Point Sur Lightstation

the Point Sur Lighthouse stands atop a tall rock outcropping at the head of Point Sur, about 130 miles south of San Francisco on the Pacific Coast Highway. not surprisingly, the point has proved dangerous for vessels as long as they have traveled the Pacific coast of the U.S., with over a dozen notable wrecks – initially spurred in part by the increased traffic associated with the gold rush – between the 1890s and 1960s. beginning in 1874, following the wreck of the USS Ventura, the United States Lighthouse Service began campaigning for a light at Point Sur, arguing that of all the spots along the California coast still in need of safety measures, Point Sur was of the “greatest importance.” in conjunction with citizen petitions, USLS lobbying eventually prompted Congress to approve $50,000 for construction of a lighthouse in 1886, with an additional $50,000 allocated in 1887. Point Sur Lighthouse

the resulting lighthouse and associated structures (which technically make Point Sur a lightstation) was built by a 25-man team over 1888 and was lit for the first time in August 1889, featuring a first-order Fresnel lens. life for the keeper, three assistants and their families was very isolated – moreso than Point Loma for sure – with the road to Monterrey often impassable and with resupplies coming in by boat every four months or so. for the most part, they had to be entirely self-sufficient.

the light and foghorn remain operational today, with both being updated to current technology by the Coast Guard in 1972 (the light was automated; the foghorn replaced with the impressive sounding “Super Tyfon Double Fog Signal” that can be heard up to 3 nautical miles distant). the last keeper left Point Sur in 1974. now, the Coast Guard services the station, but it is part of the Point Sur State Historic Park, run by the California Department of Parks and Recreation.

Rotorua: spa spectacle

spa culture in Rotorua received a big boost from the government in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, which built a series of structures for those hoping to benefit from “taking the cure” in one of the town’s many mineral baths. one of the prominent pools, known to the Maori as Te Pupunitanga, helped relieve the arthritis pain of a Catholic priest in 1878. while previously the site was known as a location of fierce battles and ambushes, it quickly became popular with spa visitors and was renamed Priest’s Pool in honor of Father Mahoney, with the government-constructed Pavillion Bath serving visitors. in 1901, the Duchess Bath was erected nearby to honor a visit by the Duke and Duchess of Cornwall and York – later George V and Queen Consort. the facilities were upgraded in the 1930s and maintained and operated by the government until the 1970s, when they were purchased by a private consortium and developed into the Polynesian Spa that stands on the site today.

nearby, the Malfroy Geyser, Rachel Pool and Blue Baths illustrate other ways enterprising Europeans capitalized on the geothermal activity of the area. in the late 1880s, a French-born engineer developed a system of artificial geysers using heat from a deep thermal pit, Oruawhata (said to be the final resting place of fierce Maori warriors to ensure they never fell into enemy hands), and a series of wooden valves that an operator could adjust to produce geysers reaching up to 12 meters high.

Thermal Pool

along with the Priest’s Pool, the Rachel Pool – known as Whangapipiro to the Maori – supplies the baths at what is now the Polynesian Spa. the pool is high in silica, a compound known for softening skin. it was (re)named after Sarah Rachel Russell – known as Madame Rachel – a cosmetician who promised everlasting youth through the use of her beauty line and who conned or blackmailed numerous members of the English elite during the mid-19th century.

the Blue Baths, also built by the government, date from the 1930s and provided a different type of bathing altogether. whereas the other baths focused on therapeutic aims, the Blue Baths aimed for a more festive, family-oriented swimming atmosphere. generations of local children learned to swim at the Blue Baths, something the other government pools could not provide. disuse led the Blue Baths to close in 1982 and they remained so until reopening in 1999 after extensive restoration.

as champions of Rotorua’s early spas hoped, the town has become an internationally recognized destination for “taking the cure” and enjoying the mineral waters that still bubble up from the geothermal waters – including the Rachel and Priest’s Pools.

Tongariro National Park

View towards Mangatepopo

the first national park established in New Zealand, Tongariro is also one of the oldest national parks in the world. the first parcel of land was set aside in 1887 under the protection of the paramount Maori chief in the area (Te Heuheu Tukino IV, also known as Horonuku) in order to protect sacred Maori land from being sold to European settlers. his family descended from the earliest settlers of Aotearoa (New Zealand), and identified with Ngatoroirangi, the man who navigated the vessel that brought the first people to the island and (according to myth) brought fire to Tongariro. once the land was under his protection, Horonuku gifted the land back to the state for preservation as a national park. while the initial parcel was considered too small to establish a   proper national park (with the example of Yellowstone as comparison), subsequent government actions set aside larger and larger parcels of land for that purpose. in 1894, Parliament passed the Tongariro National Park Act, which comprised some 252 square kilometers (not all of which they had yet acquired). several updates to the Act over the 20th century brought the park to its current size encompassing nearly 800 square kilometers.

Descending from Red Crater

the three main peaks located in the park – Tongariro, Ngauruhoe, and Ruapehu – are tapu to the local Maori and development would have destroyed the mana of the sites. the Maori still have territorial rights over the mountains and when the Te Maari crater on Tongariro erupted in 2012, they declared a protective restriction (rahui) over the area to protect both the mana of the site and to ensure the safety of trampers moving through the area. because of its importance to Maori culture and its natural characteristics, the national park was designated a dual (cultural-natural) World Heritage Site by UNESCO in 1993, after previously receiving status for natural heritage in 1990.

although technically established in 1894, it took some decades before transportation caught up enough to bring significant numbers of people to visit the park. the first permanent park ranger began working in 1931, two years after the completion of Chateau Tongariro at the ski resort of Whakapapa. a road to Whakapapa was completed in the 1920s, making the journey much easier than the previous overland trek by horseback or foot. according to our lodge hosts, the park is far more popular for skiing during the winter than for tramping or biking in the summer.

Emerald Lakes

until 2007 the track from Mangatepopo to Ketetahi was known as the “Tongariro Crossing.” however, the difficulty of the terrain and changeability of the weather found many trampers unprepared and the name was changed to include “Alpine” to better convey the reality of the track. we felt well-prepared setting out on the hike – both physically and in relation to gear – and I was still surprised by how much the climate changed on our hike – the limited visibility, bitter the wind and biting the precipitation through the South Crater, up the saddle beside the Red Crater, and past Blue Lake. not all trampers were as well prepared for the trek as we and the view from the trailhead might not prepare you for what was in store. moreover, in addition to the weather-related dangers were legitimate (though distant) volcanic risks. all three peaks in the park have been active in the last century with Te Maari in 2012 the most recent. when we stopped for lunch at the Ketetahi Hut, you could see active vents on the side of the mountain and the damage done by debris during the 2012 eruption. fortunately, that eruption occurred near midnight in August so the hut was not in use, but it remains closed to through-hikers due to its location in the active volcanic zone. in spite of the danger (volcanic and otherwise) some 80,000 people undertake the hike each year, with numbers growing.

Buffalo Beach

it shouldn’t have come as a surprise to me, but New Zealand has a booming timber industry – has had for quite some time. prior to Maori arrival on the islands approximately 1,000 years ago, forests covered nearly the entire landmass. using fire, Maori cleared about 15 per cent of those forests prior to the arrival of European settlers in the 1770s. timber proved useful in ship repair – a constant necessity for vessels stopping on their way to or from distant ports. in the early 1800s, the population explosion of New South Wales further increased demand; and the Treaty of Waitangi in 1840, which paved the way for rapid European settlement in New Zealand, increased the pace of deforestation with thousands of acres being burned to clear farmland or clear cut to fuel the timber industry.

Looking southeast along Buffalo Beach at low tide
Looking southeast along Buffalo Beach at low tide

we saw evidence of the timber industry – past and present – nearly everywhere while traveling. one of the more interesting sites (which, to be fair, we didn’t observe ourselves) is the wreck of the HMS Buffalo at the bottom of Mercury Bay in Whitianga. the area around Whitianga was once thick with kauri forests, trees useful for their gum and resin, and the harbor on the northeast of the North Island somewhat sheltered from the Pacific Ocean useful for hauling them to distant destinations. ships came from as far away as Norway, Sweden, France, Italy, and the UK to collect some of the 500 million feet of kauri harvested in the region.

the Buffalo (originally named Hindostan) was built in Calcutta in 1813 as a food transport vessel and subsequently acquired by the Royal Navy for use (initially) as a storeship. over the years, the Buffalo also served as a quarantine vessel, convict ship (carrying 180 female convicts to Australia in 1833), transport for colonists bound for Australia, and finally a timber carrier.

Looking out over Mercury Bay from Buffalo Beach
Looking out over Mercury Bay from Buffalo Beach

in this last capacity, the Buffalo came to be anchored in Mercury Bay in July 1840. while today the harbor has moved into the mouth of the river (significantly more sheltered though perhaps impractical for vessels that size), in the 1800s the dock and pier extended out from what is know known as Buffalo Bay, near where our first hostel was located. on the 28th of July in 1840, a storm blew into the bay and parted the kauri-laden Buffalo from its anchoring cables. when it became clear that the ship could not be saved, the captain steered onto the beach and the crew abandoned ship. it sank and remains where it went down. in 1996 a team of maritime archaeologists and volunteers from Australia located and charted the site of the wreck and in 2009 the New Zealand Navy investigated the wreck using snorkels; much of the ship has broken up due to storms and spending more than 150 years underwater though the hull, reportedly, remains in good condition. at low tide on a day with exceptionally clear conditions you can see the wreck from above; the weather never got truly clear while we visited Whitianga and, more to the point, we didn’t get directly above the site, but neat to consider all the same!

Audubon Park

Audubon Park, once a plantation, was used by both the Union and Confederate Armies during the Civil War, as well as staging ground for the Buffalo Soldiers following the war. named for the famed naturalist, the city purchased the park in 1870 with the intention of creating a park. little development of the park occurred in the first decade the city owned it, but it managed to host the World Cotton Centennial (a World’s Fair) in 1884. development began in earnest thereafter though nearly all of the Fair buildings came down in favor of others. structures went up and down throughout the 20th century – a miniature railway, swan boats, carousel, a viewing shelter on the banks of the Mississippi, a conservatory. several early features remain – a golf course from 1898 (converted to Par 3 executive course in 2002 and protested as desecrating the original design of the park), the zoo (which received development aid from the Works Progress Administration), and a rookery on Oschner Island, which hosts a wide array of birds (including herons, egrets, and cormorants) and apparently makes for some of the best birding in New Orleans.

during Katrina, a few of the park’s oak trees blew over, but the park escaped flooding and attendant problems because of its location on top of the River’s natural levee. following the storm, it served as a makeshift helicopter port and encampment for National Guard troops and relief workers.

we made use of Audubon Park for a morning run – once we finally got there, after walking from the end of the (construction-shortened) streetcar line. we had to share the 1.7 mile paved path (which was closed to vehicles in the 1980s) with a swarm of parents and children engaged in a charity run/walk of some kind. the costumes on some of the kids – and the gravel path to one side – mostly made up for the congestion. next time, I wager we’d try the longer dirt path that skirts the edge of the park!

Stone Academy

the Stone Academy sits on the side of the road north of Iowa City on the way to Dubuque – easy to miss but by far the most interesting roadside historic mark on that stretch of road. (all the others are just signs – a physical structure always beats just signs.) that route, highway 1, was the stagecoach route between burgeoning Iowa City and Dubuque, as well as part of the longer Montreal-Mexico trail. plenty of westward-moving settlers enjoyed putting down roots near a well-traveled road. at the time, Native Americans had not yet been shunted out of eastern Iowa and still lived in camps along the stagecoach route and within site of the school building. built in 1842, before Iowa became a state, the school remained in operation until 1953. the stones for the building were quarried on the east bank of the Cedar River, ferried, and hauled two miles to construct the schoolhouse. students attending the school came from nearby farms and homesteads and varied widely in age; some young men, otherwise considered “too old” for school, would attend during the winter as it provided a diversion between harvest and planting. today, it’s shuttered but maintained, well off main routes of travel – unless you’re going from Dubuque to Iowa City.

Piedras Blancas Lighthouse

several miles north of San Simeon stands the Piedras Blancas Lighthouse. construction of the lighthouse began in mid-1874 and the first-order Fresnel lens was first lit in February 1875. the U.S. Lighthouse Service oversaw operations until 1939, when it was transferred to the U.S. Coast Guard. the tower originally stood 100 feet tall but a series of earthquakes damaged it and, following one in 1948 centered just 6 miles away, the top three floors were removed – including the watchroom and lantern. the original lens now sits on display in Cambria.

from 1906, the station also used a sound signal to alert passing vessels of danger. the sound alert was removed in 1975 when the station was automated; the Coast Guard continued to operate it until 2001 at which time it was handed over to the Bureau of Land Management to allow “structured public access.” the light continues to operate, but the land now serves as a natural sanctuary and  research station, offering tours of the light station and wildlife refuge throughout the week. the largest colony of elephant seals on the west coast makes their home on a beach about a mile south of Piedras Blancas.

there are plans to move several miles of Highway 1 near Piedras Blancas farther inland in anticipation of rising sea levels. there are portions of the highway jsut north of the lighthouse that are only protected from the ocean by an artificial embankment and cement traffic barriers, which high swells periodically over-top, causing traffic hazards.

Sequoia National Park & General Sherman

to decompress after a flurry of wedding activity, we embarked on a two-day, 930-mile road trip to take in Sequoia National Park, the General Sherman tree, Monterrey, Highway 1, and a whole lot of California’s
Central Valley.

first stop on our tour: General Sherman at the heart of Sequoia National Park; just a touch farther west than strictly warranted on our route to Monterrey, but certainly worth the trip. when I asked the hubs whether he wanted to see General Sherman, I only had a vague sense of what it was – a great big tree. turns out it’s the largest living tree by volume – not tallest (a Coastal redwood) nor widest (a cypress or baobab) nor oldest (a bristlecone pine) – but still incredibly impressive.

naturalist James Wolverton named the tree after the Civil War general in 1879, more than a decade before the area became a national park. at that time, white settlers seeking to establish a utopian society had begun felling sequoias for trade; thousands of sequoias were taken down before it their tendency to splinter became clear and the logging operation ceased (when the area became a park in 1890).

the military oversaw the park until the early 1900s, when it was turned over to civilian supervision. during the early years of the park, the military spent much of its time cutting access trails and roadways. when the park transferred from the military to civilian control, greater attention was paid to making the park more accessible to the general public. Walter Fry, who originally came to the Sierra Nevadas as a logger (but quickly changed courses when he counted the growth rings on the first sequoia he helped fell and discovered they’d brought down a tree more than 3,200 years old), became the first civilian superintendent. he oversaw the gradual expansion of county roads and the development of a wagon road by the Mount Whitney Power Company.

after the establishment of the National Park Service in 1916, the idea of a park-to-park highway system prompted further road improvements in and between Sequoia and General Grant National Parks (now Kings Canyon National Park). the new road – the Generals Highway and built in sections of switchbacks and wedged between giant sequoias in some places – was dedicated in June of 1935 with some 669 cars carrying 2,488 passengers traversing the road from either end, meeting in the middle. during this time, CCC workers also cut a 400-step staircase into the granite dome of Moro Rock, which offers staggering views from the rock of the park and of the Great Western divide (though pollution often obscures views west over the San Joaquin valley).

the improvements suited the burgeoning numbers of tourists and now more than one million visitors take advantage of the park each year.

San Francisco’s Cable Cars

while now the San Francisco Cable Cars are primarily a tourist activity (carrying some 7 million people annually) , they grew from a need for a better method for hauling vehicles and people over the city’s famously steep hills. prior to development of the current wire-rope system, horses hauled cable cars around the city, enduring extreme hardship on the often-slick cobblestones. one story contends that the man who initiated the system, Andrew Smith Hallidie, witnessed a terrible accident between cable cars and a vehicle that resulted in the death of all five work horses. (another version has him taking over the Clay Street Hill Railroad when the initial promoter couldn’t raise the necessary capital to get the project off the ground.)

Hallidie immigrated to the United States with his father during the gold rush. while his father returned to the UK after several unsuccessful years prospecting, Hallidie remained, finding success in mining, engineering, and bridge building in the 1850s. in 1856, returned to San Francisco to start a wire rope manufacture, using principals his father previously held a patent on.

the first test of Hallidie’s Clay Street Hill cable car occurred on August 2, 1873, and it went into public operation on September 1 of the same year. for four years, Clay Street was the sole cable car company operating in San Francisco. in 1877, the previously horse-drawn Sutter Street Railroad converted to cable operation using a newly-patented side-grip style (designed to avoid paying Hallidie royalties on his patent), followed in short order by the creation or conversion of several other street railroads. in all, between 1873 and 1890, twenty-three different cable car lines run by eight different companies covered some 53 miles of cable track. of all those tracks, only three remain in operation today (all run by the San Francisco Municipal Railway).

popularity of cable cars began to decline with the advent electrical streetcars, which first arrived in San Francisco in 1892. the cost of constructing and operating electric streetcars proved significantly less than those of cable cars and by 1906 United Railroads of San Francisco (which owned most of the cable lines at that time) was campaigning to convert their existing lines to electric. opposition to the “unsightly” overhead electric cables was effectively silenced by the great earthquake and resulting fire, which destroyed most of the power houses, car barns, and 117 of the cable cars contained therein. by 1912, only 8 lines remained, all climbing gradients too steep for the electric cars to surmount. by 1944, facing competition from improved buses, only 5 cable car lines remained (two operated by Muni and one by Cal Cable – the third cable car company, established in 1878). in 1947, the Mayor proposed closing the remaining city-run lines but fierce community opposition scuttled the idea, though difficulty that Cal Cable encountered in procuring insurance in the early 1950s ultimately resulted in the closure of several lines and consolidation into the lines that remain today.

by the late 1970s, the existing cable car infrastructure had become unsafe and desperately needed repairs. then-mayor Dianne Feinstein spearheaded the effort to acquire the necessary  funds to completely rebuild the system; over two years, the entire system was replaced and updated. efforts to maintain the system are ongoing, with cars occasionally being refurbished and replaced and turntables for the single-end cars being updated.

our San Francisco wanderings found us at the end of the Powell-Mason line, running from near Fisherman’s Wharf to Powell & Market. taking the street car, rather than walking, wasn’t exactly convenient for our day’s activities – but riding the cable cars is one of those iconic things that you really ought to do while visiting the city. most of the riders seemed tourists – apparently the east-west California line is the one more often frequented by commuters.

Mt Baldy

one novelty of being back in southern California are the mountains. so accessible! within an hour you can be in the foothills or climbing one of the tallest peaks in the San Gabriel Mountains and hiking the highest peak in the San Bernardino Mountains even sooner! it’ll make for much more interesting trekking as we prepare for our next big hiking adventure.

last weekend we headed out for the summit of Mt. Baldy (or, officially, Mount San Antonio), the highest peak in Los Angeles county. it’s part of the Transverse Ranges that lie along the San Andreas Fault and was likely bestowed the name of Mount San Antonio in the 1840s by a rancher, after his patron saint. indigenous people in the area had other names for it, but today everyone calls it Mt. Baldy.

early entrepreneurs took advantage of the water resources of the canyons, building a sawmill (which burned down within a few years of construction and was never replaced) and starting an ice-hauling business. the steep walls of the canyon preserved snow on the northface slopes well into the spring. in the late 1850s, one-time mayor of Los Angeles, Damien Marchessault, and a partner built an ice house in the canyon (hence its current name) and started hauling ice down from Icehouse Canyon and selling it door-to-door. they also used it in their ice cream parlor in the city – the only one at the time.

it wasn’t until the late 1870s that prospectors tried their luck at gold mining around Mt. Baldy, without much success. water levels at the mines proved uncertain and people living downstream from the runoff filed suit over pollution of the creeks. more importantly, however, there wasn’t that much ore to be found and in relatively short order recreation overtook mining as a primary activity around Mt. Baldy.

the first successful summit of the mountain occurred via Lytle Creek in 1875 by a group of army surveyors and it wasn’t long before the adventurous took to climbing the mountain for recreation, generally via one of today’s common routes (Mt. Baldy Trail and the Devil’s Backbone – which we took). in the 1930s, the Civilian Conservation Corps improved and expanded the Devil’s Backbone Trail, to help stabilize and widen the trail, offering better protection from the occasionally precipitous drops on either side.

the first “resort” went up in 1880 and shortly thereafter the owner of one of the mining support stations (near what is now the village of Mt. Baldy) converted it into a rental resort; by the turn of the century, the latter entertained up to 100 guests per weekend (keeping in mind that at this time the canyon was not yet accessible by automobile). on enterprising mountain guide opened up a “resort” some 80 feet below the summit (really just a set of tents), but after damage from a cooking fire in 1913, it was abandoned.

the shift to recreational use of the canyon resulted in bitter disputes between the camp operators and the San Antonio Water Company, which controlled water rights for the area. the Water Company ultimately wrangled control of the road and closed it off to all comers for several years; eventually, however, they decided to profit from the interest in recreation and bought one of the remaining camps (and hiring the previous owner to run it) and reopened the road with tolls. Camp Baldy, as the Water Company renamed it, became a haven for tipplers during Prohibition, though it was subject to periodic raids (agents only found contraband on one occasion). Foster Curry, whose family was known for running the resorts at Yellowstone, came down to help run the resort with the assistance of a woman he met at Camp Baldy and who later became his wife. under their supervision, the resort grew to include cabins built along the creek, a pool (called “The Plunge), barber and beauty shop, post office, casino, dance pavilion, photography studio and a school.

in 1938, a flood swept through San Antonio and Icehouse Canyons, destroying nearly all of the existing structures, including most of Camp Baldy. the Forest Service (which took over land and leases when the area became a a national forest in 1908) did not permit new structures in Icehouse Canyon, but much of Camp Baldy returned as Mt. Baldy Village, which now includes stores, lodges, fire department, school, and Forest Service information center. the Sierra Club built a lodge near Manker Flats (open to club members) and a ski hut on the Mt. Baldy Trail, near the headwaters of San Antonio Creek and named for the first female president of the Sierra Club (Aurelia Harwood, for whom a peak on the Devil’s Backbone Trail is also named). today, in addition to the numerous hikers in all types of weather, there is also the Mt. Baldy Ski Lifts (which operates the closest ski slopes to Los Angeles, and which runs the lift we rode to get to Baldy Notch on summer weekends). as long as the haze isn’t bad, you can see all the way to Catalina from the top of the peak!

we could only see cities to the north of the mountains; above the haze we could see to the horizon … just nothing on the ground.