Landslide Victory

Evergreen Cemetery’s slide management

The rainy season cometh.  We danced for it, prayed for it, even voted to manage the water from it.  So when we get what we ask for, when Nature demonstrates the saying: “when it rains, it pours.”, expect our green hills to turn into mush and slide downward. 

Luckily, much Evergreen's hillsides are held together by joined crowns of lush redwoods. There are also  undulating tails of tall ferns and deep delving scented bay trees.  Hardened gnarled oaks tend to stay towards the bottom half. Occasionally, especially this time of year we are reminded that we have an oddball, flame colored deciduous wonder.
Enough rain in our quadrangle will best the most rooted of these hillside occupants, upending its trunk, sending the added weight to the slump of rock, clay, and sandstone, propelling the debris right into an old crypt or granite monument. 

Evergreen Cemetery has experienced numerous mudslides. In 1865, one such slide made the newspapers.  Cemetery volunteers, our first generation of “Evergreenies”, (the name we volunteers give ourselves today),  took on the challenge of Evergreen’s management with poetical humor, (if I read my 1865 counterpart correctly.)

  Today when you visit Evergreen, you can look straight up the main path to see trees and ivy. A lot of large trees are not holding their ground, but have collapsed, and been stacked by Nature, the high powered constituent in this race against ruin. In fact, in the two other gullies surrounding Evergreen, the debris looks human managed, stacked askew as if some giant played pick up sticks.  A sign on the main trail now to keep visitors safe, right before the Glory Path climbs up towards the top of Evergreen, to remind them that there is only one trail to use.
 In fact, the small hillside stream has already eroded away an empty plot. If it weren't for the single redwood standing guard up there, (with the help of some old wharf pilings put in back in the ‘70's), the whole section might slump down hill, again, this time taking a few headstone dense family plots with it.

In 1969, we were able to capture erosion in action at Evergreen:  

Creeped out?

In 1982, another landslide occurred. It happened during the famous storm, one that is forever recorded in a powerful picture book produced by the Santa Cruz Sentinel called “The Storm of ‘82”.  (This storm was also responsible for the Love Creek disaster.) Nature won this round against us.

In 2012, Engineers took a hard look at why landslides and flooding occurred at Evergreen. The hillside was slowly creeping downward. What trees clung to its sides leaned sideways like a human on a surfboard. This elegant solution was the result of this planning after many months of discussion and bids.

photos courtesy of G.Neier, Evergreen Archives

 The culvert  funnels water down this beautifully designed, channel shaped retaining wall. (complete with artistically placed stone pebbles within the water furrow..)  Flow heads straight into a large drain installed below the street.

Photo by G. Neier, Evergreen Volunteer

photo courtesy of G. Neier

Currents of Renewed Ambition

photo courtesy of D.White, Evergreen Volunteer

Cinder blocks for use on plot retaining wall

This isn’t the end. We are starting to shore up old plot retaining walls and with donations from the City of Santa Cruz, we are able to restore sections of Evergreen with recycled materials from local sources, replacing the first attempts by volunteers  to hold back the tide of mud and debris from further endangering the more delicate and historic sections of this living piece of local history. We may not ever win the race against Nature, but we can convince the landscape to work around us.

 Interested in helping out? Visit the Museum’s webpage .

Hauntingly Familiar

What is your favorite haunt on Halloween? Creepy mansions, old wharves, cemeteries?? Halloween cometh, and where I live, it's a national holiday. (I think it has to do with an excuse to eat candy, dress up and make mischief.)The blogging this week will concentrate on Spooky Tales of Evergreen Cemetery.
Evergreen Cemetery suffers the most this time of year, especially its fragile gravestones. People come because they want to see "The White Lady of Evergreen." Some come to celebrate their religious beliefs and some just want to come for the chills factor. After all, aren't cemeteries creepy?The reality is not that cemeteries themselves are creepy, but that some of the stories of how people GOT there, ARE.

For instance, what about the mysterious Marie Holmes? Her headstone has been stolen twice, and found twice. We don't know why it was taken the first time, and we suspect, due to the location of the second time it was found, the culprits may have been involved in a prank. But why, remains a mystery.

You see, there is a lot of inconsistent information about Marie. The biggest claim about her, is that she was a prostitute.  The second infamous claim is that she committed suicide in public. She DIED in public, but when you review some of the interesting stories around her, one fact can't be denied: She had a drink with a young man half an hour before she died. The community loved Marie and gave her a rock star's funeral, with a 'heavenly choir' and a full church service, not something commonplace for of woman of  her social standing.
That young man, who last spent time with Marie, killed again a few years later. Worse yet, he was sent away for thirty years, showed up, squatted, according to a local historian's remembrances, on the street that bears his step dad's last name, and yes, though he was a stepson, managed to get buried in the family plot.
That doesn't sound very interesting, except perhaps for the discovery of an old cemetery map behind a book page of a tattered 1920's Evergreen Association journal. This map revealed that three other young women died of "suicide" within a few months of Marie. Another interesting notation:  all the women, including Marie,  had babies buried with them. Hmmm.

Back on the other side of Evergreen is another mystery.

photo Courtesy of Santa Cruz Museum of Art and History

location of the Brinton headstone today

Mary Brinton made a sensational set of headlines for over a week after her body was found out in a tule reed choked lagoon near Natural Bridges. Her purse, recovered in a pool of blood staining a viewing bench on a cliff,  clearly cried out 'suicide' to the local police, except for an exceptional detective named Starbird.  Starbird was what we would call today, obsessed with finding the truth. We have legions of TV shows about such  detectives. Starbird, in the early 1900's, was the real thing. He didn't buy the coroner's or his boss' write off that this poor unknown woman's fate was suicide. Starbird investigated her identity.
First of all, Starbird took a sample of the blood found at the crime scene. He had to travel to San Francisco to a special laboratory to identify whether or not it was human. It wasn't human. The next step was to take her photo. He had a list of people who claimed they saw a woman who "looked melancholy," near the murder site, but when shown the photo of his VIC, well, they could not identify her.  Starbird looked at the labels of his VIC's clothing. He politely inquired if any women had bought a particular skirt or blouse (like his VIC's ) but no, very little was found out this way. Many had paid cash! Meanwhile, all manner of tips came in, (to use the modern lingo) but none of them could tell Starbird his VIC's name. (Many names were given, but none, as they say, panned out.) Finally, the victim wore spectacles. Somewhere there must be a record of who bought the spectacles for his victim, or even her own name.  Sure enough, the optometrist had the name of the patient who wore that particular prescription.   It was a break in the case. Starbird had the name of his VIC. Mary Brinton.
You'd think that would be the end of it, but many folk "identified" Mary, saying that she was sad, depressed, and yes, would have killed herself any time. Starbird was no fool. He tracked down three of these people, two who lived in Menlo Park, California. Without elaboration, he asked the "close associates" of Mary Brinton, if they could identify the 'unknown' woman in the photo (Mary), and none of the three could identify her. Meanwhile, Starbird had found out another curious fact:  Mary was very, very rich. She had funds in her bank account,  the equivalent in today's valuation, of 3/4 of a million dollars. She also had a child in New Zealand.  Finally, someone from Carmel came forward and identified Mary. Mary Brinton was the family nurse to a very wealthy man who lived in Redwood City. Who that man was, well, that still remains a mystery....The killer was never caught. In the end, Mary's death was still ruled a suicide, since there was no 'evidence' of foul play. What do you think?
Stay tuned!

Labor Intensive

Low water use succulents bring the green back.

Succulents installed at the Chinese Monument
by Homeless Service Center Volunteers

Labor Day. Every Monday we work to clean up, clear weeds, and assess potential problems in case the earth decides to move, or in a wet year, slide, around us. We labor to preserve a place that was a hub of entrepreneurial idealism, despite racial tensions and Civil War conflict. Santa Cruz's population grew, and then some died. The land was deforested to feed lime kilns and build dwellings, town businesses, and industry. It was cleared for farmland. And there was drought.  Evergreen was a name of hope and to instill hope, they created  Cemetery Decoration Days.  As always, they had to warn folk about the consequences of plant theft.

California enters it's third year of drought. And yet, here we are, again, like our forebears, giving hope, decorating our Cemetery,  trying our best to make sure our monuments prepare for our most important event of the year: Legacy Day. Our local paper, established in 1856, and author of the above print, recaps here,  today's events.
If you would like to volunteer at our site please contact the Museum of Art and History.

Rain is on the way: A salamander found by youth volunteers
clearing away ivy, searches for damp ground.

Let's do the twist..

On  December 21, 1862, May 16th and  October 9, 1865,  very large quakes rumbled through Santa Cruz. 

Damages were unreported or limited to brick buildings, bridges, or chimneys of stone,  which fortunately were not as common as wooden dwellings and structures. But what of Cemeteries? In 1989 Loma Prieta roared through Santa Cruz leaving devastation in its wake that ran deeper than the loss of its historic buildings. It shook our very souls. For an excellent recap of this history click on this link or visit the Museum of Art and History in Santa Cruz.

http://www.santacruzmah.org/2013/artifact-of-the-month-opening-the-lid-on-memories-brick-from-the-1989-loma-prieta-earthquake/

Evergreen Cemetery had some very interesting quake damage from our  1989 6.9 shakeup. 

Thanks to FEMA funding, many of these historic monuments were put back in place. Perhaps this is nature's way of saying that even the past is never set in stone, no matter how much we anchor, spend or preserve. It gives us pause to think about the next shakeup  and to wonder, are we ever truly prepared for change? 

To see images of pre-quake Santa Cruz please visit here:

https://www.facebook.com/pages/Santa-Cruz-County-History/125332627489930

Remains of the Day

 March 7, 1863 The Santa Cruz Weekly Sentinel

Santa Cruz in the 1860's was very much a happening place. When you finish disinterring your relatives from your local churchyard, (moving them to either your own land, or perhaps to a plot at Evergreen), you could go and have dinner, a drink, a salt water bath, and perhaps enjoy live music.

Disinterment was rampant in the nineteenth century, whether it was due to dispute, love, or theft. (Cadavers were in demand for many reasons.) For the poor and the 'undesirables' of society, when met with their demise, usually ended up in a place called The Potter's Field. For 'proper' folk, it was something to be avoided. Yet every town cemetery had one, and some part of most public non denominational cemeteries created one. On our Evergreen Cemetery Maps, the locality of  its Potter's Field has been a challenge simply because of the incompleteness of our roster. We have time and structure fires to blame for our lack of records but it is interesting to note that our Chinese section AND the Potter's Field appear to overlap or quite possibly, the brambly steep hillside that is seen behind our Mason and G.A.R. sections are all that is left of what might have been the resting place of Santa Cruz' most unwanted. 

To test this theory, we asked for help-

Alert flags, handler color coded

The Institute of Canine Forensics came to our aid in the Spring of this year. Trained to locate human remains/burials in excess of 1000 years of age, these dogs and their handlers explored Evergreen with no knowledge of the locality of our PF. Some of the handlers had no previous knowledge of Evergreen's history. They simply explored our grounds, canine leading the way. When the canine came upon a suspect area, she or he gave an alert signal unique to their handler.

Urn side fragment
CSUMB Intern Jackie

Urn Base, Potter's Field
CSUMB Intern Jessica

The handler would then put down a small colored flag over the area in question. After their job was done, it would be our responsibility to find out if the dog was correct or not.  In the two sites we decided to excavate to confirm or deny the canine location, BOTH sites yielded stunning finds. When the canine sweep was completed, the number of unmarked burials in our Chinese section confirmed some of the unmarked burials on our roster, a little further up the hill than we thought. There were unmarked graves behind the G.A.R. plot too, just where the older maps had suggested our Potter's Field might have been.

Footer stone found two plots from origination locality at a depth of 10 inches ( hard mud.)

When the Unit returned for a second sweep one month later, they spent some time around plots that had headstones and some that contained enclosures but no headstone. Here, one canine in particular alerted us to some misplaced stones, buried for some time, by perhaps a previous renovation team. This type of 'reassignment' was common in the days when no maps were available and the interest in preservation was fleeting. Today, Evergreen is a priceless window into not only Santa Cruz' past, but the nineteenth century culture and its citizens who resided here, especially those that died untimely and suspect deaths. Ironically, I find that the folk whose grand monuments remain, their stories do not interest me as much as the unmarked grave of a young prostitute who died suspiciously at the hands of someone of society and wealth. And the graves of those that died tragically because of their dangerous livelihood? I need to find out more about their past. Who were they?  Why do we care? Why is it so important that we NOT forget them?

Piper,
 canine officer in charge

Shaken, not stirred.

Three months after we moved into a stucco house just off of a place called Arana Gulch, a ghost showed up in my backyard.   Being a mom of a toddler at the time, I wrote off this visitation as the result of stress,  ( he had no legs that I could see and the dog ran right "through" him.) Then,  a librarian, who was also a neighbor, pestered me into admitting that I had seen someone. I described my encounter. She smiled and announced with relief:  "You've seen Jack Sloan, the Ghost of Arana Gulch." With a tilt of her head she added mischievously: “You’d be his type.”

Three months later, the Loma Prieta quake hit.  It was 1989.  A bone breaking 6.9 on the Richter Scale left our house still standing. We were lucky.  Our tiny neighborhood huddled around gathered barbecues, all sharing the contents of our defrosting freezers. We were three days into a power outage that was county wide.   Over the warm glow of coals, the librarian neighbor handed me some information about a man named Andrew Jackson Sloan.   
I kept the odd notes for many years, especially the one that said he was murdered near my property and that he had fought off seven bandidos with a bull whip!  Jack Sloan, I later found out, did die on February 11th, 1865, but from three gunshot wounds, one in the groin which ended his life.

I was skeptical at first about where or why Jack died, until I began to research the history of my deed. Despite a cynical window clerk at the County Records Office, I did find my deed, made at the request of F.A. Hihn, one of the founders of Santa Cruz. My land was sold to a neighbor, two days after the murder.  One year later, in 1866, the land was in default and sold off at auction by the US Government. During the review of my own title, I did notice my husband and I had signed our papers on February 11^th, something that, at the time, twenty five years ago now, I had not given much thought to. That was my first connection with the history of A.J. Sloan. 
Alot,( as local Santa Cruz Historian Sandy Lydon is fond of saying,) of 'Hooey History' is found around Mr. Sloan but much, including his fate, is still a mystery.

Until now. 

My novel, Buried Star, explores a few serious and fanciful theories of what may have happened to Mr. Sloan. Some ideas have even been reported as actual 'history', but have no basis in fact. Andrew Jackson Sloan is, as he did then, still creating controversy.

I guess this all boils down to whether or not you believe in ghosts.

Do you?

An open book or a damned man?