range.  Shadow Mountain lake and Lake Granby are both dammed up reservoirs of the Colorado river (the two lakes pictured below), which provide water to the cities along the corridor from Denver to Cheyenne.  These views can be seen off of US-34, south of the western entrance to Rocky Mountain National Park.

The water reaches the far side of the divide through tunnels that were drilled under thousands of feet of mountain.  There are, of course, natural lakes in the region as well, though they lie further off the beaten path.  Grand Lake, Colorado's deepest and largest natural lake, can almost be seen in the first photo behind the peninsula with the homes on it.  The range catches about 80% of the state's precipitation, and like the rest of the crest of the Rockies, it usually keeps eastern weather to the east and western weather to the west.  The eastern side is frequently starved for clouds, whereas the western side can conversely be under a full-blown storm of some sort.  Those pictures are very deceptive!

Sunday Afternoon Post: Old Mission Peninsula Vineyards

The Grand Traverse region of Michigan is something of a climactic anomaly.  While it straddles the 45th parallel, the area is not dominated by the Laurentian mixed forest as one would expect.  Rather, within a ten minute drive, one can find everything from true boreal forest to oak-hickory woodlands, ecosystems that would otherwise be hundreds of miles away from each other.  On the Old Mission peninsula, which divides Grand Traverse Bay into two semi-fjords, orchards and grapevines are planted nearly everywhere, taking advantage of a growing season as long as can be found in New Jersey or the Ohio Valley.  Seen here is a vantage point looking northwest and southwest from around the middle of the Old Mission peninsula, out on to the west arm of Grand Traverse Bay.  The Leelanau peninsula is the land beyond the waters.

Conversely, around nearby Kalkaska, are extensive stands of Jack Pine (Pinus Banksiana), Balsam Fir (Abies Balsamea), and Black Spruce (Picea Mariana), a boreal mixture one would expect to find in the Hudson Bay lowlands, not the lower peninsula of Michigan.  Lake Michigan is a very powerful factor in the local weather masses, able to moderate the shoreline regions, such as those pictured above, and cool the inland areas almost to a subarctic chill during winter months.  The result is a rich wine-producing region set in a northern landscape.

The Santa Fe Trail: The Start of U.S.-Mexico Relations

The Mexican-American war, while perhaps the most important event in the history of the relationship between Mexico and the United States, was not the first meeting of the two nations.  Rather, through commerce and migration, the countries had a relationship dating back to the early part of the nineteenth century.  Mexico was still a Spanish territory when Americans began showing up in Tejas, Nuevo Mexico, and Veracruz.  The men who came to these places were explorers, merchants, and mercenaries, even some fur traders from distant Canada.  Here and there, business of all sorts happened, at least when the authorities were not around.  The peoples of Mexico were more than happy to engage in commerce with the more friendly and generous faces than those which came from across the ocean.  Time and again, however, the Spanish authorities intervened, and the Americans found themselves arrested or deported, just as Canadians, eager to find more fur-trade opportunities, had been many times before them.

Americans still made their way to Mexico, in greater numbers once the Louisiana Purchase was validated by Spain in the Adams-Onis Treaty of 1819.   Spanish bans on Mexican exports still stood, even if relations between Madrid and Washington were becoming more civil.  Like so many of his contemporaries, William Becknell took a gamble that maybe things were getting peaceable enough that trade might sneak by a bit easier.  In September of 1821, Becknell departed from Missouri and set out across the Great Plains toward the capital of Nuevo Mexico, Santa Fe.   About 40 miles out of Santa Fe, at a place known as San Miguel del Vado, Becknell and his five companions were approached by soldiers.  While no record remains of what took place at this meeting, not too much imagination is needed to envision that it was a cordial affair, because Becknell was informed that Mexico was now free, and that Santa Fe's markets were ready and waiting for commerce with the rest of North America.  When Becknell arrived in the city, crowds gathered and a great celebration began.

He quickly found buyers for his small stock of textiles, and he found goods and silver to bring back with him in exchange.  Mexicans wanted textiles, especially the very desirable cotton, which the United States was starting to produce in abundance.  Americans like Becknell gladly accepted silver pesos for it, but they also brought back draft animals, herbs, spices, exotic jewelry, and an amazing rich of mineral wealth of all kinds.  They also found furs; French and English speaking Canadians alike, usually working for the growing Hudson's Bay Company, were part of a vast network already working the interior of the continent, and well-informed about what was going on to the south.  In many ways, Santa Fe commerce was the start of relations between all three North American nations, and the city was very much an international hub of activity.  In any event, Becknell came back to Missouri with a smile on his face and much-needed silver currency to fill the cash-dry economy there with.  The next year, he loaded covered wagons, the first to cross the plains in fact, and did it all over again.  By 1824, traffic between Santa Fe and Missouri had started to impact the American economy enough to prompt President Monroe to order a survey of prominent trail routes between the lands.

The opening of relations was profitable for both parties, and Mexican traders took to the trail just as often as their American counterparts did.  Commerce often did not stop in Santa Fe, and the wagons went clear from Independence to Chihuahua and points southwards.  Santa Fe, however, was the juncture between the worlds of the United States and Mexico, and the city engaged in so much American trade that eventually most of New Mexico's dealings were with a far closer United States than with seemingly distant Mexico.  This is not to say that Santa Fe or the New Mexicans surrendered their culture and identity in the process.  While the New Mexicans embraced becoming a part of the United States during the Mexican-American war, they also retained their language and unique culture that had developed as a marriage between Native and Hispanic worlds.  To this day, many New Mexicans are completely bi-lingual, and cities like Santa Fe celebrate their heritage even as they are undoubtedly American in loyalty and character.  The area still celebrates the link it serves as between the parts of our continent:

Otherwise known as I-25.

The Santa Fe trail, after all, was about introducing cultures to one another, blazed in the forging of ties between two young republics, an opening of borders to commerce and migration.  The opening of the trail was a tender embrace between America and Mexico, and is all too easily forgotten in the wake of a century and half of mistrust, bigotry, power struggles, politics, and drugs, between the two neighbors.  Memory remains, however, and regardless of where one stands on the issue of relations between our two nations (which have really started to improve, despite what goes around), this world of a bonding between two nations can still be seen in what remains of the trail, especially in New Mexico.  Let's start down in Santa Fe,  then:

This part of New Mexico is the junction of the Rockies, the deserts of the southwest, and the Great Plains.  Not too much of a stretch of imagination is needed to see that this was once a world truly in the middle of the path between east, west, and south.  Everything here is distinctively New Mexican, right down to the bus stops.

Here we have a place that is obviously part of the United States, and yet also would not seem too out of place in Mexico, while not being entirely a product of either place.

They most likely did not know it, but the founders of Santa Fe picked a pretty decent location that would become the meeting place of many other "trails" to come in the future:

Moving out from Santa Fe, the trail, Us 66, and now I-25, skirts the southern end of the Sangre de Cristo Mountains (part of the Rockies) before spilling out into the Great Plains.  Pictured here is part of Glorietta Pass.

At the entrance to the pass, the trail passes just to the south of the ruins of the Pecos pueblo, preserved at Pecos National Historical Park.  Glorietta Pass, in fact, has served not only as a passage for the trail, but has been walked by Coronado and his conquistadores, fought over in the Civil War, and long served as the meeting place between Pubeloan peoples and the peoples of the plains, such as the Kiowa and Comanche.  Pecos is probably the most diverse point of cultural meeting in all of North America.  We will come see it in a future post.  For now, here is the view from the ruins, looking back west to the pass.

 The trail eases out at an angle into the high plains of northeastern New Mexico, leaving behind the pinyon-juniper forest and entering one of the most arid parts of the Great Plains, a grassland dotted with cholla cacti, sagebrush, and yuccas.  The golden grass waves in an almost ever-present wind that blows between the great air masses of the arctic and the tropics, and between mountains and seemingly endless plains.

Once in the plains, the trail diverges.  One path, historically considered the safest route, follows the base of the Rockies north into Colorado until it cuts across the land to meet the Arkansas river.  This route is largely followed today by I-25.  Some of the best preserved ruts of the trail can be found at one of its famous sites, Fort Union, where the other path of the trail leaves this one.

This other path cuts northeast-southwest across New Mexico, past dead volcanoes and into the panhandle of Oklahoma, which has some of the most open country in the entire world.  The experience is good for making us feel small when we otherwise feel like kings of the earth, to say the least.  We have the luxury of roads to do this on now.  One can only imagine what travelers heading down the trail must have felt when they saw this, at once both in awe and hoping that the ruts they traveled on would stay visible.

This path continues into surprisingly rugged parts of Kansas before meeting the other path again at the Arkansas river, at which point the trails cut clear across the open land towards Independence, Missouri.  Halfway between the river and Missouri, things would get a bit greener and arboreal again, with some trees even growing in the middle of the prairie, sentinels of the advancing edge of the eastern forests.

At Council Grove, the trail is well-defined, and a memorial sits on it to mark the spot where the United States and the Osage nation signed a treaty to protect safe passage across their homeland.  The town was named for both the treaty and the grove of trees that offered shelter to those getting ready to depart into the treeless expanses to the west.  One of the 12 Madonna(s) of the Trail, placed by the Daughters of the American Revolution, can be found here.

The trail then arrives at its eastern terminus, Independence, a very different place from Santa Fe.  Here we have the text-book definition of a Midwestern American town, a place that even in the 1820's would have been as much a great discovery for Mexican travelers as Santa Fe was for the Americans and Canadians.  The tour we took from west to east was to highlight the impression this must have made on such travelers, heading from the vast, open, dry, adobe west to the relatively more compact, settled, humid, brick and mortar east.  Just as Santa Fe served as the door to Mexico and the inter-mountain west (including the Old Spanish trail to California, by way of Utah), Independence was the place where the California and Oregon trails would start, as well as points to the east, serving as the western terminus of the National Road, which would take people all the way to the Potomac at Cumberland, Maryland.  Here too, in those days of optimism so long ago, could there be found the various peoples of the continent, trading with one another, exchanging cultures, and getting ready to set off across the land to some destination of promise.  No record remains of any parties thrown when the first Mexicans arrived in Independence, but it was quite likely that the meeting was a good one.  

Surprising Landscapes

So, where is the landscape this picture portrays?  

Oklahoma! In fact, only twenty-five miles northeast of Oklahoma City, on I-44 heading towards Tulsa.  Oklahoma conjures up images of dusty plains and flat, nearly treeless landscapes, when the opposite is true for much of the state.  Not long after one enters Oklahoma from the Texas panhandle, for example, do trees start popping up everywhere.  That said, the land still has a very "western" feel to it, complete with rocky bluffs and "mid-grass" prairie, but the transition between east and west is a bit more compact down here.  

The south east corner, down where Texas, Arkansas, and Oklahoma have a meeting, even boasts a native population of shrub palms, Sabal Minor, along with baldcypress and other subtropical plants and trees.  In the southwestern corner, far removed from the Rockies or even the Ozarks, are the Wichita Mountains, rising from the plains.  Oklahoma is yet another example of how there are truly no "fly-over" states, and that something exciting exists even in one's seldom appreciated backyard.  

Turning Northwards

Summer is on the way again.  We had a solid week in the upper 70s and lower 80s, and the cooler 50s predicted for the upcoming days keep getting pushed back further in the forecast.  Sure, we might have another frost, but the leaves are already popping on the trees, and the grasses are coming back to life again.  As such, my mind turns northward, ready to discover more of why Michigan is called a pleasant peninsula (though it has two).

This was taken from one of the scenic viewpoints on Pierce Stocking Scenic Drive, one of the most lovely drives in Michigan, and the most comprehensive tour through Sleeping Bear Dunes.  A trip around it gets you access to the dunes, interior lakes, several types of forest, and detailed descriptions of what you are looking at by way of signs and guidebooks.  With the exception of the boreal forests that occur on the Mio Plateau in the upper center of the state, nearly every ecosystem that occurs in the northern upper peninsula can be found here.   In the picture above, in fact, that is pretty much the case.  While it might seem that there are only forests and lake-shore, what you see are two different types of coniferous forest, several different types of hardwood and mixed forests, swamps and bogs, riparian habitat, beaches, dunes, and of course, the freshwater marine world of Lake Michigan.

Wednesday "Filler": Friendly Faces at River Raisin National Battlefield Park

I have been putting this off for a while now, because I wanted to give it a serious post, but my guilt has got the better of me.  If you are even still reading, hello to my friends down at River Raisin National Battlefield Park, you have not been forgotten!

The Raisin was an important fight in the western theater of the War of 1812.  The second battle was an important victory for the Americans on the road to the Battle of the Thames, where Tecumseh finally met his demise.  The battles also largely spelled the end of any French-American cultural independence in Michigan, as the town of Monroe (then Frenchtown) was devastated by the assaults, and the locals just decided it was better to pack up and move on.

The park is also one of the newest units in the National Park system!  It's nice that south east Michigan is getting a bit more national attention, to say nothing of how 1812 is starting to get some recognition. Expect a series of posts on this place as I explore it in more depth in the coming year.  For now, be treated to a cannon, on a sled.  Yes, how much more Michigan/Ontario can you get than that?

If you live in the region, consider giving it a visit.  They have an impressive museum there, one of far better quality than I have seen at civil war sites.

Neo-Gothic Churches in North America: A Little Bit of the Old Country in a New Home.

In the middle and late 19th century, the United States, and to a lesser extent, Canada, saw an increase in immigration among German and other northern European peoples.  Such peoples made their way inland and to this day their descendants continue to populate the areas shown on the U.S. Census map below.

A great deal of these immigrants were Roman Catholics, and quite proud of their heritage.  The villages and cities that they left behind often had grand monastic or cathedral parishes, and they wanted to re-create something of that world of majesty in the new lands that they would settle.  Coinciding with this desire to establish a little bit of Europe in North America was a Victorian penchant for romanticizing the medieval past, while also elaborating on it with gilded ribbed vaulting and dark, rich wooden interiors.  The new styles caught on amongst the immigrant populations, perhaps in part because some types of wood were still relatively inexpensive and readily obtainable.  The result was a vigorous building of grand parish churches that beautified a somewhat bleak industrial era urban landscape.  On the Plains, in some of the smaller towns, these churches tend to really stand out.

Kansas, somewhere off of I-70

Then, in the cities, we have places like St. Patrick's Cathedral, which, while dwarfed to some degree by modern structures, adds a presence of soul and lasting culture to an otherwise heavily commercialized street like Fifth avenue.  St. Patrick's was a bit of a different story from many of the other Neo-Gothic churches built further inland, however.  For the most part, it was a project endorsed by the ruling ecclesiastical authorities (Archbishop Hughes came up with the concept in the first place), and it had ample funding from rich donors and poor parishioners alike.  Non-Irish communities were usually not as fortunate, and sometimes German, Polish, and other ethnic communities had to fight with the predominately Irish bishops just to get the rights to form a parish in the first place.  That, however, is a story for another post.  Let's take a look at one of the German parishes.

This is St. Joseph's, built between 1870 and 1896.  She is still an operating parish, and one that offers everything from your typical Sunday Mass to traditional Latin Masses and the odd Mass now and then in German.  Like many parishes in urban cores throughout the United States, its membership has dwindled somewhat in recent decades because of demographic shifts, but it still serves the neighborhood, and its setting and architecture draw visitors from far and wide.  Want to take a look inside?

While it is something of a misnomer to label her a "typical" American immigrant Neo-Gothic parish church, what you see above is generally what one will see in such churches.  Overall, St. Joseph's has a majestic simplicity to it.  Not every edge is painted, not every window is as grand and detailed as the next (funding situations often resulted in windows being installed in stages, and thus not all turned out the same, or were even completed as desired), but the place is clearly beautiful.  All three nave stretches are equal in height, which was apparently inspired by southern German "hall church" styles.  Much of the structure was raised by parishioners, and many of the windows and other decorations were locally produced in Detroit.  When the community had to stretch the budget, they did, but in general, they wanted to leave a lasting monument to their perseverance and faith, and thus spared no expense.  Instead of using plaster, carvings in the church were made from wood.  The window below, imported from Innsbruck, Austria, is more evidence enough of a desire to build a truly majestic monument and temple.

The scene depicted is the death of St. Joseph.  Now, this is one of those photographs that does not do the window justice.  The colors are absolutely brilliant, and I could only image what the Church would look like if the rest of the windows were produced by the same people from Austria.  Of course, the other windows are just as lovely, and by no means should my admiration for this piece be a sign that the Detroit artists were inferior.  Costs aside, the parishioners could have probably imported more art from the old country, but they chose not to.  This was Detroit, this was their new home.  The local artists poured their hearts and souls into a true labor of love, unashamed to be compared and seen next to foreign talent.  In fact, some of the earliest use of American architect firms in producing stained-glass design is found in the other windows, which can all be seen on the parish website, linked above.

St. Joseph's is one of the many churches in Detroit that is worth a visit.  The history of a hard-working and determined immigrant community can be seen quite visibly here.

Sunday Afternoon Post: Pine Barrens and Cacti

Most people are surprised to find out that grasslands and savannas exist well into places like New Jersey and Ontario.  In northern areas, such as this picture taken near Manistique, Michigan, savannas are usually referred to as "pine barrens".

The famous pine barrens of Long Island and New Jersey also fit the description of a pine savanna, and are some of the last remaining non-governmental undeveloped land in the eastern United States.  In Michigan and Ontario, pine barrens can be found wherever the soil is sandy and relatively low in relief.  The eastern upper peninsula happens to have many scattered pockets of such land, especially on the margins of some of the coastal sand flats (but not dunes, which are a different ecosystem altogether).  In Ontario, scattered pine barrens can be found along the lower drainage of the Petawawa River, a vast outwash plain that served as one of the last primordial glacial melting rivers.

I plan to bushwhack the area quite a bit in the coming year or so, as I plan to write my dissertation on the development and existence of Opuntia Fragilis in northern Ontario, Quebec, and the Ottawa valley.  Fragilis is a prickly pear cactus, and supposedly one of the most cold hardy in the world, having migrated north and east on the heels of glaciers from refugiae during the last glaciation.  I have a suspicion that it might be more widespread in our local barrens than has thus far been documented.  For those wondering, Michigan and Ontario have two species of native cactus, Fragilis and Opuntia Humifusa.

The Humifusa seen above is wrinkled and recovering from its winter dormancy.  This was taken at Kitty Todd Nature Preserve, part of the Oak Openings Region of the Toledo, Ohio area, though Oak savannas and Humifusa can be found scattered in remnants throughout southern Michigan and southern Ontario, as far north as Saginaw and Peterborough, where they transition out and are replaced by the pines.  Yet again, here we see the delightful mosaic and interconnected ecosystems that make up our continent, a world where pines, grasslands, and cacti meet in a marriage of seemingly distant partners.

Michigan is not Flat

Well, maybe it is down around the southern part of the state.  Up around Cadillac, however, I was amazed to find this:

This would be southbound M-37 heading toward Mesick.  The locals call anything north of this area "northern Michigan", which is quite funny, as the upper peninsula usually gets left out of that definition.  Enough rambling for now, the weather is simply too nice to be inside complaining about the lack of relief that there seems to be in these parts.

Mount San Jacinto from the Desert

To look down on the viewing point, go here.

One of the loveliest sights in California (or the world, according to John Muir) has to be San Jacinto Peak.  It is one of the most prominent peaks in the United States, standing over 8,000 feet above its base.  Like the rest of its range, the peak blocks Pacific moisture from reaching into the deserts to the east, and the summit is often obscured by clouds that give up and rain down on the top.

The dramatic increase in elevation, and the convergence of three distinct weather regions results in environments ranging from chaparral to pine forests to palm oases being found within miles of one another.  The mountain also overlooks San Gorgonio Pass, which links the desert with the interior coastal basins of the greater Los Angeles area.  Semi-humid air, usually in the 80's or 90's, meets the extremely dry 110's of the desert, the result of which is usually a near permanent strong wind blowing through.

Wind farms have been developed here since the 1980's, and they are extremely noticeable.  Some consider them to be an eyesore, while others hail them as a responsible use of natural resources.  I tend to view them as signs of the potency of nature; power that we can harness, but that we should always be respectful of.  The pass itself is a wonderful place where nearly all of what southern California has to offer comes together. Starting in the desert, one can drive west and watch as the vegetation suddenly changes, grows more dense, and the air cools off by as much as thirty or more degrees in the space of a mile or two.  The surrounding mountains are just as dramatic.  In the winter, they are capped in snow, often only on one side.  I was fortunate enough to be on a flight from Dallas to Ontario, California that took a flight path directly over the peak.  I was on the side of the plane that faced north, and thus toward the San Bernardino mountains which wall off the north side of the pass.

The transition from the dry interior side of the mountains to the moisture trapping western side can clearly be seen in this photograph (I need to learn how to take better aerial shots).  Also seen are the forests, dense pine lands higher on the mountains, gradually diminished with lower elevation and becoming the seemingly browner looking chaparral further below.  On the right of the picture, the lower right, being the Sonoran desert, merges with the upper right, the Mojave desert.  From the top of San Jacinto Peak, the view is apparently just as amazing, though the San Gabirels, seen here from 10,000 feet higher, are on a nearly level plane with the vantage point.

For better reference, the viewpoint of the first picture is the green arrows, the second would be the red arrows, and the third would be the yellow.  The pass itself is the corridor that runs between the ranges, pretty much centered by the red arrows.

The pass has historically been used by migrating peoples, including the band of immigrants led by Juan Bautista de Anza, who were sent by Mexico to establish colonies along the coast and to secure the lands are San Francisco.  His passage is commemorated and able to be traversed today by those following the Juan Bautista de Anza National Historic Trail.  Later on, explorers, traders, and interstate 10 would find a simple route through here.  San Jacinto Peak continues to stand sentinel over millions of travelers passing over its ankle every year.