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.

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 .