Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
Because the drill was gas-powered, it needed constant refueling and lubrica-
tion. The drill bits tended to break. The water can was always in need of re-
filling. Even so, the hard work was relieved by its taking place on one of the
most beautiful stretches of land in the wotld.
Chico Creek had been spared most of the ravages of the Gold Rush.
That event, even though it occurred nearly 150 years ago, left ugly blemishes
on the rivers of California that still persist. In their mad quest for gold, the
miners dredged tons of gravel and rock from the state's rivers and left these
waste piles everywhere in the river valleys. The Mother Load, in the
foothills east of Sacramento, was hardest hit, and those rivers of the north,
such as the Feather and Touolome Rivers, were devastated as well. Chico
Creek is a smallish creek flowing out of the Sierta Nevada foothills. It too
had its share of gold, which, because of the rugged country around, was
mined by hand rather than by machine dredges. But it has other treasures as
well, treasures first discovered hy William Gabb. It has Cretaceous-aged fos-
sils of spectacular beauty.
The geological setting of Chico Creek is itself extraordinary. Most of
the Sierran foothills in northern California are covered with dtab rock:
thick, gray volcanic residue from the Sierras uplift blanket the older rocks in
the region. Only where creeks and rivers have cut deep gorges can the more
ancient geology of this region be found. On Chico Creek, the high valley
walls are made up of the thick volcanic rock, and only in the creek itself and
in the low walls lining it are different rocks found, sedimentary rocks of
much greater antiquity. Here the creek has knifed down into an ancient sea
bottom, where clams and snails and ammonites in untold numhets lie en-
tombed. The cool creek burbles merrily over this smooth, dark rock with its
myriad white fossils, and each year the flooding snow melt erodes the sur-
rounding rock to bring new treasures into view, treasures that sparkle briefly
before they too are eroded into sand grains on their way to the Pacific Ocean.
Gahb's pioneering expeditions to Chico Creek in the earliest years of
the California Geological Survey showed the presence of Cretaceous-aged
fossils in California, as we noted Chapter 1. Although Gabb could find no
fossils similar to any species known from Europe, the prints of numerous am-
