Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
may even hear the cry of a lone coyote or happen across the tracks of an elusive bob-
cat along the riverbanks.
PINE VALLEY NATIVES
For thousands of years, fertile Pine Valley was home to the Esselen people, providing
them with excellent hunting, gathering, and living grounds. The Esselen may have
used fire to clear underbrush and maintain the pine stands and broad meadow, where
deer, rabbits, antelopes, and even bears once commonly grazed. In the adjacent
forest, doves, quails, and other game birds flocked beneath the abundant canopy
of oaks, bays, pines, and madrones. Wild roses grow in dense thickets on the east
edge of the valley, perhaps cultivated by the Esselen for straight, strong arrow shafts.
Beneath the sandstone cliffs, women took harvested acorns from the surrounding oak
woodlands and ground the nutritious meat into flour. Their mortar holes still pepper
sandstone outcrops just downstream from the Pine Valley-Pine Ridge Trail junction.
Today, few Esselen remain to answer the many questions one might have about
their ancestors' lives in Pine Valley or elsewhere along the Santa Lucia Range. Most
of their people were decimated by disease brought by Spanish missionaries. Those
who survived were often captured and sent to work in the Spanish missions. Others
were killed without mercy. Sadly, much of their culture, language, mythology, and
religion was also lost.
