Carmel River
The Carmel River News Blog gathers any and all data concerning Carmel River, CA from any and all sources. No claims to veracity are made. All pictures and quotes are owned by their source websites. This site only scratches the surface of the ancient history of Carmel Valley.
Tuesday, February 6, 2024
Tuesday, January 30, 2024
Tuesday, January 9, 2024
Saturday, November 11, 2023
Steelhead numbers in the Carmel River are on a downward trend
Steelhead are a threatened species whose decline in the Carmel River became a driving catalyst behind the state’s cease-and-desist order against Cal Am for the utility’s decades-long overpumping.
Over the long term, steelhead numbers in the Carmel River are on a downward trend. That is expected to continue as climate change continues warming the ocean and, locally, leading to more extreme droughts – just around 1 to 2 percent of steelhead that make the trip out to sea successfully return to spawn.
Info from MCW
Image from MPWMDThursday, October 19, 2023
Friday, September 8, 2023
Tuesday, June 27, 2023
Thursday, June 22, 2023
Rana Creek Ranch Was Recently Acquired by the Wildlands Conservancy for $35 million
Photo by: Courtesy of Hall & Hall
From: SF Gate
A sprawling 14,000-acre property in the Carmel Valley will become a public nature preserve. Known as Rana Creek Ranch, the land is an important site for the Esselen Tribe, and the tribe will be able to access the land again after the sale. Wolves, tule elk, beavers and the California condor all roamed the land 200 years ago.
Tuesday, April 25, 2023
Thursday, March 2, 2023
Friday, February 17, 2023
The South-Central Coast Steelhead Have Declined to the Low Hundreds
From: Carmel River Watershead
The National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS) published in 2013 a Recovery Program for our distinct population of steelhead trout named the South-Central Coast Steelhead (SCCS).
The "grade" they gave the Carmel River steelhead recovery at that time was "Poor," as the numbers of adult steelhead in our river had declined to the low hundreds if even that many.
NMFS stated that to delist (remove) our SCCS from the Threatened Species list a number of conditions would have to be met including: mean annual run size of 4,500 adults, adequate ocean conditions, density of spawning fish, and certain fish genetic histories in our river.
Thursday, February 2, 2023
Tuesday, January 10, 2023
Friday, December 16, 2022
Thursday, December 1, 2022
Baltazar's Rebellion of 1779
What began as civil disobedience and casual opposition by Baltazar eventually turned into an attempted coup. Batazar fled the Carmel Mission in 1779 along with a band of several other mission natives. Baltazar turned south to the Big Sur coast, meeting his daughter and her people, the Sargentaruc, who organized ways to resist Spanish forces.
As Spanish forces continued to cut off resources and reinforcements to Baltazar’s rebellion, it became increasingly difficult to sustain the resistance. Baltazar died in the fall of 1780 of unknown causes, and many members of his group hesitantly returned to the missions for the promise of seeing their family and friends again.
Art by Louis Choris- “Indian of California.” Painting is not of Baltazar, but of a typical Ohlone man in the Bay Area and likely similar to what Baltazar looked like.
FROM: Point Lobos
Wednesday, November 2, 2022
“Isxchenta” is known as Point Lobos
The area in/around Point Lobos is known by many of the local indigenous peoples as “Isxchenta” (pronounced EESH-hen-tah). The Rumsen, Esselen, and KaKoon Ta Ruk peoples, who still live in the area today, have kept their cultures alive despite many attempts by settlers to erase them.
Wednesday, May 18, 2022
Carmel River Tributaries
Approximately
96% of the Carmel River flows from the many tributaries in the Santa
Lucia Mountains, including San Clemente Creek and Cachagua Creek
subwatersheds.
In contrast, the combined flow from the Tularcitos, Rana,
and Chupines subwatersheds of the Sierra de Salinas produces only 4% of
the annual discharge of the Carmel River, but occupies 23% of the
entire watershed.
Tuesday, February 15, 2022
no stream is more important
On the California coast between Santa Cruz and the famous Hearst Castle at San Simeon, no stream is more important for native steelhead than the Carmel River.
From TUSunday, January 2, 2022
Tuesday, May 25, 2021
Franciscan missionaries were like “Nazis operating concentration camps.”
Through 1821, the Spanish built 21 Catholic missions in California to claim Native lands and convert Native souls. Journalist Carey McWilliams once compared this system to “Nazis operating concentration camps.”
By 1833, Franciscan missionaries had baptized 81,586 California Indians and buried some 62,600, who perished from disease, displacement, and starvation.
From: FIX
Image from: Wikipedia
Friday, January 29, 2021
Wednesday, January 27, 2021
Friday, November 20, 2020
126 Steelhead Made it up to Los Padres Dam
"The Carmel River is small and picturesque, nestled in the hills of the Carmel Valley. The river itself is fairly small, only flowing about 30 miles from the peaks of the Santa Lucia and Sierra de Salinas to the lagoon at Carmel Bay. It is also a naturally intermittent system, with historic estimates suggesting the lower portions of the river may only have had year-round flow in about six of every ten years. Although these characteristics represent challenges for anadromous fish, it is believed that an average of 8,000 adult steelhead would historically spawn in the Carmel watershed every year.
As of 2015, for the first time in nearly a century, steelhead were able to move upstream unimpeded past the former site of the San Clemente Dam, which was removed due to both public safety and ecological concerns. Fish still face a barrier to movement at Los Padres Dam, but between January and May of this year, a total of 126 adults made their way to the dam."
From: FishBio
Wednesday, September 30, 2020
Saturday, August 29, 2020
Carmel Fire 2020
From: Carmel Valley Locals
The area in which the River Fire first gained traction hadn't had a fire in recorded history. This helped feed the flames that destroyed 43 structures and put about 20,000 people under evacuation warning.
Cal Fire previously attempted to carry out controlled burns but was stopped several times between 2013 and 2017 by members of the public who were leery of the controlled burn coming too close to their homes.
From: The Californian
Friday, August 21, 2020
Thursday, August 20, 2020
Wednesday, August 19, 2020
Tuesday, June 30, 2020
Archbishop says Satan is Behind Defaced Statues of Saint Serra
The archbishop of San Francisco claimed Father Junipero Serra, the man famed for bringing Catholicism to California in the 1700s, is a "great hero" and "great defender" of Indigenous peoples and partly blamed the removal of Serra's monument in Golden Gate Park on the Devil.
Serra is considered by some to be a de facto slave owner who used the labor of Native individuals against their will to build the missions.
From SFGate
Wednesday, June 10, 2020
Punta de los Lobos Marinos
After the establishment of San Carlos Borromeo de Carmelo the mission's cowboys, or vaqueros, tended herds of cattle on the nearby grasslands and became the first non-native people to use what is now Point Lobos State Reserve property. It was also during the era of Spanish occupation that Point Lobos was first named, when the barking of sea lions inspired the name Punta de los Lobos Marinos, Point of the Sea Wolves.
From: Point Lobos
Friday, May 1, 2020
Case Studies in Demographic Collapse
"The Franciscan missionaries stationed at San Carlos Mission (established in 1770) recruited converts from the Carmel River basin and nearby areas from the 1770's through the first decade of the nineteenth century.
The Indian population increased in size until the last phase of active recruitment occurred in the 1803-7 quinquennium, during which period the missionaries baptized 108 converts, 71 in the year 1806 alone. After 1807 only 24 more converts came to the mission, and the population of the mission began a steady decline.
The numbers reached a recorded maximum of 876 in 1795, to a mere 165 in 1834, on the eve of the secularization of the mission.
The mission population experienced a net decline of 62 percent per generation and mean life expectancy was low, averaging 7.6 years at birth. "
From: Indians, Franciscans, and Spanish Colonization by Jackson and Castillo, 1995
Tuesday, April 28, 2020
Scott Barn 1863
Monterey County Register of Historic Resources: Scott Barn 1863
From Hastings Natural History Reserve
Friday, April 24, 2020
Finch Creek spawning habitat
Sunday, April 19, 2020
Thursday, April 9, 2020
Big Sur Land Trust Acquires Patriarch Ridge
The Big Sur Land Trust has acquired 83.5 acres of property atop Patriarch Ridge in Carmel Valley.
The land is a mix of old growth mixed evergreen woodland, chaparral and grassland habitat. A dense canopy of stately trees creates an open, park-like understory with adjacent woodlands, grassy slopes and chaparral-covered hillslopes that drop steeply into shaded redwood canyons.
Patriarch Ridge is a very important part of the Esselen Tribe’s sacred lands and includes the upper watershed divide between Williams Canyon and the Garzas Creek drainage. The Esselen name for Patriarch Ridge is “Tebitylat” — meaning “resting spot.”
It has been used for countless generations of Esselen and Rumsen people for ceremonies and as a travel route and corridor for bringing in important food sources from the coast on the northern end of Big Sur at the villages of Sarhentaruc and Ixchenta.
From Monterey Herald
Friday, January 24, 2020
Thursday, September 26, 2019
The First Spanish Grant of Land
The first Spanish grant of land to an individual in California was to Manuel Butron (1727-1793), a soldier from the Monterey presidio who had married a baptized Indian woman. Father Serra approved of Spaniards marrying converted Indian women and supported Butron's petition for a grant of land.
In 1775, Butron was granted a small concession in the Carmel Valley.
Interestingly, although he seems eventually to have lost his land grant, a number of Mutsun today can trace ancestry back to the Butron family.
Manuel Butron was buried in the floor of the chapel of Mission San Carlos Borromeo del Carmelo.
From: Protect Juristac
Map from: Amah Mutsun
Wednesday, September 4, 2019
The Indians resisted the yoke, and many died in resistance
The Spanish missions were established in California late in the 18th century. They were the work of father Serra who'd walked on his martyrs bare feet from Mexico to Monterey. A garrulous fanatic, Serra committed himself to "slipping the gentle yoke of Christ” over the heads of "neophytes," as unyoked Indians were called by the Franciscans, all of whom had been born in Spain.
The Indians resisted the yoke, and many died in a resistance so fierce and unyielding that they killed the babies born of rapes by the Spanish soldiers who accompanied the missionaries up and down Spanish California from San Diego to San Rafael and Sonoma.
Thursday, July 25, 2019
California Condor Comeback
The California condor, North America's largest bird, once ruled California's coastal mountains. The vulture-like bird was revered by Native Americans and was believed to contain spiritual powers.
Now, condor reintroduction celebrates a milestone: Chick Number 1,000 has hatched.
From KCRW
Image from: TripSavvy
Thursday, July 11, 2019
Consuming More Water From the Carmel River is no Longer Feasible
Consuming more water drawn from the Carmel River is no longer feasible, neither ecologically nor legally.
The California Public Utilities Commission ruled in September that the best way forward was for California American Water to construct a $329 million desalination plant on the Peninsula.
From: Monterey County Now
Picture From: Passion4Place
Wednesday, July 10, 2019
Wednesday, June 19, 2019
It’s Called a Genocide
Joining with tribal leaders beneath an Oak tree along the Sacramento River, Governer Gavin Newsom formally apologized Tuesday for California’s role in the “systemic slaughter” of Native Americans.
“It’s called a genocide. That’s what it was: a genocide. No other way to describe it. And that’s the way it needs to be described in the history books,” Newsom said. “So I am here to say the following: I’m sorry on behalf of the state of California.
California’s first governor, Peter Burnett, told the Legislature that “a war of extermination will continue to be waged between the two races until the Indian race becomes extinct.” The state spent $1.3 million subsidizing dozens of militia campaigns against Native Americans over the next decade.
From SF Chronicle
Removal of the El Camino Real bell marker
“The true history of the California mission system has never been told. It is shameful that these places where our ancestors were enslaved, whipped, raped, tortured and exposed to fatal diseases have been whitewashed and converted into tourist attractions.”
For the Indians who toiled in California’s mission compounds the ringing of the bell regimented an iron-clad schedule of forced prayer and compulsory labor. The bell was a potent symbol of the domination of the Catholic Church and the Spanish state over all aspects of the lives of the indigenous people who were forced to live “under the bell.”
From IndyBay
Thursday, May 23, 2019
Cathedral of San Carlos Borromeo
The Cathedral of San Carlos Borromeo in Monterey Presidio was founded by Franciscan Father Saint Junipero Serra as the chapel of Mission San Carlos Borromeo on June 3rd, 1770 near the native village of Tamo.
From: Santa Cruz and the Monterey Bay Areas
Wednesday, May 8, 2019
Four Years After California’s Largest Dam Removal
At the Carmel River other species, such as lampreys, an eel-like fish, are coming back, and tributaries are showing more wildlife.
Photo by Vern Fisher
Wednesday, April 24, 2019
The Papal Bull Inter Caetera Started the European Colonization of the New World
In 1493, Pope Alexander VI issued the papal bull Inter Caetera, which started the European colonization of the New World.
"Among other works well pleasing to the Divine Majesty and cherished of our heart, this assuredly ranks highest, that in our times especially the Catholic faith and the Christian religion be exalted and be everywhere increased and spread, that the health of souls be cared for and that barbarous nations be overthrown and brought to the faith itself...We...assign to you and your heirs and successors, Kings of Castile and Leon...all islands and mainlands found and to be found, discovered and to be discovered towards the west and south, by drawing and establishing a line from...the north...to...the south...the said line to be distant one hundred leagues towards the west and south from any of the islands commonly known as the Azores and Cape Verde…"
From: Church Militant