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.