Thursday, January 8, 2015

Mapping the Past for the Future

I love maps, map apps, old maps, and new maps. The best maps are ones that capture the era but have no clear signature of when, who, or why they were made. You can study, investigate, and speculate about the map's true intent.
Here is one found in the Museum's Evergreen drawer.
There are many historical names on this map: Judge Logan of Haunted Brookdale Lodge fame, R.C. Kirby husband of activist and feminist Georgiana Bruce Kirby,  and W.F. Cooper of the Cooper Building, just to name a few, and something extra. 
As a team we saw how cleverly the map maker caught the curve of the hill and the gully. He marked it too, with this dotted line. The Mason and G.A.R. plots are clearly squared off to the lower left. The blank field between the numbered plots and the squares is The Old Section. This is further verified by (see the upper picture of the first map) by the gully and hillside mark on the right side and a notation that clearly shows the stream there today. The one deed reference written on the map says "Vol 91 -241". A trip to the county revealed something quite different. 
Volume #91 page 241 at the County Records Office showed a complex dispersion of an estate of someone in Boulder Creek. Land, cash, just about everything was dispersed to a mysterious Evangelist.
I also tried looking at the entire ledger for any reference to Evergreen but to no avail. Luckily I had taken photo of this map on my phone and studied the reference numbers again. This is what I decided the Volume 91 truly was: 
Viola! The deed, and all of its participants appeared on page 241!
"Third day in November in the Year of Our Lord, Eighteen Hundred and eighty three."
Now for the curious mystery! What on earth was that circular "road"? (Without my glasses I mistook it for a pond at first, and alas my archive mates have permanently dubbed it my "Pond." theory!). Needless to say, we have considered that this might be a plan of some sort. But the referenced deed simply states that the boundaries of the properties adjoining this city land have been verified and marked on this map. There is no mention of Evergreen's use or plan. 

Here is the area,  near the retaining wall in the background, as it looked a few years ago:
And below today, from Evergreen Street, straight up, like the 1883 map suggests. The "pond" would have been behind the Chinese Gate up there.
Often, on site, we have noticed how flat the area behind the new Chinese monument appears to be despite landslide activity. It's bowl shaped. We assumed this was excavation done during the building of the culvert, except that a few burials dating pre 1880 (seven actually) were in place with minimal disturbance. There was slide debris on some, but from an older earth movement, not the recent construction. One of the things we've wondered as a team, was how access was managed for much of the funeral parties mentioned in the 1880s, in particular something as large as a Chinese ox cart mourning procession. Many news articles describing "The Celestials" funeral processions involved an ox cart of some size. We assumed that folk simply "parked" on the road below (Now called Evergreen/Coral Street) and walked up, much like today. If this cart turnaround was already part of the landscape then it would provide a better understanding about access in the 1880s and about the general planning of burials. 
Today, we are trying to map this area. It's called "The Old Section". There are no plots as the map above shows for Evergreen "proper" and there is a peculiar reference in the 1970s to two Chinese paths: Dragon and Incense. 
What we do not see and have not found, is long term evidence to support a long time use of such paths. We have, however, found twentieth century pathways put in to connect the bottom to the top, running over a few old burials in the process. These were done, according to recent maps, in the 1980's. As one visitor and former volunteer said during her last visit: "I want the Eighties to come back."
So do I. 1880s that is.