Biology Reference
In-Depth Information
nearby mountain ranges and quickly overtopping riverbanks to spread
across the Central Valley.
The settlers that came to the valley were full of the vim and vigor of
conquering the West. Taming nature was just part of a day's work, and the
fertile river plains of the Central Valley were worth the risk. They didn't
really believe the size of the floods described by the Native Americans or
in the speed with which such waters could arrive on their doorsteps. But
flow gauges set up by the U.S. Geological Survey in the early 1900s con-
firmed that the Sacramento River could rise from its normal flow of 5,000
cubic feet per second (cfs) to 600,000 cfs in less than a week—an amount
that could never be contained within its natural banks.
On January 7, 1850, the small riverfront town of Sacramento experi-
enced its first flood. The river rushed and swirled through the entire town,
rising to the first floor of most houses and stores, and soaking others. The
flood brought citizens together for a meeting, where they decided to build
an earthen flood wall around the entire town. This first California levee
would kick of decades of individual communities or property owners
building small levees or dams willy-nilly, and of floods every few years
that wiped out what crops, goods, and livestock the people had managed
to amass.
Localism ruled, and the rights of individual property owners remained
sacred. The response of most landowners threatened or engulfed by water
was to redirect the water to a neighbor's doorstep. If you built a levee on
your side of the river, the owner on the opposite bank had to build a higher
one. Accounts from the late 1800s describe midnight moments when
masked men stole up on dams, disarmed guards, and dug trenches—
breaking open the barrier so that the water might flood one part of the
valley and spare another.
Within the natural river system, the first lands to absorb winter floods
from storms and snowmelt were the delta's freshwater tule marshes. The
state soon labeled these “overflowed” lands. Farther down in the bay wa-
tershed, this designation encompassed shoreline mudflats and salt
marshes. Early Californians viewed marshes as wasted land that could be
put to better use once drained. They called this activity “reclamation.” Lit-
tle did the empire builders know the critical function these marginal lands
served in the estuarine ecosystem—and how much it would cost their de-
scendants to restore them.
From the very beginning, those with an eye for the future began buy-
